Before the pandemic hit in 2019, many non-profit organizations (NPO) were meeting in person with great attendance. During the pandemic, the same NPOs were struggling as no one wanted to meet in person due to this deadly disease. Some NPOs either disbanded or quit meeting until a better solution was found. Several NPOs used online teleconferencing services, which were either costly or not user friendly. Some services offered video and most offered audio only meetings.
Zoom Call
Along came Zoom in early 2020, a new video teleconference service that offered low-cost meeting and webinar services for NPOs, schools, and small businesses. Zoom was an ideal video conferencing service as it was easy to use for all ages using your home computer, tablet, or even smartphone and inexpensive. Most users could add a simple camera to their home computer, and they could easily conference with other users. Many laptops, tablets and smartphones already have the ability to video conference with a built-in camera. Zoom was downloaded over a half billion times in 2020.
During its introduction, sharing documents, slide presentations, photos, and websites became the normal use on Zoom broadcasts for many organizations plus gave the ability for online chat and record the meetings for later viewing.
Today, Zoom has added many more features including closed captioning for the hearing impaired, whiteboard demos, breakout sessions, polls or surveys, telephone or audio only access, scheduling, AI assistance, 5 or more GB storage, calendar service, higher security, and enhanced statistics. They now offer four different plans from a free account to large organizations with different features and time limits.
Although there are many competing video services such as Microsoft Skype or Teams, Google Meet, and GoToMeetings, it seems Zoom has done well as a fairly new startup. Zoom is another technology that has helped our planet become more interconnected with each other. Bob Larson is a technologist and Marketing Director for 50 Plus!