Virtual clubs

My church has been using Zoom,it has been easy to learn and use.We have heard that your meeting should be password protected,otherwise you can be hacked with pornogrophy hate speech or images and the like.It has not happened to us,but we are now password protected.My wife and her friends also use Zoom and like it.

Morning, Even with how far advanced we are in these types of conference/video calls the images seems to hesitate or is still glitchie. Take skype and especial now, the images are glitchie or lag because the land or wifi system can't handle this type of data transfer. So unless you absolutely need video chat, I'd stay with a voice system that uses a walkie talkie format. I personally use zello for voice and image transferring. However, even if you're interested in any type of chat system, not all or everyone can voice chat all at one time. So with zello, you create a channel and allows those who are the channel mods to select who speaks next within the channel etc.

More information: https://zello.com

My clubs, the Delaware Valley Scale Modelers and the Lehigh Valley Scale Modelers, have been using Facebook as our forums for some time before the Wuhan virus quarantining began.  No one's suggested using online meeting apps yet; just posting when it's convenient for each individual seems to be sufficient right now.

Before the quarantines, DVSM met monthly, and LVSM met bi-weekly.

Baron - I was in DVSM many years ago, drifted away once life got to busy.

Our local martial arts association did a pretty extensive comparison of the various systems out there and ended up recommending Zoom for two way communication up to about 20 or so. It's easy to use, reliable, doesn't seem to glitch, and they did a series of updates last weekend to fix the security issues. I've been on Zoom with 35 to 50 Folks and I don't recommend it for large groups - everybody's the size of a postage stamp and there's a cacophony of voices even with good speaking discipline. I wouldn't do more than 16. Sessions can be recorded locally.

For large groups you have to sacrifice two-way for bandwidth. We do 45 min Face book Live sessions every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday to about 100 students. They automatically record and post for later viewing. You should have a private page for your group to use Live.

Umm, this forum?  No video conferencing, but I’m not camera friendly anyway!  

I'm happy with Zoom but it is limited to the number of participants. We use Zoom at work now and have up to 35 people, but most of us don't turn on our video.
Never tried Facebook. I hate Facebook! I can never find anything if I miss it the first time and it was constantly bothering me with notifications, so I turned them off. Now never look at it, but if it works for you then.....

Facebook has it's problems, but for delivering content to a lot of people, it's hard to beat. It's lousy as a reference source, but was never intended to be. Forums like this one are far better for that. Just make sure your group has a private page only for vetted members to avoid a lot of the nonsense.