Today’s post comes to you courtesy of a Guest Blogger*: Robin Whitford. Many of you will be familiar with Robin and her Hooking Outside the Lines site. She sells a lovely selection of wools/textures and rug hooking equipment from her home near Ottawa. She posts regular videos to facebook, and she offers some really great classes.....via Zoom. Also available from Robin is her Creativity Club which is a weekly gathering of rug hookers, and more - it includes theme events, mini classes and yarn packs! Head on over to her site to check all this out! Her facebook page contains lots of videos, too!Zoom is a major component of Robin’s communication strategy for her business and she is very adept at using it. Robin recently wrote an article in the OHCG Newsletter on the use of Zoom and we are posting it here with her permission. We are hoping to do a few more zoom sessions within our group so we’re putting this info out there again for anyone not sure about Zoom.
A Quick Zoom Primer: Try it for yourself!
During these unprecedented times of physical distancing, limited social circles and maximum number of people in public gatherings, our regular branch meetings have been anything but regular for months and there is no clear end in sight. As we move towards colder weather, limiting even our outdoor gatherings further, alternatives are important to keep our communities connected. Luckily, technology such as Zoom provides an easy and low-cost alternative to meeting in person and everyone that i have helped try it has been excited to use it again and again.
As a member of the Ottawa Olde Forge Branch, I missed having the option of attending any of our usual 3 monthly meetings when the pandemic was first announced. However, as many of us were familiar with Zoom, I decided to host informal monthly online meetings since April - we now meet twice a month, since fall. For anyone who has not tried it, imagine all your friends coming on your computer or tablet at the same time. You can see each other, talk to one another, show your work and ask questions from the safety and comfort of home.
You can use Zoom to teach a class, do a demonstration or have a show and tell. Olde Forge has mainly done the latter, as it is a great way to check in with each participant, see how they are doing and what they’ve been working on.
Zoom is free if you keep your meetings under 40 minutes, but if you with to have longer meetings, the host is required to pay $20/month for a membership and this could be covered by the branch. The host of the meeting is the only person who needs to initiate a meeting and would then send the meeting invitation to the other branch members (Zoom provides and easy ‘copy and paste’ option for the meeting invitation).
To attend the meeting, once you have received an invitation, is very straightforward - you simply follow the prompts to create a basic account at no cost. To join future meetings, you will just click the link provided, enter the password provided in the invitation (if required) and that is all! Once you are in the meeting you can select to have your camera and sound on or off (or just mute yourself while the dog is barking). Of course, there can be glitches and sometimes people have trouble joining a meeting, but they are the exception and not the norm, and can often be fixed by logging out and logging back in.
There are also dozens of YouTube tutorials who will walk you through each step. I’ve added the link below for one video, for anyone wishing to see what it is all about, or it can be shared with all branch members with the meeting invitation.
CLICK HERE FOR HOW-TO-ZOOM VIDEO
(THANKS ROBIN!)
(If you want to come back to read this info at a future date, rather than have to wade through previous blog posts to find this one, we’ve put this information in a tab at the top of your screen: Click on HOWTOZOOM above!)
*if anyone else wants to take a stab at writing stuff for our blog, let me know - we’d looooove to have you join in on the fun - no technical skills are required - just write something and we’ll post it!
