After a year of working online and meeting virtually for many, we’ve grown accustomed to Zoom norms and etiquette. We all know to mute our microphones when we’re not talking, use the “raise hand” function to ask a question, and use the chat to easily share links and resources.
Unfortunately, we’ve also grown accustomed to the threat of “Zoom bombing,” that awful situation when an outsider breaks into your virtual space, disrupts your meeting, and causes distress to your participants. While always a risk, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from such an eventuality. And, with practice, you can quickly kick a troublemaker out of your meeting, prevent them rejoining, and carry on with your event.
Interested in finding out more? Join us on 25 March 2021 at 10am US EDT for our next CSCCE Community Tools Trial, and read on for more details.
What is a CSCCE Tools Trial?
CSCCE Tools Trials are intended to support community managers and other event facilitators work through challenges related to running virtual meetings, workshops, conferences, and other events. In our “1.0” series we focused on testing out specific platforms, and in our current “2.0” series we’re delving a little deeper into specific use cases suggested by members of our community of practice (read a recap of last month’s trial on virtual networking events here).
This month, at the suggestion of and in collaboration with community member Erin Robinson, of Metadata Game Changers, we’re going to focus on Zoom (and potentially other video-conferencing platform) safety and what to do if you are disrupted.
Zoom Safety Drill
As we moved online, many services we took for granted at in person meetings fell to the organizers of virtual events. One of those services is event security. So, in this month’s trial, we’re going to take some time to share experiences with Zoom bombing, and work together to refine a checklist for virtual event planners. We’ll talk about built in security features on Zoom and how to configure them, how to ask participants to report any Zoom bombing activities happening in private chats, and how to follow up with participants who were affected.
We’ll also take some time to role play with a Zoom bombing “fire drill,” so if you’d like to see how quickly and efficiently you can shut down a bad actor, then this is your chance.
If time permits, we’ll also consider related concerns, such as what to do if a Zoom bomber gets into a shared Google Doc and starts to interfere with shared notes, agendas, or other work.
After the call, we’ll make our security check lists available to anyone interested, and also share a recap of the trial on the CSCCE blog.
How to join the trial
We will meet on Zoom at 10am US EDT on Thursday, March 25 2021 for a 60 minute session. You can find calendar invites and the join link here. Anyone is welcome to join the call, even if you are not a member of our community of practice. If you’d like to join, you can request an invitation to our Slack group here.
Send any questions or suggestions ahead of time to info@cscce.org.