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Online Conferences and Covid-19

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm

Sounds cozy doesn’t it? Clustered around the fire, hot chocolate, spiced cider, hot buttered rum…

All friends shut out, the housemates sit…

Yeah. Right. We’ve been sitting around the fire with our housemates for what is it? Seven months now? That’s about long enough with our friends shut out, wouldn’t you say?

People bridle at the enforced privacy of pandemic lockdowns and social distancing. For me, the isolation is not so bad. I know the ropes of working from home and I’m an introvert.

I like and enjoy other people, but person to person encounters drain the life out of me. I know many of my friends are energized by getting together and breathing the same air with others, but it rarely works that way for me.

Pre-pandemic, I joined with a good friend or two for lunch regularly. Oh, I enjoyed those lunches, but when they were over, I exhaled a sigh of relief and took a nap to recover the energy I had lost. I used to think this personal quirk was a disadvantage, but now, I realize it is a boon not to be troubled by all this isolation. I’ve noticed that there are other folks like me, but in a group of ten, maybe only two of us.

The Washington Library Association online conference

This week, I’ve been participating in an online library conference. I’ve read that the online event business is booming. I can understand why. Online conferences are cheap and they work remarkably well; I prefer online conferences to the in-person species.

For attendees, traveling to and from these gatherings is expensive. Airfare, hotels, and meals cost, and time away from regular work costs more. On the event business side, conference hotels and centers are orders of magnitude more costly than electronic platforms. Speakers charge less to present electronically because presenting from a home or office takes less time and effort than crossing the country to check into a venue that is not much of a perk for a speaker who endures one-size-fits-all hotel décor several times a month.

As I understand it, the firms that stage these events have reduced their fees and made them back and more because the number of attendees has increased. This year, the Whatcom County Library System was able to purchase blanket admission to the Washington Library Association online conference that lets the entire library staff, and trustees attend rather than individual registrations.

I’ve gone to the Washington Library Association conference every year since I became a library trustee, but I almost decided not to go this year. I enjoy and benefit from attending, but the hectic move from our Ferndale house back to Waschke Road disrupted just about everything on top of the pandemic. Making it worse, I’ve started some time-consuming projects. I’ve always worked during conferences on a laptop or tablet, but this year, I’ve been able to work from my office in between conference events. It’s been great.

I have some suggestions for attending online conferences.

Schedule your time carefully

Attending a conference in person is a scheduling challenge. It’s easy to miss a session that you really wanted to attend because you skipped a page in the agenda, or you were distracted by a conversation with a colleague. When you’re attending from home, scheduling is more difficult because the events in your life are not built around the conference schedule— for example, your lunchtime may clash with sessions you want to attend. You can always listen to the recording, but that’s never the same. Review the agenda and plan ahead as carefully as you would in person.

Don’t multi-task

Efficiency experts liken multi-tasking to a speedway multi-car pileup. You get less done and what you do is seldom done well.

The temptation to multi-task is strong, especially attending a conference in your home office where you are likely to have several screens up and running. My usual home setup is a primary screen for the project I’m working on, another for online lookups, and a third for communications. I don’t have any trouble concentrating on my project at hand. For me, having one browser open to an online dictionary and another to email and Slack is the reverse of distracting: a quick side glance to a secondary screen and I’m back to the main subject. But when I have to fiddle opening and switching windows and desktops, I am distracted and likely to get stuck on whatever I have to bring up.

All those screens while listening to a conference presentation is different. Even the best presentations have dead spots that tempt me to look aside and process the current crop of sub-urgent communications or check on the latest minor question that’s been bugging me. Don’t do it! Boredom is lack of engagement. The instant I disengage, loss of interest in the presentation begins to snowball and before I know it, I am researching which village in Cornwall was most likely to have been the location of King Arthur’s round table, or some equally pressing subject, instead of taking a once in a lifetime chance to raise a question about tracking outcomes of library strategic initiatives. Yikes!

Take notes

I’m terrible at taking notes at conferences. While I am participating, new ideas and concepts pop into my head with crystal clarity that I couldn’t possibly forget. No need to write anything this exciting down.

Steller’s Jay eying the last thing that entered my head.

Sure. I’m seventy-one years old. If I’m distracted, the content of my head disappears with the cheerful readiness of a Steller’s Jay stealing peanuts. The arrival of the next idea clears my head of everything but lingering enthusiasm for whatever’s not there anymore. Come to think of it, the same thing happened 50 years ago when I was an undergraduate attending lectures.

Take notes, grasshopper.

Use chat

In the software development groups I used to lead, chat apps, like Slack, often were the key to productivity and communication. Most conferences have provisions for chatting among session attendees and community discussions. If you participate, chat takes the place of the conversations that go on in the hallways and over meals and drinks. Not perfect for establishing friendships, but chat discussions are often thoughtful, cogent, and well worth your time.

Remember, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” In a chat session, you’re as smart as what you say. Take time to think, be courteous, but don’t be shy.

Setup

Have your professional appearance, background, camera, microphone, and lighting set up before the conference begins. Not all sessions allow you to interact with the speakers, but when they do, be prepared as a courtesy to your fellow participants.

Your setup is like a pandemic mask. You wear it for others, not yourself. You won’t get any personal benefit from clear sound and a flattering Zoom image. Your questions will still be answered if you look like a bear in a cave and sound like a mouth full of crushed granite. And the chances that your boss will notice your setup are slim. Sorry, but this is true. However, think about your fellow participants. They want to be part of a professional and dignified group, not a pack of ill-fed scavengers. Give them a break. And a good appearance will make you feel better too.

I’m impatient with the pandemic. Like most people, I wish it were just over, but I’m a historian as well as an engineer. Plagues don’t disappear in a blink of the eye. They fade away with effects lingering for decades, even centuries. The plague in 14th century Europe is sometimes said to have lead to the Renaissance. We don’t know what the long term effect of covid-19 will be, but our best hope is to adapt to the snow storm, not fail at ignoring it.

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Zoom Steps Up

If you host Zoom meetings you probably received an email from Zoom today. They’ve made some changes to the default settings for meetings that will appear Sunday, April 5. Good changes. Bravo! Let’s hope they continue to step up.

With the announced changes, Zoom defaults to meetings with waiting rooms and passwords. These defaults will make zoom-bombing harder. I hope the Zoom devos are also fixing some of the other troubles that are not so obvious to users. This is the way I expect responsible software developers to work.

The Zoom interface is well-designed. I’ve been comparing online meeting platforms this week and Zoom is still tops with me, both in ease of use and performance. Without instrumentation, getting a meaningful read on performance is difficult because it depends on network conditions at least as much as the meeting platform. However, in my limited experience, Zoom yields a smoother meeting with fewer jerks and breakups than other platforms I’ve tried since social distancing began. Online synchronized swimming instructors take note.

Go Zoom!

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Zoom Redux—More Issues

This morning, I heard about another point of caution with Zoom. I’ve added two bullets to yesterday’s post on using Zoom. I will discuss them here. Also, if you are contemplating using Zoom in your business, you may want to read my note to businesses below.

Unsafe links

Unsafe links can appear in the Zoom chat windows that folks use for sidebar text conversations during meetings. Participants can place live links in their chat. If hackers insert a link that refers to the local network, clicking the link can reveal credentials for logging onto computers on your local network.

By using a web browser rather than the app, you can avoid this issue. However, Zoom can be persistent in trying to get you to use their app. If you don’t know your way around computing, you might be using the app and not realize it.

Zoom is said to be working on a fix, but until the fix is in place, don’t click on links in Zoom chats. Not all links in chat are dangerous, and not all local networks are vulnerable. For example, clicking on an HTTPS link to a well-known public site is likely to be safe. Also, if your local network has the port 445 (the SMB port) locked down you aren’t vulnerable. If this is gobbledygook to you, just don’t click on links in Zoom chats unless you are certain that the participant who posted the link is who they say they are, and you trust them. In fact, you should always be cautious about clicking on any link anywhere. If you don’t have a good reason and are not sure where the link will take you, any link can lead to danger.

Waiting rooms

I also added a bullet suggesting using Waiting Rooms. Instead of allowing anyone with a link to directly enter a meeting, participants enter the waiting room and wait until the host invites them in. This gives the host more control of who enters the meeting. Strictly controlling meeting links and meeting IDs is more important, but when you are forced to make a meeting accessible to participants you can’t control via distribution of the meeting links and IDs, a waiting room is helpful.

A note to businesses

The recommendations here do not apply to businesses, which face problems that individual users do not. A business with substantial networked assets must protect those assets. In the rapid transition to working from home that is going on now, businesses are forced to give employees access to assets, like shared documents and applications, held in their private network. Remote workers access these assets from outside the traditional business perimeter. Zoom may appear to be a ready and easy-to-use solution, but there are other solutions that have been used longer in business environment and have undergone more rigorous vetting as methods of sharing resources. For example, Zoom’s unsafe links are based on file-sharing vulnerabilities that IT pros have dealt with for decades.

Zoom’s data sharing proclivities are annoying to individuals, but may be outright threats to businesses.

Treat Zoom cautiously as easy-to-use meeting software. You will probably need more than Zoom to support your newly remote workers. Don’t try to stretch Zoom farther than it was designed. Invest in training and more robust solutions when you need them. You will not regret that decision.

 

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Zoom Safely: Minimize the Risks

Last week I was shocked when a friend, a senior vice president of cybersecurity at a large media corporation, posted this on Facebook:

“Just don’t use Zoom. It is a cesspool of security and privacy issues…”

I took his warning seriously. He knows what he is talking about. This post is no April Fool’s joke.

However, today Zoom is a lifeline for many people and important to me personally. With a heart condition, diabetes, and being over 70, I had best stick close to home with COVID-19 in the air.

Everyone uses Zoom today. My daughter in law school attends classes on Zoom all day. My library friends get together on Zoom to share a beer and discuss books. My wife and I met with our realtor on Zoom yesterday.

I don’t expect folks to quit using Zoom, and I don’t plan to quit myself. It’s popular for good reason: it works well and is remarkably easy to use. In my old job as a software architect working with developers on every continent but Antarctica, I’ve used just about every online meeting platform frequently. Zoom is excellent, particularly for people for who can’t take time to learn complex and balky platforms. Which makes Zoom security and privacy issues all the more troubling.

Zoom has not been a paragon of responsibility in fixing security vulnerabilities. I won’t go into the details of what is wrong with Zoom. I might in a future post. Here, I will tell you how to minimize the risks.

Concerns

First, Zoom shares data with companies like Facebook and other data brokers. That is what it is. I don’t like it, but it’s part of the 21st century. I believe we can and should do something to fix the data sharing digital economy, but nothing will happen overnight. I wish Zoom would just stop it, but I have little hope that they will until they are forced to. Their sharing pays for your free service. If it makes you feel better, Zoom is not the only offender; your data is probably already being bought and sold all over the network.

Second, Zoom meetings are subject to unwanted intruders and harassment. Louts sneak in and flash pornography and hate messages. They dominate chat sessions. Meetings, like town meetings or church and temple services, can turn into travesties and have to break up.

Third, less of a concern to individuals, Zoom is susceptible to denial of service attacks. Meetings can be overwhelmed with unwanted messages which tank performance.

Finally, Zoom emits digital pheromones that drive cats to walk over keyboards, hit keyboard shortcuts, and take over the screen.

What can you do about it?

There are a few steps you can take that will considerably improve Zoom experiences.

  • View the Zoom video tutorials. They’re easy and worthwhile. Become a Zoom expert.
  • Access Zoom through your web browser. Don’t install the Zoom app. Many of the ongoing problems have come from the app, so avoid it, at least until Zoom gets their house in order.
  • Guard the Zoom meeting link and ID. If you are not conducting a public meeting, don’t make it public. (Boris Johnson, UK prime minister, tweeted a screen shot of a cabinet meeting with the meeting ID prominent. Don’t do that.)
  • Zoom has a meeting password option. Use it when appropriate.
  • Let Zoom generate a random meeting ID. You can put in your own meeting ID like “Joes-Dance-Party”. Trolls could guess the ID and slip in.
  • Use Waiting Rooms to control entry to the meeting.
  • Protect the screen sharing option. When setting up a meeting, you can restrict who can share and who can start sharing when someone else is sharing. Change these settings during a meeting by clicking on the down caret next to the “Share Screen” button at the bottom of the screen.
  • Do not click on links in Zoom chats unless you trust the participant who posted the link.

Zoom is not perfect, but these are not perfect times.