Tagged: Guest Blogger on The Effervescent Bubble

Using Zoom

I’m pleased to welcome back guest blogger, RYAN CHURCH. He loves to talk about TECHNOLOGY. As I’ve always found his explanations really helpful, I asked him to explain how to use Zoom. 

Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Biome Renewables, a design and engineering firm based in Toronto that uses biomimicry to create world-leading clean technology.

Here’s RYAN…

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The need for social distancing, more correctly termed physical distancing, has affected different sectors of our society in different ways.

I am a millennial; 30 years old, the CEO of my own clean energy technology startup. Much of what I do is online, and has been online since long before any of this COVID19 pandemic swept into our lives. Normally, I worked from home a few days a week and only went into the office for meetings when necessary, or to do collaborative tasks that benefit from all being in the same room. You might have thought that I believed in “social distancing” before it was cool. In reality, it is just the most efficient way to work. I’m not alone in this belief. Many of my generation work in this way. We make our living in a virtual world.

Others in our society didn’t work this way. The boomer generation, for example, typically “went to work” every day. Now in their retirement years, they normally interact with friends in person whenever they can. They get together. Now that physical distancing is being strictly enforced, the boomer generation faces a real threat of social isolation unless they find alternative means to get together virtually. Hence, the need to learn about Zoom.

In my day-to-day work week, I use Zoom conferencing a lot. It allows me to connect with team members without having to travel. I can host a video call, or join one in progress. And it’s free for forty minutes. If a meeting is prolonged, you can always start a new one. Businesses who normally use Zoom for longer periods pay a fee.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Access the Zoom webpage: https://zoom.us/
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  2. Click on the button “Sign Up, It’s Free” in the top menu.
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  3. Choose how you’d like to sign up. You can use your personal email, or if you have a Google account, you can click on that. I wouldn’t sign in with Facebook.
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  4. Now go to the email you used to sign up. Zoom will send you a confirmation email. Click on the blue “Sign Up” button within that email. Then create your password.
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  5. Once signed in, you can schedule a meeting, join a meeting, or host a meeting. Zoom will launch an application on your computer which you then must download. Downloading will allow you to access these features.
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  6. If you want to host a meeting, you invite people by clicking on this button and following the links.
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  7. If you want to join a meeting that someone else initiated, you will have been sent an email with a code. Click “Join a Meeting” and put in your code. You will be talking with your friends on video in no time. [If you have problems with the sound, check the sound inputs and outputs on your computer or mobile device.]

With these simple steps, social isolation can be transformed into global connection, putting you in touch with friends everywhere. Other platforms like Skype do much the same thing, but Zoom allows you to schedule meetings in ways that Skype just does not.

For those concerned about “Zoom-bombers” inappropriately invading your meeting, it is important to know that this occurs only when meetings are Open Invitations, advertised publicly, online, and not limited to designated individuals. It is also something that has not occurred with paid accounts. So, if security is of concern to you, paying for Zoom is the best option. This also eliminates the length limit of your calls.

There are other good options that will allow you to connect with those who matter to you, such as WhatsApp, FaceTime and Google Hangouts. But these have limitations. WhatsApp and FaceTime don’t allow you to schedule a call and are primarily designed for your phone. Google Hangouts can lag. 

So, download Zoom on your computer or smart phone, set up and join those Zoom meetings. Using Zoom, you may find that our world is more connected than ever.

 

***** If you have any comments or suggestions based on your use of Zoom, please share them with all our readers by adding a COMMENT below this post. Thank you. 

My Australian cousin writes on electoral reform and the Australian system

My cousin LARRY, today’s Guest Blogger, was born in Canada where he lived for about 50 years. On retirement in 1990, he and his wife left Canada on a 10-year sailing voyage to Mexico, several South Pacific Island countries, New Zealand and Australia, with the goal of sailing past the Sydney Opera House. After 10 years of fun and adventure, they sold their 37-foot yacht to an Aussie couple. He is now an Aussie citizen and lives in winterless Australia.

Here’s Larry…

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I have lived here in wonderful Australia for 16+ years. During that time, I have done some research into the Australian electoral system. The complication of the whole process boggles the mind and they keep tweaking the rules. So confusing is it, that in the lead-up to the last federal election in 2016, the Federal Electoral Commission even published wrong information regarding the rules of voting, causing much confusion at the polls which caused ballots to be ruled informal (not counted) when they shouldn’t have been. There is a rule that once a ballot has been ruled as informal, it cannot be changed to formal for any reason, so these ballots were never counted.

Australia has elections every 3 years for the Lower House and ½ the senate, (Senators are elected to 6 year terms). However, if the government of the day calls for a double dissolution, all seats become vacant including all senate seats. This is what happened in 2016 so ½ the elected senators only got 3 year terms.

Australia has compulsory, preferential, manually counted voting. It may sound like a good idea to force every citizen to vote but in my opinion, it isn’t

Preferential voting here means each person on the ballot must have a number beside it in the order of your preference or your ballot is ruled informal and discarded. The Political Parties will get together and make deals for preferences before the elections. The various parties will publish “how to vote” cards which are passed out to voters at the polls, to try to influence the voter to vote their preferences to benefit them, as per pre-election deals made with the other parties. Many people just grab the card from the party they support and vote like sheep as per instructed on the card. Others get boggled with all the ‘how to vote cards’ thrust at them as they line up to vote. We call the walk from the footpath to the voting room entrance, ‘walking the gauntlet’ and do not accept any cards.

No one needs ANY ID to vote! Many cases came to light after the election, where on Election Day; people were told their name was already crossed off so they couldn’t vote again, when in fact they hadn’t voted at all. Obviously someone else voted and used their name. Anyone could visit different voting locations and give any name out of the phone book if they desired and some reportedly do just that. The far Left Labor Party has the reputation of telling their members to “vote early and vote often”. True or not – depends on who you talk to. This needs changing immediately, in my opinion.

People, who think seriously about their vote, will vote intelligently, and would have voted even if they weren’t forced to. However the people who don’t care and normally wouldn’t vote if not threatened by a big fine, don’t want to be there, and are angry they have to stand in a queue for hours to vote. Many of these people will just number their ballots 1, 2, 3, etc. from the top down to get the process over as soon as possible. It is such a problem that before printing the ballots, the names of the people contesting the seat are drawn out of a hat, to set the order their names will be placed on the ballot paper. Usually, the name at the top gets so many 1’s and has a very good chance of being elected. The poor guy at the bottom of the list is disadvantaged and rarely gets elected. The result is decided by voters who could care less! It is not a good system and why I prefer the ‘first past the post’ system.

The Senate – A senator is a member of the Australian Senate, elected to represent a state or territory. There are 76 senators, 12 from each state and two each from the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.
Our Queensland senate ballot had 122 candidates listed alphabetically by Party, running for the 12 seats available. I made a computer print-out, listing them in the order I wanted to vote for them, which took several hours to research and put together at home. It took about 20 minutes to fill out the 4 page ballot, putting a number from 1 to 122 beside each name. Very few people would have taken the trouble to do this and many just put a number beside the 2 or 3 people they are familiar with and put any sequential number randomly after all the other names. Not good – bogus outcome! The results of the Senate vote in 2016 took over 2 weeks to compile and publish the final list of elected.

Assuming that Canada is about the same as Australia, I would guess that no more than 35% of the population actually give a damn about who their government is. In Canada, the 65% don’t vote, here they do vote and badly skew the results. Forced voting is not good. Preferential voting is not good. Be careful what you wish for!

I find it interesting that Trudeau would be tinkering with the electoral process. Usually when any ‘politician in power’ starts tinkering with the electoral processes, they are trying to tweak the system to their party’s advantage for future elections. I personally would be very leery of someone who wanted to do this.

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