Using Zoom

Our Festival sessions will be held on Zoom, which is an easy to use video conferencing platform. Zoom works on phones, tablets and laptops/PCs so we hope it is accessible for everyone. If you haven’t used Zoom before, please take a minute to download it before the conference.

Best practice for attending Zoom Festival sessions

Please aim to sign in for each session a few minutes before it starts to enable us to start promptly. You will be in a ‘waiting room’ until the host is ready to start the session, when they will admit you into the meeting.

All sessions will be set to the default of participants’ video and microphones being muted on arrival. For panels and keynotes, we ask that only the speaker and chair use audio and video during the main session, with audience audio and video being optional during the Q&A. Your session host will give more information at the start of the session.

You can turn both your microphone and camera on and off via the relevant symbols on your screen.

It is best practice to mute your microphone to avoid background noise, only turning it on when you need to speak to participate in the session.

You can switch between ‘gallery view’ (which shows all participants at once) and ‘speaker view’ (which shows just the person currently speaking). You may find it helpful to switch which view you are using depending on the type of session.

We advise that for interactive sessions you wear a headset/headphones if possible as this reduces the chance of echoes and background noise for other participants.

For sessions that include Q&A, you will be able to use the chat box function to ask questions. Questions will then be asked by the session host.

Please do not make your own recording of any conference sessions. We will be recording some sessions (subject to agreement of the speakers) and will make these available to attendees for two months following the conference.

If you are concerned about the security of Zoom, the Ada Lovelace Institute has some helpful guidance about the use of Zoom which we have used in our choice of online platform. In terms of privacy, it is advisable to access meetings via your web browser rather than downloading the app onto your device.

If you have any questions or need any help please email graduateschool@westminster.ac.uk