On meet.common-lisp.net
meet.common-lisp.net is a video meeting server (Jitsi Meet) run by common-lisp.net for the Common Lisp community. It works in any current browser, and in the Jitsi Meet app on a phone. Nothing to install, no account needed to join.
A room of your own. Rooms are named by their address:
https://meet.common-lisp.net/ followed by a name you choose, such as
https://meet.common-lisp.net/berlin-lisp. Opening a room takes an
account on the meeting server; ask the admins for one at
https://common-lisp.net/registration/#request ("An account on the
meeting server"), a week or two before your first meeting. Once you
are in the room, logged in, anyone with the address can join as a
guest. Until a logged-in person is there, guests are asked to wait.
- Choose a name that is hard to guess by accident and easy to type: your group's name and city.
- Use the same address every time, so it can go in the calendar entry once for a meeting that repeats.
- Whoever is logged in is a moderator: they can mute people, remove someone, and start a recording. Have two people with accounts, in case one cannot come.
The commons. For an informal, unplanned meeting there is the commons, a room that is always open and needs no account at all. It is public: anyone can walk in. Use your own room for a meeting with a talk.
Recording. A moderator can record the meeting with the Meet's own button, where the server's recording service is switched on (the commons page says whether it is, and what it costs). Everyone in the room sees the recording mark and is told aloud. Always ask the speaker first, and say at the start of the meeting that the talk will be recorded, so that anyone who would rather not be on it can keep their camera off. The recording's address is given when it ends; download it before it expires, and put it where your group keeps its videos.
Running a good online meeting
- Two roles: the host, who speaks and keeps time, and a co-host, who watches the chat, lets people in, mutes noise and reads out questions. A speaker cannot do either while presenting.
- Open early. Be in the room fifteen minutes before the start, so that the first arrival finds someone there.
- Microphones off unless speaking. Ask people to turn their camera on during the introductions if they are happy to: a meeting of black squares is hard to speak to.
- Questions in the chat, or with the raised-hand button; the co-host reads them out at the end of the talk.
- Screen sharing: the speaker shares one window, not the whole screen, and makes the editor's font big: 18 points at least, more for a REPL. Test it before the meeting.
- Keep it shorter than a meeting in a room: 75 minutes is plenty.
- A backup. If the meeting server fails, say in advance where you will go: a second address, or the group's chat channel to regroup in.
Hybrid meetings: in the room and online
The hard part of a hybrid meeting is that the people online cannot hear the room. Plan for the sound first.
- Sound: a speakerphone or a conference microphone in the middle of the table, not a laptop's microphone at the front. The speaker uses a microphone of their own (a headset, or a lapel microphone) joined to the meeting.
- Picture: the speaker shares their screen in the meeting directly, from their own laptop, so the online audience sees the slides sharply. A camera on the room is nice to have, not essential.
- Questions: repeat every question from the room into the microphone before answering it. Take questions from online in turn with questions from the room; name a person in the room to watch the chat.
- Echo: only one device in the room has its speakers and its microphone on. Everyone else in the room who joins the meeting (to see the slides closer up) keeps both off.
- Test it all half an hour before the start, with someone at home.
Other video services
The kit works the same with any other video service your group already uses. Put the address in the calendar entry and in the announcements; the rest of this file still applies.