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Zoom Tech Issues for singarounds/singer numbering

19 Oct 20 - 04:20 AM (#4075926)
Subject: Tech: Zoom: Take a Number (queue) feature?
From: GUEST,mmarlow

Zoom should have features to automate the management of a queue of speakers.
(Like the take a number machine at the DMV/bakery/etc.)
Assigning numbers and keeping track of who comes next would be easy
to automate.

This would make hosting a song circle easier. It would also be useful in lots of other meeting formats (manage people giving testimony, handling people with questions, handling speakers at a round-table, ...). So seems like a generally useful feature.

1) Have you looked for a zoom plugin to do this?
1b) Did you find one (or find that there isn't one)?

2) If not found - has anybody looked at the API to see if the hooks are there so such a thing could be created?

3) Is there another online meeting program that is suitable for song circles which has this feature? (I ask about zoom just because a
bunch of circles seem to use it. But there are lots of other meeting/chat/online jamming programs out there.)

I started looking at the plugin list, but a lot of the items there are described in vague buzzwords so it is hard to tell what they do.

A brief scan of the API seemed to be missing a lot of the functions I would expect to be there, but maybe I didn't dig deep enough.

Asking in case others had already explored these possibilities.

If nothing exists and the API won't support it, might be worth requesting zoom add such a feature.


19 Oct 20 - 11:51 PM (#4076087)
Subject: RE: Tech: Zoom: Take a Number (queue) feature?
From: Joe Offer

Yeah, numbering participants really takes up a lot of time. Automatic numbering would be helpful for a lot of reasons.

And now with more user-friendly breakout rooms, people are proposing having multiple singarounds in a single Zoom session. How in the world can we number singers in a Zoom session with several rooms?

I meant to answer your message yesterday, and then I got distracted. And then I forgot about it. I'm wondering the same thing you are, although I have to say that I have two wonderful assistants at the Mudcat Worldwide Singaround, and they handle that task and many others. And now that Zoom has improved the search function on its participant list, moderating a singaround got a whole lot less stressful. I number the single-digit folks with a zero before the digit. Then I put "0" in the search box, and I get a list of the first ten singers, plus #20 and #30 and #40, but I can deal with that. Then I put "1" in the participant search, and a nice list of the teenagers appears. Sure made things a lot more fun.

Cheers!

-Joe-


20 Oct 20 - 09:20 AM (#4076127)
Subject: RE: Tech: Zoom: Take a Number (queue) feature?
From: Joe Offer

Another Zoom issue: I want to share a longer video or audio with a group, but my rural Internet connection isn't very stable. Is there a screen share setting that will allow the group to continue watching a YouTube video I'm sharing, even if I lose my Zoom connection? Or can I play them an MP3 of a lecture on Google Drive without interruption?