Although I’m not an introvert, I’m comfortable staying in my home and not seeing anyone for a few days. I enjoy being by myself. But after two weeks of restricting my interactions and staying in, even I am craving human interaction. Reaching out via Facebook, the phone and video conferencing has been so important to me. Increasingly, I’m hearing about innovative ideas from others doing what they can to stay connected.
For those who are naturally social and extroverted, who rarely spend a day without going out, taking a class or going to a local cafe, the self-isolation can be very difficult or even excruciating.
As a longtime communicator, I’ve been trying to help businesses to communicate with their customers in effective ways. They need to alert customers if the business is still open or let them know why they are not. They may want to consider creating online classes in lieu of in-person experience or go live on Facebook. Just as importantly, there are ways we can connect with family, friends and co-workers as well.
My family is not as far-flung as many: We live within 45 miles of one another, except for my daughter, who works in Chicago and is in self-isolation with her boyfriend there. Stace and I talk and text frequently, and try to see one another at least once a month. But it’s been nearly two months now since we’ve visited or met, and likely will be several weeks more before we do so. We’ve made our communications more frequent. I don’t carefully schedule my calls with her anymore, around work and meals. I call when I need to talk.
I have three siblings and seven nieces and nephews, including two MSU students isolated in their places in East Lansing and three others living in their own homes with their significant others. I miss them all; the usual family gatherings for birthdays and holidays are not possible, and the impromptu visits or meet-ups are ill-advised. The usual Sunday afternoon with my brother and his wife at a local restaurant/bar is on hiatus. I’m staying with my parents at the moment, as they too are isolated and not seeing family and friends as they usually do several times a week. My parents have always been very social, and staying in without at least going out for their daily breakfast at a local restaurant is difficult.
Facebook right now is a godsend. One of my friends told me a few days ago that she and her family had created a Facebook messaging group to stay in contact. I realized that my own family already had such a group, used primarily for posting photos of holiday get-togethers. Repurposed now, it allows us all to connect daily, in a family-private setting, so we can post as many photos of our dogs and silly memes as we want. I’d highly suggest this as a way to connect with your own friends and family. FaceTime is great for one-on-one video conversations, if you have an iPhone or iPad.
Another friend mentioned to me that some businesses are actually using FaceTime to help customers shop, taking them around the store. While grocery stores and larger retailers have online stores and capabilities, smaller businesses often do not. This seems like a tremendous customer-focused idea.
Facebook Live and FaceTime can help grandparents stay in touch with grandchildren who are staying away in the name of safety. And taking it a step further, there are a lot of easy video conferencing options that can bring families together for virtual birthday parties, holidays or even just evening chats. Yesterday, my family created our first video conference call. It was terrific, and we all agreed to continue conferencing several times a week.
There are a lot of ways to do conference calls, but I have used Zoom for years professionally and it is a great free and easy way to conference in a lot of people at once. You can upgrade to the paid version for more bells and whistles, but I find the free version fine for a 40-minute-or-less video conference, and it allowed my parents, me and my nieces and nephews to all gather virtually in a time when we haven’t seen each other at all.
Several family members did not join, saying they’d never done a FaceTime or conference call before. It’s clear from the faces above that the younger generation in our family are very familiar and tech-literate. But for those who want to try a Zoom conference call and are afraid to do it, here’s a quick how-to. I’d love for other families to be able to do this, too!
A few pointers:
- Don’t share your zoom meeting on public social media, or anyone who sees the link will be able to join, and you may get. Share the meeting invite privately, or in a private group, or require sign-in. For our family, I’m posting the meeting notices in our private Facebook group, which is only accessible by family.
- Use any kind of a device, but be aware that if you come in via mobile you won’t be able to see everyone in the same way you can on a larger screen. We used a laptop and the “gallery view” so that we could see everyone on the screen at once.
- If you choose the free version, you are limited to 40-minute meetings and you may not be able to tap in through audio only. If you spring for the upgrade, you can record your sessions to the cloud (as opposed to on the local machine), and there are some other bells and whistles as well. Frankly, I find the free version fine for what we are doing.
- Check out the Zoom Blog, which has good suggestions and tips.
OK, here are the basics for getting into a Zoom call:
- If you are the “host” of the call, you’ll need to have a Zoom account. Go to the Zoom site and create one; it’s very easy. There’s even an area specifically designed to help people navigate during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are videos and tutorials, as well as free zoom training.
- Once you have an account, scheduling a meeting is easy. Here’s a quick view.
When you are done selecting all your options, all you need to do is SAVE. Then copy the meeting invite here:
When you are ready to start the meeting, simply click on the START THE MEETING button, or if you have navigated away from the site in the meantime, go to the MEETINGS tab on the left side of your screen, in the page navigation. The meeting will start, and you will see people join as they do so. As host you have a lot of options. You can mute or take participants off video, and you can even “kick out” participants. You can choose to be the only one to share the screen. If you check the Settings tab you’ll see a host of other options. I hardly use any of them; a basic conference call between friends or family rarely requires it.
If you are simply joining a Zoom conference call, just click on the link that was sent to you. Where it says JOIN ZOOM MEETING, there is a URL. That’s all you need to do to join, unless the host has enabled password entry. You’ll likely see the following message if you’ve never used Zoom before. If the meeting has not started yet, you’ll receive a notice on when the meeting starts.
If you see the following box, which consistently shows ‘launching” but does nothing else, try looking behind your browser window; the Zoom window may have opened in a separate window that is hidden.
Once you are in the Zoom interface, there are a number of options that appear across the bottom of your screen. Here’s an explanation of how to use them. The most relevant ones are the mute and video – sometimes a participant inadvertently hits one of those then cannot figure out why they are muted (no one can hear them) or why they don’t appear on video. The CHAT option is great for communicating with everyone if you are having issues with audio or video, or if you want to convey another message. You can see below that I have a line through Start Video, which means I am NOT on video. But there is not a line through MUTE and so my audio is working.
Zoom really does offer a lot of options, but what I like about it is that at its simplest it is so easy to use. Truly, nearly anyone can do it. Give it a try. And if you are still nervous, just comment here and I’ll invite you to a Zoom test conference and will walk you through the experience.
After all, we all have to stick together right now! Let’s all COMMUNICATE!
