WOYWW Crop

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday number 600 actually falls on December 2nd. Oddly, it’s a Wednesday.🤪 we’ll do that as normal, of course. (I hope!). But the Crop is usually on a Saturday and so, Saturday 5th December it will be. Hurrah.

Now, we Deskers are a world apart, literally.  I’m proposing two separate Zoom meetings across the 5th December so that I and hopefully, some of you, can be online to various parts of the world to enable visiting. If you want to, you can drop in on both, stay awhile or stay the course. You can call in on us at any point during any of the designated meetings, and no one will mind if you come and go at all. It will be lovely.

To do this, you need Zoom. You can download the free App or you can treat it just like any other website and use the url and link that I will publish. If you download the App, there are slightly different actions to take. It’s actually much easier than I thought it would be, and having all participating faces on screen at once is just lovely. 

The App looks like this once downloaded:

Ignore the photo of my two lovelies. My favourite photo ever so far. Once you’ve downloaded, you have to register, of course. Sorry, no getting around it. You can always delete the whole Bally lot once our Crop is over!

Then, when you tap on the App, it opens to reveal this....I have reduced the screen shot to remove dates and things..too confusing.  You click on the Join icon. 

And then another screen magically appears into which you have to put some detail. Detail that I will publish here on this very blog on Friday 4th December. Not before. 

Then you do as prompted;  add the Meeting ID, allow audio and video and click JOIN. Then at my end, (for I am the Meeting Organiser) a pop-up will magically tell me that you’re waiting to be allowed access, which of course, I’ll allow. In my experience there has been a short delay between clicking JOIN and me ‘granting’ access, so please be patient and don’t panic. It’s probably not more than 30 seconds but feels very long when you’re

 a) nervous

 b) trying new-to-you technology and  

c) not sure you’ve done it right because it was easy.

Zoom seems to be updating fast. At the last test, two people used the link and entered the meeting via their browsers. Both had to register with Zoom first though, just as you do to use the App. I suspect at some point that it will be App only access, but for now it still generates a URL as an alternative. I know that Ministry of Defence and Government don’t use it for meetings because just as I can’t guarantee it, security online is always an issue. We’re going to be shooting the breeze, talking glue, paper, fabric and family, so it’s definitely up to you to decide whether to join or not. As with all things WOYWW! 

If you decide to join us, please will you make a legible name badge/tag/desk sign, especially if you blog under a nickname. Set up your phone/camera so we can see it and your lovely face if nothing else....there is no dress code. If you swing by in PJs, gardening clothes, that’s just fine. We want you to swing by. Birthday suits too, if you’re brave. You’re certainly beautiful enough. Bring something to work on too, it’s very much easier to pass the time chatting if you’re cutting, colouring, knitting...eating. The only thing that makes it difficult is extraneous background noise, so it would be helpful if you weren’t in the same room as a TV that’s on, for example.

Now, the big issue. Time Zones

I’m splitting the day, hopefully to allow as much coverage as possible. It would be great if you can join in at both sessions for some or all of the time, I really don’t want to sit on my own!

Session One : 930am GMT till 1130 GMT will cover time zones east of London, Europe to Australia
Session Two : 530pm GMT to 830pm GMT will cover time zones west, the US and Canada etc.

I think that’s plenty of info for now. I hope I’ve answered some questions. Loads of you are already Zoom familiar so feel free to comment if I’ve got something wrong or you know of a better way.