My very first presentation in front of a writer’s group will be this Sunday. Originally, I was supposed to speak to the group at the Millhopper Branch of the Alachua County Florida Library but with all the craziness in the world, all public events were canceled. When I got the notice from the coordinator for the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, I opened my big mouth and suggested that we could probably do it using Zoom! :0( – And they voted to do it…
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Now, I hadn’t used the video conferencing software yet but my daughter had been using it for work. She works at the University of Florida. So, I went online to my favorite learning place, YouTube, and began watching videos. So far, so good. I opened a free account and contacted a couple of my fellow authors to give it a try. Now we are meeting every week for a writers group that includes critiquing and discussions about the “business of writing”. It was fairly simple to set up a weekly meeting and invite each participant. The links are created just for that meeting and you can include a password requirement should you want to implement that. If there are only 3 participants you can meet online as often and, generally, as long as you like. But any more than that and for any longer one of you will need to buy a monthly subscription. Once you have paid for a subscription the software will allow you to assign someone else to start the meeting if you are unable to attend.
There have been some security issues with Zoom over the last couple of weeks with people who don’t have enough to do. They have been intercepting some of the video conferences and splashing lewd sayings or whatever. Some have even gotten into the cloud server and shared the videos that were recorded. Zoom has been addressing each problem as fast as they can. There is a major update to the software recently. Just take proper precautions such as requiring a password, participants should register to continue, once the meeting has started the coordinator can lock out any newcomers, and finally if you are going to record your video sessions for goodness sakes record them on your hard drive and into a folder of your own choosing.
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I am still trying to figure out the share video screen though. Everyone in your meeting is supposed to be able to see your video that is playing on your computer as you are playing it. But that will have to be addressed in another posting later. In the meantime give Zoom a try and connect with some of your fellow writers.
