Simple Online Meetings
With 4 or 5 online meetings a week the philatelic world is moving very quickly into the digital age. This presents some challenges for those who are not fully familiar with the technology, but the key is to concentrate on the function.
The following hints work for Zoom, Webex, Teams, GoToMeeting, and lots of other online meeting packages. The theory is the same, and the functionality is the same, the only difference is the brand.
Attending as a Guest:
If you are attending a meeting then you will need a LINK to that meeting, a MEETING ID and a PASSWORD.
Pre-Meeting Checks
- Do you need to update the software?
- Does the link work?
- Do you need a camera / microphone – or are you just listening using your computer?
- Are you going to dial-in for the audio if your computer is having problems?
Taking Part:
If you are displaying they you will need to prepare your material. There are 3 main types of presentations that people give and each has it’s own features.
Photos in Windows 10
Put these in a folder for the meeting and rename them so that they are in order. Then when asked you can open the first one. You should then be able to move to the next image with a single click of the cursor arrows on the keyboard. You can move backwards and forwards until you are happy.
If you have a folder full of images that you want to display then this is easy to do with the following steps:
- Organise the slides into the right order and rename them so you know where you are.
- Then double-click on the first slide to open it up in the Photos app.
When the time comes to share you need to remember to share the application rather than the screen. So you share “Photo” on a Windows 10 box.
PowerPoint
If you need to add text to your images you can import them into PowerPoint as a slide show in a few clicks. From there it is recommended to enlarge the images and zoom in on them until you are happy with them.
You can then setup a slide show to display them and start that show before you start to present. At the appropriate time you can again go to share “PowerPoint” and see the images full screen.
Adobe Acrobat
If you are Using Adobe Acrobat Reader to present a PDF then you probably want to set it to SINGLE PAGE VIEW in the VIEW menu. Then you can Zoom to Actual Size and use the cursors to move up/down on a page and forward/backwards to the next/previous page.
Full Screen mode will get rid of all the menus and give you a nice clean image.