For the past 2 weeks my Rotary Club of Pinellas Park Florida has held Zoom meetings on Thursday at noon. Last Thursday our guest speaker was Dick Crippen, Senior Advisory for the Tampa Bay Rays talking about the delayed MLB season. We had 28 members and one guest from Canada attend the meeting on zoom and it worked well. I had the pleasure of leading the group in the Four Way Test at the end of the meeting.

Friday evening Charlotte and I held our first family Zoom meeting with our two daughters and their families totaling 10 people including 4 grandchildren. One family lives across town here in Florida and the other currently lives in Plymouth, Minnesota. It was fun to see and hear everyone tell highlights of their week staying home working and attending school remotely.

Saturday afternoon we attended our first homeowner neighborhood chat group on Zoom and got to meet some new neighbors in our 400 home community. Next Saturday we agreed to have one of our neighbors who contracted the coronavirus after returning from a vacation trip to Indonesia to attend (virtually) and speak about their experience.

Hey @dsh33782 Don, I moved your new message about using Zoom and sharing how businesses, schools and social groups are using technology, including Zoom to hold virtual meetings to this existing thread.

I have been using Zoom for quite some time now to meet with my team virtually. It is easy to use and quite reliable. @contentandwell shared this important article with me, which led me to review my settings.

- Zoombombing: What it is and how you can prevent it in Zoom video chat https://www.cnet.com/how-to/zoombombing-what-it-is-and-how-you-can-prevent-it-in-zoom-video-chat/

It's unfortunate that what has become an essential service is under attack from people wishing to do harm. But forewarned is forearmed. Check your settings as suggested in the article to avoid any issues. Zoom remains a great service. Other free options include Google Hangouts, Join.me, Whatsapp, Skype and more.

Talking with the young people in my life, I see that educators are using a variety of software too like Blackboard, BigBlueButton, and GoogleClassroom. One tool that the kids like is the ability to breakout into small groups. The teacher sends them into small group chat rooms, randomly assigned for a specific period of time. When the clock runs down, they are all brought back into the virtual classroom. They tell me that this is almost better than in person because the random assigning forces them to work with different classmates and the digital call back to the classroom is faster than the teacher trying to get everyone's attention. Interesting...

Don, have you discovered any advantages to virtual meetings?

@dsh33782 Don - we have been using Zoom this winter to stay in touch with our distant kids/grands.
Now it is also an essential tool for my volunteer commitments, not just Connect. Our meetings vary from 3 - 100 people, and we are looking at using Zoom or its successors long term to keep snowbirds and business travelers connected to the group even after this current crisis ends.
We find Zoom easier to use across varied platforms than Skype, Hangouts, etc. I know I will appreciate being able to call in from my phone to Zoom when I am actually in the car without my computer in hand (once we can travel again.) When we need to be more secure we still use Microsoft Meetup because it's easier to lock down participation.
My friends' small church actually used Zoom the past 2 Sundays to hold remote services & a coffee "gathering" afterward - pretty cool! Our much larger church had to resort to prerecording and using UTube - certainly not as satisfying.
I wonder how many of the changes we are making under these trying conditions will actually become the "normal" way of doing business in the future? And what else will change?
Sue