Join us for a Virtual Community Get-Together on May 3, 2020

By AppleVis, 30 April, 2020

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

We would like to invite everyone in the AppleVis community to join us for a virtual get-together as a way to help people connect in new ways during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Our virtual get-together will be held via Zoom on Sunday, May 3, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. CDT/ 7:00 p.m. UTC. To join the meeting from iOS, Mac, PC, or Android, simply follow this link. You can also join the meeting by manually enterring Meeting ID 842 8555 7596 into the Zoom app.

To join via telephone, find your local number here and use Meeting ID 842 8555 7596.

To help make our get-together a welcoming place for all, we ask participants to please abide by the following guidelines:

  • Please be polite and treat others as you would like to be treated. Please give the same consideration and tolerance to others that you would like to receive from them. It is perfectly okay to have a differing viewpoint from someone else; please remember, though, to express your views in a respectful manner.
  • Please keep conversation family-friendly. Language which is sexually explicit, discriminatory against a person or groups of people for any reason, insulting, or otherwise deemed offensive, is prohibited.
  • Please do not discuss the illegal use of licensed software or information about software which would breach any non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

We look forward to getting together with everyone! If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments.

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By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Hi!
Since the meeting is 2 PM central time on Sunday, am I able to join at 3 PM Eastern time? How does this work?
Thanks!

By Michael Hansen on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hi Angel,

3:00 p.m. in the Eastern time zone is the same as 2:00 p.m. in the Central time zone, so you can definitely join at or any time after 3:00 p.m. until the meeting is over.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

In reply to by Michael Hansen

Thanks for the response, and looking forward to joining the meeting.

By Daniel Angus M… on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

hello,

I am exsisted to partisapate in this gettogether at 4:00 atlantic daylite saving time. though in recent days I've been creditcal of Apple, I am preparing for that day when my mac is nolonger support and updated by apple. What should we talk about in this virtual gettogether? I'm game for anything.
Daniel

By Daniel Angus M… on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

uk time is 8:00

By Michael Hansen on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

We do not have a specific topic in mind for the meeting; in fact, one of the things I am personally looking forward to with this event is just getting to talk to people from the community and "put a voice to a name."

By Michael Hansen on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Because of the informal nature of the get-together, we do not plan to record it. Our hope is to simply help people stay connected in these difficult times; if we can answer any Apple questions along the way, all the better.

By Khushi on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

hi, I'm excited. but.. its 8PM UK time.. means night time in India. I'm sad I won't be able to join.. what's Indian time for 2PM central time? I know its something after midnight, but I'm not sure.

By Trenton Matthews on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

You are indeed correct, it's the midnight hour over there in India.

For the mountain time zone, that's 12 PM (Noon.)

By maxi on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Hi. what is the time in Estonia when the meeting starts?

By Jeff on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

You can use the World Clock tab of the Clock app to get a time difference between your local time and the same time in a different time zone. Just specify a city in the time zone for which you want to know the time difference, e.g., London for GMT, New York City for Eastern Time, Seattle for Pacific Time, etc.

A clarification to a comment above: The mmeeting on Sunday is at 1 PM Mountain Time, that's noon Pacific Time.

Don't forget to take into account Daylight Savings for those regions that observe it.

By Lielle ben simon on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Hi, i am looking to meet everyone, it's even good time for people that life in Israel. It starts in 10 PM.

By JC on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Hi,
I'm so looking forward to this!! now that I'm apart of the applevis community, I'll totally be joining you all for this virtual event.

By roman on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Hello everyone. I can't wait to join this meeting. It will be a lot of fun! See you all.

By Lucretia M. Brown on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

What’s the password to join the meeting?

By Dave Nason on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hi. A password is not required.
Dave

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

First time it work, After listening to confusion, Zoon in my PC stop and I had to go to the link on the applevis to get in. Waited for more than 15 minutes with please wait the host will ..... What else can I say.

By Macky on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Is the meeting cancelled? Someone was playing music and I'm guessing Michael stopped it? Typing this whilst in the waiting room...

By JC on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Hello their

This was a great gathering!! let's do this again!! but this time, make it more secure. maybe have it once a week. Michael, amazing job organizing this. I had a lot of fun. I'm glad I was able to re-connect with my AppleVis friends again.

By Diego Garibay on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

As soon as I tuned in people were talking about the possibility of getting training for Apple certification. It was a good solid discussion without people cutting into each other. It was all very organized and I seriously enjoyed it. Even if I was only there for about 10 minutes. LOL great stuff guys please do it again soon.

By Macky on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

I couldn’t get back in after the meeting closed after someone was playing music. Very disappointed. Is there a way we can safeguard against this happening if the meeting goes ahead again in the future?

By Ipadman on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

I really enjoyed the first half hour or so, but then the meeting was cancelled because someone called Bob the Builder started playing music.
I really hope that it happens again, and that next time it's more secure, maybe by only sending out the link to people who give their email addresses or having a certain window of time to join before blocking new people from joining.

By Jeff on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Initially, the meeting was pretty chaotic with everyone trying to talk at the same time, but once everyone was muted and some order prevailed, the meeting was enjoyable, except for the zoombombing. I'd recommend using a password in future if more such meetings are held.

Perhaps a few simple rules of etiquette might be established to help keep the meeting under control. For instance, keep your mic muted unless you want to speak. At least with the iOS app, it's very easy to mute the mic. There's a mute button at the bottom of the screen. You can just focus on that button and double tap to toggle mute on/off.

If you want to speak, unmute your mic and speak your name and that you want to comment. Then the moderator can acknowledge you and let you speak. That way, folks are not constantly talking over one another.

I think this meeting was a good idea and I'd participate again if future meetings are held.

By Daniel Angus M… on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

hello,

this meeting was awesome. got to finally meet members of the AppleVis Editioral Team, which was awesome. a better thing than unmuting when you want to talk is temperarlierly unmuting with the soacebar. that's whay I did, hence noone knew I was there. when the first zoom bomming happend, I though, what? it was made clear to all that this meeting is family friendly, no explisit language. then when their was some, I thought that what uf some users were chrildren? Zoom is not secure as the link is public on AppleVis.. in future, I'd use group facetime. at least Apple gets security right. then no windows questions will be asked, simpoly because windows users wouldn't be able to join. What do you think?

By Michael Hansen on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hi all,

First, a huge thank-you to everyone who attended the meeting! I really enjoyed getting to talk to so many people, and I look forward to doing a similar event in the future.

This was our first meeting using Zoom, and I certainly learned a lot. As the host and organizer of the event, I want to take a moment to address the issues we experienced today; the decisions I made both before and during the meeting; and what we will improve upon for any future meetings.

Because of the well-publicized instances of "zoombombing," where people go into Zoom meetings and broadcast explicit content or otherwise disrupt the meeting, my initial intention was to enable the meeting registration option and require people to pre-register for the meeting. (Upon registering, a user would then receive an email with instructions on how to join the meeting.) I eventually decided against requiring users to pre-register, though, because Zoom's registration page includes a ReCaptcha. If we were going to publish the meeting information on the website and not require registration anyway, I saw no benefit to having a password since that password would have to had been public, too.

During the meeting, we had three instances of a participant choosing to broadcast explicit content. Because AppleVis is a website for people of all ages, my top priority was to stop the explicit broadcast as soon as humanly possible. While I could have let the broadcast continue while I tried to figure out who was behind it, in the chaos of the moment (and not being able to see what might be being broadcast on screen by the zoombomber), I decided that the quickest way to shut it down would be to close the meeting. More experienced Zoom users might have chosen a different approach, but I did what I felt would resolve the situation as quickly as possible. In the future, I will be better prepared.

In an effort to prevent the “zoombomber” from returning, upon reopening the meeting I only readmitted people whom I knew we had talked to or whose names I recognized. Unfortunately, my choice meant that, in most cases, people whose identities were unclear from their display names did not get readmitted to the meeting. I also locked the meeting for a time after the second Zoombombing instance, though I did reopen it later. It was never my desire to exclude genuine participants from the meeting, and yet I realize that that is precisely what I did. I am sorry, and I hope you will please accept that this was not my intention.

Going forward, we will have a better thought-out security strategy for future events, including a process for registration and a better way to manage situations where people choose to be disruptive.

Despite the challenges we experienced, I still feel that today’s meeting was a success. I really enjoyed getting to connect with everyone, and I sincerely hope we are able to do more events in the future.

As always, thank you for your continued support of the AppleVis community.

Sincerely,

Michael Hansen

By Morgan Watkins on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

Today was my first attempt at using Zoom. It worked! Miracle! And, what I enjoyed most was hearing the voices attached to some of the names I have seen in the AppleVis community for quite some time. I would definitely attend again. Michael, you did a stellar job of managing ourfirst time down this path. Well done!

Knowing what people were doing within zoon, I am not surprise that this happen. It was a good intention anyway.

By Al on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

I'd like to participate to but it has been announced too lately for people not looking at news everyday but only every week.

Probably you could create an temporary e-mail account where people could send an e-mail to register to the event.

Thanks for organising such event.

Subject says it all.
In the beginning, the meeting was totally disorganized and absolute chaos.
I was never able to get back in after the second Zoombombing incident. Waited in the waiting room for a long time and then got a message that the meeting was locked by host. Decided I had better things to do, so I moved on.
A big waste of my time.

By Daniel Angus M… on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

it was awesome and deffenatly not a waist of time, as brett s suggested. it was busy at first, but as soon as the meat of it started, by members of the AppleVis editorial team, it was good.

By Khushi on Friday, May 22, 2020 - 04:04

hi
I wish next time you keep it at a time where Indians can also join :)
I know :)
most of the events fall after midnight here.. it sucks sometimes :)

By Dominic on Monday, May 22, 2023 - 04:04

Are we gonna do one of these again Future?
These sounded amazing.

By Daniel Angus M… on Thursday, June 22, 2023 - 04:04

that is up to the AppleVis editorial team. it would be neet, but also it was not that good when the zoomboming happen. as long as it can be hoasted with more security, that that is awesome!

By Tyler on Thursday, June 22, 2023 - 04:04

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

That was exactly the problem we faced when we had a community get-together, which is one of the reasons doing another one hasn't really crossed our minds since then. Inviting the public to join a Zoom meeting means that anyone can come in and zoom bomb us, and while we can subsequently remove those users and prevent them from joining again, nothing stops them from joining from a different account and repeating the act.