I’ve been tasked with finding a software that we can use to hold large meetings online. A couple Google searches have mentioned that zoom might be a good option.

Anybody familiar with it and used it?

The good bad and ugly?

My aikido dojo will be holding live online classes using this platform. I've already downloaded the app and signed up, but won't have any experience until next Tuesday when the first class goes live.

From what I see so far, it looks pretty good.

We use it and have had no issues. I think I like it better than WebEx.

My company uses Zoom. We switched from Skype after we switched from some other thing. Anyhow Zoom has been pretty good. But I don't know about setting it up or anything like that. Outlook lets me set up any meeting as a Zoom meeting. Audio and video work well, and options for both are available.

FWIW I work for the company that has the malaria drug now being tested on Covid 19, so not a small company.

As frayedends said it's pretty decent. Just make sure whoever is listed as the organizer of the meeting understands how to operate it. My last organization no one could figure out that as the meeting organizer you could mute everyone and then un-mute specific folks as needed. Thus the start of every meeting was "please make sure your phones are muted folks".

My son's high school here in NH (Pinkerton Academy) is using Zoom for the Remote Learning Program they rolled out this week for 3400 students. I have no personal experience using it, but from what I've seen, Zoom is very capable platform and the AV works well.

Used them for my final MBA class. Worked pretty well on the user level, not sure about on the administrative level, though.

I have used it perhaps a half dozen times to show a single presenter from a remote location to a large meeting of people using a large projection screen and audio system. It works fine, as long as the internet connections at BOTH ends are good. Better than Skype, IMO.

Kids online school uses it, easy peasy.

I have used bluejeans and zoom. They work fine. The meeting organizer should select the "mute upon entry" button so that when 20 people are in the meeting working from home you don't have to listen to crying kids and barking dogs and 20 different conversations going on in the background.

Zoom is a good tool, but they've been suffering big time of late trying to keep up with demand.

https://ww.9to5google.com/2020...eviews-coronavirus/#
https://downdetector.com/status/zoom/

My company uses it exclusively. Super easy to use and accommodates a pretty large group of people. In fact was on a several calls this week with zoom that had in excess of 500 people on.

My wife used Zoom yesterday for a job interview and then to chat with her friends that night. She is pretty computer literate and didn't need my help to set up the client end. My company uses something else and I hadn't heard of Zoom until this week.

Thanks for all the feedback, folks. Very much appreciated.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
Thanks for all the feedback, folks. Very much appreciated.

Probably late, but my company regularly uses Zoom for meetings. I was on one today with 200+ people, and it was dead solid.

Zoom will probably come out of this pandemic as a shining example of cloud based scalability.

quote:

Zoom will probably come out of this pandemic as a shining example of cloud based scalability.

Because most people appear to be asses, Zoom is/was getting slaughtered in online reviews because students were pissed that they had to use the website.

https://ww.9to5google.com/2020...eviews-coronavirus/#

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
Because most people appear to be asses, Zoom is/was getting slaughtered in online reviews because students were pissed that they had to use the website.

Nobody in business gives a shit what they think. They should get back to drinking and screwing on spring break.

My large publicly traded company uses Zoom, without issue. It's easy and reliable. Can launch from a web browser, or app. Can dial in by phone too.

If you use Google suite already, you could try Google Meet.

We're using that, but we're already on Google and Google has made pretty much all its features free for educators.

It's working out fine. I only ever used Zoom once for a meeting and it was less intuitive to get into than Google is, IMO.

Zoom, BlueJeans and WebEx are generally fine. Expect some hiccups this week or so when the demand spikes and they get their feet back. We had a WebEx call today with close to 500.