Last night’s Zoom book event got off to a slightly rocky start when, after I’d already let the audience into the meeting and muted them, the author objected to everyone having their videos on and asked me to turn their cameras off en masse so he could see only their names. “Zoom bombing is terrible,” he said. I am still not sure how someone would “Zoom bomb” while muted. (Maybe make obscene gestures and hold posters with dirty words up to the camera?) I’m pretty sure I can set Zoom to turn the cameras off before people enter the “room,” but I could not figure out how to do it during the meeting and was not inclined to experiment.

After some back and forth we realized the author had his Zoom set to gallery view, which means all attendees (48) were shown in a grid on two pages of the screen like the old Hollywood Squares game show set. From Paul Lynde’s location on the upper left I advised him to switch to speaker view (“Look on the upper right of your screen.”) This would show him mainly the two main speakers and the host while minimizing the audience. He did and after that all was well.

Funny how shyness about public speaking manifests itself online. Obviously, we need to brief speakers about Zoom before events. It’s too easy to assume everyone is familiar and comfortable with it.

Last night another party in the gazebo next door, whiffs of barbecue, the sound of laughter and singing well past midnight. Michael did not even bother to mutter under his breath.