1. Mute yourself when not speaking
2. Lag time makes group responses difficult to do in unison.  It is better to stay on mute when you are not speaking.
3. Zoom has a “Raise Hand” feature to support sharing (see below). You can also send a private chat to the leader to share.
4. To reduce “cross talk” the host can disable the chat feature. Take a group conscience.
5. If you are concerned about anonymity, you can change your name by clicking on the ellipses (…) in the window of your personal image/icon.  Select “Rename” to do this.
6. You can add a virtual background to your image by going to the preferences section under the zoom.us menu and select “Virtual Backgrounds”
7. Join the meeting early or stay on after the meeting for Fellowship!
   
   To raise your hand in a Zoom meeting, click the “Raise Hand” icon on the bottom left of the Zoom window. When you click the Raise Hand icon, a hand icon will appear next to your name that will notify the host your hand is raised. You will also see the hand icon turn green. When you want to lower your hand, you can click the hand icon again and your hand will be lowered. Keep in mind that a host can lower your hand for you, as well as disable the raise hand feature altogether. If the raise hand feature is disabled you will not see the option to raise your hand.

How to host a meeting with Zoom – A member created a YouTube video on how to create (host) a meeting with Zoom.

How to prevent Zoom Bombing in meetings: the Austin Texas Young People’s group did a video with tips and tricks to run Zoom meetings

Our own Valley Group did an easy to read information sheet on how to wrangle participants in a meeting to minimize disruptions and people trying to cause trouble.

Notes about protecting anonymity in Zoom meetings from the NYC Intergroup:

For Zoom users: With the rush to shift to online meetings, many of us did not take time to investigate what this meant to the spiritual foundation of our recovery – namely, anonymity. Now that online meetings are accessible, we want to pass on best practices for protecting anonymity.

These have been curated from the membership and online resources.

The default Zoom settings run counter to AA’s spiritual foundation of anonymity. The meetings are publicly accessible and full names and faces are often displayed. Additionally, by default all Zoom meetings are recorded to the cloud. Turning that feature off is simple, fortunately.

There are other settings in the Meeting subtab that can also be adjusted, such as disallowing remote control of devices, file transfer, data sharing with Zoom, and screen sharing.

Here are some suggested settings for your meeting to use. Please note that most, if not all, of the settings below are not the Zoom default:

Go to: Settings > Recording and click off the Local and Cloud recording features.

In the Zoom Settings section, under the Meeting subtab:

• Require Encryption for Third Party Endpoints
• Disable Auto saving chats
• Disable File transfer
• Disable Feedback to Zoom
• Disable Screen sharing
• Disable desktop/screen share for users
• Disable Remote control
• Allow Virtual background (this is the Zoom default and allows the user to use a virtual background instead of the inside of their apartment, for example)

In the Zoom Settings section, under the Recording subtab:

• Disable Local recording
• Disable Cloud recording
• Disable Automatic recording