How to run an online meeting

General advice about actually running the meeting (as opposed to setting it up in the first place). It references Zoom, but the most of the advice applies in general to all species of online meetings.

“Zoom Bombers”

SEE ALSO: There’s some good advice here (from NY intergroup)

This has become a thing … people finding random zoom meetings, and saying disgusting things. There’s a few things you can do when setting up your meeting, to lessen the chances of having zoom bombers – see the setup page. If you DO get zoom bombers during the meeting, you can kick them out by hoving over their names, and clicking on “Remove”. They can’t then rejoin. However often we’re not sure if someone is a zoom bomber or just a name we don’t know. We ask everyone to identify themselves at the start of the meeting, but often zoom bombers will arrive after your meeting has started. When that happened to us, I interrupted the meeting, and asked everyone to either say their name and home group, or put them into the “chat” window. Those that didn’t (I gave them 2 minutes), I removed.

Note that it seems to be happening only with Zoom. If you have an ongoing problem, you may want to move to other free platforms like FreeConferenceCall or Jitsu (open source, and free).

If “Join Before Host” was set in your meeting settings, the host can join the meeting without being logged in. If you are the host, but do not have host controls such as removing participants, or mute/unmute all, you’ll need to leave the meeting and login in to Zoom, then rejoin the meeting (click on the meeting link again, or click “Join” and enter the meeting ID).

Audio vs video

Some people prefer audio only meetings (don’t have to dress up … or wear clothes at all! 🙂 ), and others prefer video (being able to see each other adds to the sense of connection). You can decide whether you want your meeting to be one or the other, or to let each person decide. Just let everyone know at the start of the meeting what the expectation is (eg “Please turn on your video when sharing”, or “Can everyone please turn video OFF as this is an audio only meeting”).

Muting

Background noise can be a big issue in online meetings, if everyone leaves their microphones on. But if everyone turns them off, you don’t get to do the “Hello, name” bit, or to hear people’s reactions when you’re sharing. In some meetings, people turn their audio on and off as required. As the host of the meeting, don’t hesitate to ask someone to turn off their audio if there’s a lot of background noise coming from them, or you can mute them yourself. (You’ll know who it is, if you’re in Speaker view, because the screen will keep flicking to them, as it shows whoever it thinks is talking). You might want to start the meeting by asking everyone to self-mute whilst others are sharing (and to un-mute momentarily if they wish to greet the person, applaud, etc), and make sure everyone knows where the “Mute” button is (bottom left, in Zoom).

Keeping track of names

In face to face meetings, we take a list of names at the start of the meeting. This is slightly trickier in online meetings. It’s hard to rely on what you’re seeing on the Zoom screen, to keep track of who you’re asking to speak. There are 3 main views:

• Gallery View means you can see all the participants at once, which is great, but if you have more than about 20 people, it can become really confusing.
• Speaker View means you see whoever is speaking, but if there’s noise coming from any other person, it can flick to them temporarily, which can be off-putting (unless you “pin” someone to keep them on the screen). You can avoid this by having everyone mute themselves when they’re not speaking. The Host can also mute everyone, either one at a time, or as a group … but of course if you do it as a group, you’d mute the current speaker as well.
• Participant list: You can also view a list of participants, which shows in alphabetical order, but sometimes people change their names during the  meeting, so where they are in the list changes.

So, it’s easier if you have a list of names. You may want to write down each name as you see each person arrive, or maybe read that list out just before starting the meeting, to check everyone has been listed. Of course, people will arrive during the meeting too – you could add their names as you see them arrive, or if that’s too hard, you might choose to only ask the people you’ve got listed to share, and if you run out of people, then ask if there’s anyone else who wants to share.

7th Tradition

One way that groups manage 7th tradition is to request that people contribute using online bank transfer, directly into the group’s bank account. You can put your account details in the chat window each time, or along with original meeting listing.

Please note that there is some risk to anonymity by doing this, if your bank account name has “AA” in it. Unfortunately it isn’t possible to change your bank account name once it’s been created.

Another option would be to use PayPal donations, by setting up a PayPal account connected to your group bank account (I haven’t tried that myself, so I’m not sure of the details) … but apparently this might break traditions, because AA doesn’t take “donations”, only “contributions”.

You may also choose to ask for donations to go directly to GSO, CSO or Area – bank account details are listed on the Make a Donation page (click on the “via bank transfer” tab).

Helping participants with technology

You’ll probably want to ask people to arrive early (eg 15 mins before the meeting actually starts), so that you can sort out any technical issues before the start of the meeting. You may want to start the meeting with a run-down of how to participate – telling everyone how to mute and unmute themselves, turn their audio on and off, access the chat, “raise their hand”, etc. And what the expectations are – eg that they mute themselves if there’s background noise; whether to “raise their hand” or just interrupt if they need to speak, etc.

Showing readings

If you want to show readings, bring them up on your own computer screen. Then, click on “Share Screen”, then select which window you want to share.

To stop the screen sharing, click on “Stop Share”.

When people start their shares, you could copy and paste the text of the reading into the “Chat” window (and stop screen sharing, so you can see video of person who’s sharing instead), so people can refer back to it when they’re sharing.

Socializing after the meeting

You may want to keep the Zoom room open after the meeting has officially ended, for people to socialize. If you’re the host and want to leave, but allow the meeting to continue running, you can pass the “host control” to another person – Zoom instructions here.  You can have more than one host to a meeting – this can be done in the initial meeting set up (see How to set up an online meeting)

 

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS! Please ask questions (or give some advice!!) in the comments below, so I can add that info to this page (or ask privately here).