Whose got the zoomies?

I’ve recently changed my view about the online conferencing app ZOOM. As a self-employed lone worker in a business of one I find I can talk to the staff without an app.

My limited exposure to it has been fortnightly model railway group meeting for a beer and annoyance with the other half’s zoom meetings where I have to leave the room.

The latter does my head in. There meetings would be over much quicker if they took it in turns to talk instead of talking over each other and operating on the `shouts loudest’ basis. I once held a Maritime Radio licence and a key part of that was “one at a time” and end what you’re saying with “over”.

NEVER Over & Out. Anyone who says “Over & Out” is a muppet.

• `Over’ = said my bit, your go
• `Out’ = we’re done goodbye. The equivalent of hanging up
• So `over and out’ is, I suppose “your go but I’m not listening!

My exposure to ZOOM until this last week was with our Trent Valley Model Group. We have a quite liberal interpretation of the Trent valley but physical meetings were held in the Brunswick pub close to Derby station. Me, being in York and the last train home being about 8pm, I was lucky if I made it to one meeting a year.  Since Covid happened we’ve met fortnightly and I have been to all bar a couple of them. We’re still taking the mick out of each other but without the travel.

So, the change of mind?

In the past I have done videos on how to do model making stuff and posted them on You Tube but they aren’t interactive.

In this last week I set up a zoom call with a customer building one of my kits who was struggling with assembling a number of parts. With both of us able to wave the relevant bits around in front of a camera and see what the other was doing I was able to show what was supposed to happen better than I could explain it and then check that he had done it right at his end.

Maybe I like it a bit more now.