Zoom for member meetings.
Rory (FSA)
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Dear members and supporters,
Whilst it is possible for members/supporters to Skype with each other for free, I have been experimenting with Zoom (after being invited to participate in a FairShares company meeting via Zoom). It is easy to use, is more stable and flexible that Skype. There is a free account for 1-to-1 conversations. For meetings of up to 100 people, there is a 'Pro' account that costs £11.99 a month (or £9.99 a month for a whole year).
What do you think about purchasing a subscription to Zoom and start to hold member/supporter (quarterly?) meetings online? We currently have about £1,200 in our PayPal account - we need around £450/annum to meet overheads at the moment (website, Loomio, and filing fees for the company).
Thoughts?
Rory (FSA) Thu 7 Sep 2017 5:27PM
Thank Sean - yes - 40 minutes for up to 100, and free for 1-to-1s. If we do online training sessions as well, then I think we would need the subscription.
Gordon Casey Fri 8 Sep 2017 5:11PM
Zoom is amazing for multi-party conversations, the most reliable platform I've ever seen.
I've recently become a big fan of appear.in - pretty sure it was John Gieryn who showed it to me. In any event, it's free up to 8 people and the UX is the following:
- you 'claim' your room (in this case: fairshares) and then that room is always there, up on the internet for people to access whenever they need to. They do not need an account (Skype), a connection to the person you're trying to talk with (Skype again) or a unique one-time identifier (Zoom/Google), or anything. They just go to the room, just like it was a physical room - if they're there at the wrong time, you might be in another meeting - so the door is locked (or not). Or they might show up early and chat with other people while they wait for you.
I claimed Brave Coop so you can go to https://appear.in/bravecoop to check out Brave's room.
I've been trying to tell people about it so they can claim the room names now before all the good ones go (I haven't done any name squatting though).
Anyway, I Love it.
Rory (FSA) Sun 10 Sep 2017 7:32AM
Got it!
Can try that for chat, and get Zoom when we outgrow it! Will add to front page.
Deleted account · Thu 7 Sep 2017 9:13AM
Hi Rory
I've been on Zoom and agree that it's pretty good (although I generally don't have many problems with Skype).
My understanding is that Zoom is pretty much FREE for smallish groups - possibly up to 10 or 20 people. I think the limitation is that you may only have 40 minutes air time, but I also understand that you can then arrange another Zoom pretty much straightaway for another 40 minutes.
So I guess the question for FS is - how many people will be on a Zoom call and how long do you want to talk for? 😃
Might be worth doing a little extra digging around terms of use because it might not cost anything....
Sean