The Conference is available on YouTube Here
Questions & Answers captured via Zoom Q&A chat.
| Audience Question | Panel Response |
|---|---|
| Agree with you about MS Teams (it's horrid) but is there any reason you are excluding Cisco Webex; it's the oldest of the lot (issues ironed out years ago), and is at least as good as Zoom? | Answered live, YouTube Bookmark |
| Do you still collect subscriptions and, if so, how? | We collect using MemberMojo and have it embedded through our website. Through MemberMojo you can collect through PayPal, Stripe, also the option of bank transfer and cheque - hope that helps. |
| Question for NEAS ... have they experienced many "don't do that sort of thing" (i.e. Zoom) and have they any insights as to how to care for those members ? | We've been fortunate enough to not experience this as I think the situation led to more people being willing to try it out, the only one is our Observatory Patron and she was in a care bubble with another couple on our committee. Happy to help think of idea if you've experienced this, feel free to email us! Only one objector for privacy reasons, complained via Facebook! No one else has complained. Clearly not everyone can or will use it, so important to have email, etc. as other options for members. |
| What if anything can you do for members not online - we have number (CardiffAS) and some with very slow rural broadband | We send emails each week and a monthly magazine also, but we don't do anything on paper. It is difficult at present to do much more unfortunately. Nice to hear from Cardiff, that's where I (Ian) started out in Astronomy as a spotty teenager back in the mid 80's! |
| How many of your members don't use online at all? | Hard to say exactly. Nearly all our members renew online with only one or two needing manual help. Clearly not everyone is willing or able to use Zoom or similar, so we do have a newsletter and monthly email magazine. We've only had one member refuse to use Zoom at all for privacy reasons, but complained via Facebook so you just have to accept that and move on! |
| We upload our Zoom meetings to an unlisted YouTube channel for our members. Often, if a speaker uses background music, we get copyright issues - to the point where Edge will not play the video. We get round this by using Vimeo Thoughts please | You can use YouTube studio to mute music in uploaded videos and recorded streams for exactly this reason, have had to do it on a couple of our videos from many years before my time. Not easy if they're talking over the top of music though. Additionally, you can blur video in YouTube studio as well. This helps if you have been in a school and/or want to blur out any children for safeguarding. |
| Lucinda, how have you dealt with features like live captioning when streaming zoom through youtube live? | We haven't used live captioning. It might be something we will have to test as we want to be able to trust the transcripting technology. I am sure it has improved but we haven't experimented with it yet. We do need to do this as accessibility is very important to us. It is something that we are working on for 2021. |
| Another good site to link to Facebook is Billetto UK. Easy to use and events can be monitored for numbers attending. It will also automatically send your members and/or public the Zoom links to join the sessions. I find this better and far more efficient than Eventbrite | Zoom has updated its platform to now act as registration and reminders. So it can be done within Zoom now as well. The RAS uses Eventbrite because we already have a large following there who immediately get notified of our events. If we were to do a press briefing, then we would use the built-in Zoom registration. |
| A great Zoom feature we use at every webinar we do is to start in practice mood. this allows us to ensure all speakers and hosts are ready to go. And allows us a half hour practice before going live on Zoom. attendees are in a waiting room until we go live. I recommend it to you all. | I also highly recommend enabling a practice session. You can do this when you create the Zoom link. It allows for a private session with your speakers to prep them before allowing your audience in. We also hold practice sessions for speakers a few days in advance as you can enter the Zoom meeting or Webinar as soon as you create it even though it is for a certain day and time. |
| Lucinda, can a 'Highlight' video be set on the channel of a personal YouTube account or just on a Brand Account? | The answer is YES. Go to your YT Channel > YouTube Studio > Customisation and it will allow you to create a video spotlight at the top of your channel homepage. |
| Our club has added you tube videos to presentations for use at zoom meetings but gave up because the quality members received was so unreliable. | This can be either your Attendees download speeds or sharing the bandwidth at the time of viewing. Or possibly your Speaker/Panelist does not have sufficient internet/bandwidth. You can let your attendees know that your event is being recorded to YouTube and can be watched at a later time. Also, do try asking them to check the boxes for optimisation and sound when they get to the Zoom share panel. That may help. They are boxes that are located at the bottom of the share window in Zoom. |
| are nasal sprays effective against Covid? | Answered live, YouTube Bookmark |
| Would Dr Peter James recommend that Societies plan to hold all talk meetings online for the rest of 2021 | Answered live, YouTube Bookmark |
| Questions around Talks One to Four | YouTube Bookmark |
| Would it by possible that FAS could put together a standard Risk assessment form that all our club could use? | The FAS has produced (and is still producing) a set of guidance documents. These are available for FAS members to download via MemberMojo. If you have problems contact our webmaster, Martin. |
| Hi, This morning I was working on setting up a YouTube channel to find out that a channel requires 1000 subscribers to continue. Still trying to work out what is happening. Any information to help resolve this problem would be welcomed. Regards, | You need 1,000 subscribers to monetize the channel, i.e. for YouTube to pay you for showing adverts. You don't need 1,000 subscribers to set up and use a channel or nobody would every be able to get started. YouTube also WILL NOT allow you to livestream from your mobile phone unless you have at least a 1000 subscribers. As an aside, if you want to personalise your YouTube channel URL, you will first need to acquire at least 100 subscribers. |
| Is there any requirement for trained First Aiders at an amateur astronomy event/gathering ? | Not mandatory but very good practice YouTube Bookmark |
| With regard to public events and First Aid - especially if your organisation (or the host) doesn’t have any First Aiders, it’s worth knowing that the St John’s Ambulance Service says “If you had a small local event which lasts four hours and needs two First Aiders, our full price would be £96 plus VAT”. |
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| Is there a required ratio of attending organiser numbers to numbers of public ? | This would be based on your risk assessment - each senario would be different. |
| Would it be a good idea to do a risk assessment and pass it to the organisers to sign in acceptance | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| going forward how can we handle hands on displays eg meteorites | I have put them inside a polythene bag and wiped the outside of the bag between handling |
| Is the temperature check gun useful? What would be an ok temperature range, and what do you do if they exceed it? Might they not just have been walking quickly possibly for instance | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| Having been in a care home, where resdients’ temeperature readings may be anything from around 34.5º to 37.5º, how useful do you regard taking visitors’ temperatures? | very useful as a screening function. |
| Hi Graham, did your attendees each bring thier own eyepiece to the observing session at the various domes? I certainly wouldn't want to get any form of sanitizer anywhere near my Ethos eyepieces! | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| re "the venue should ..." what if they don't ? Walk away ? | Answered live, YouTube Bookmark |
| Observation re. night-time activities. Peoples perception of distance is not accurate in the dark ... how do you manage that ? | Use of marshals would be useful - but with a good personal manner |
| Hi Jenny, isn't there an argument to refuse entry to someone with mask exemption? They could be asymptomatic at that point and yet still be a spreader - the last person you want there without a mask! | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| Can you say "This event is not suitable for people who cannot wear a mask"? | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| Sorry about posting this on here, but in the absence of chat I believe WebEx has close captioning. it was used for the SE region's World Space Week events so local branch of Institute of Physics can provide details. Zoom certainly doesn't have it, or at the time - other than someone doing simultaneous typing. | Zoom does do transcripts, quite well. But you need to spend more money for the Business licence that has it. :/ |
| An alternative to the lip reading, it's possible to have captioning software (like Otter, etc) to manage your live captioning on your zoom sessions. | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| Comments re Captioning:- Power point has CC built into it there is a charge for Otter https://www.rev.com with its Zoom plugin https://www.rev.com/zoom-live-captions is a better link |
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| Are their special rules (eg use of PPE) for First Aiders ? | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| This year we have introduced a cheaper membership fee for solely on-line members as disctivct from full members (i.e. pre Covid). Has NE Essex AS had experience of this? | We haven't because we have a rolling year, so people can join for a full year at any time and it would be too complicated to manage assuming this ends sometime in 2021. |
| Have you managed to use breakout rooms at the end of your Zoom meetings to simulate the chat that takes place after meetings in person? | Hi we’ve not had the need yet, but if the numbers grew to a point we would definitely utilise it. We’ve trialled it an it was very easy to do. |
| Hi Ian, the fact you metioned that we might have to mark up social distancing markers seems to suggest that you think that the level of Covid risk and the likelihood of it being transferred during an event isn't high enough to cause any outreach event to be abandonned. Or did I misconstrue? | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| Are society volunteers deemed to be 'Employees' in terms of insurance ? | Answered live. YouTube Bookmark |
| Final Question Session | YouTube Bookmark |
The Covid-19 Outreach conference page is here