Yesterday, I tried to have a remote conversation with some smart people. There were problems.
The good news: Zoom performed smoothly and well. We could hear and see everyone, we had a pleasant discussion, and everything was saved nicely locally. That’s mainly what I need for working with students.
The bad news: The parallel display in a live YouTube stream did not come off at all well. The first sign of trouble was that YouTube ignored all my prior planning and set up, and at the last minute spawned a new video stream. I don’t know what happened there at all. Then this new stream showed everyone, but only included my audio. It was a total mess for viewers at home.
When it was all over, I just killed the planned live stream, deleted the recording with only my voice, and re-uploaded the video. Here it is:
I’m going to experiment today with some private videos to iron out the kinks, and then on Wednesday evening I’ll try again with a casual conversation with some wicked SJWs and Skepticon weirdos.
I’d love to get in on that Wed conversation!
I’ll send you a link!
Were you using “the YouTube”, PZ, rather than plan ol’ YouTube? Apparently that’s a “thing” this morning, a distinction worthy of calling attention to.
Love the Hawaiian shirt!
It was nice ‘meeting’ you all yesterday evening (for me – afternoon for you). We’ve just moved over to online meetings rather than campus meetings, but it’s not as strange for us – we work this way all the time. The links to tips about online teaching from Stanford and Harvard that were circulated yesterday are now making the rounds in south-eastern Sweden … being much appreciated. I’d be interested in participating in future events too – and I can create a new Zoom room for you, if you need one (we’re allowed to create as many as we like, since the Zoom system is run on a national basis here, so if the central Zoom set-up needs more capacity, they just build more server halls).