Zoom Tips

During the COVID-19 crisis, the Zoom online meeting facility has proven very popular globally, for good reason - it's relatively simple to use, it's free for basic usage and it works well. Here are some tips to help you get started with Zoom:

• Joining a Meeting: if you have been invited to join a Zoom meeting, you will have probably been sent a link to click on. If so, just click on the link - that's the easiest way to join a meeting. You should then click on the Online Video and Computer Audio options if they are presented to you. 
• Mute / Unmute: if quite a few people are in the meeting, it's best to select Mute so that any background noises don't cause problems. If you want to talk, remember to click Unmute first of course!
• Gallery View / Speaker View: you will either see Gallery View or Speaker View options, probably in the top right corner of your screen. In Speaker View, the person currently speaking appears in a large window, and others just as thumbprint images. When in Gallery View, you can see all (or a lot of) the attendees in equally sized windows, though the person currently speaking is highlighted. A small point of confusion: while you are in Speaker View, the Gallery View option will be displayed (to allow you to switch to Gallery View), and vice versa.
• Chat: there is a Chat item in the toolbar, which will display a number if there are any chat messages that you haven't yet seen. Just click on Chat to open the chat dialogues area. You can type messages here - by default they go to everybody, but you can select somebody from the dropdown to chat privately.
• Breakout Rooms: for Nomads Social Nights, if there are quite a few people all wanting to chat at the same time, we can make use of Breakout Rooms. Think of these as individual tables. Once you join a Breakout Room, you can only see, hear and chat to the others in your room. You should be able to move to another room if you want, or back to the main group.

Zoom Privacy: there has been some publicity about potential privacy concerns with Zoom and other online chatting software. Most of the concerns are to do with recording of meetings, a facility that The Nomads are never likely to use. If you are attending a meeting that is being recorded, it will be very obvious (and you should also be asked to give specific permission to allow that).

Other online chat facilities that have online video options that work well, especially for one-on-one chats, are WhatsApp (very simply and effective), Google Hangouts and Facebook Messenger.