Social Tech

Party Like It’s 1962

My experience holding an open house during a pandemic

Today is my 60th birthday and I am taking visitors all day. This should bring terror to you heart or at least concern for my safety. That was the challenge presented to me a few weeks ago. Following the proverbial advice of when life gives you lemons find the person with the tequila, I decided to make it a virtual birthday party. This worked to my advantage in several ways.

First, everyone would stay healthy (duh). Secondly, many of my friends are scattered around the globe by chance, life moves, or travels. Lastly, it would be very laid back since I could host this as an open house where people could come and go based on time zone, work schedule, or competing interests.

I also needed to consider what my guest’s attitude would be toward a virtual meeting. Many people I know are tech-savvy and quite comfortable with virtual meetings or are extroverts looking to interact at the drop of a hat. There would also be many “Facebook Friends” that could be invited that could decide on their participation level, video, audio-only, chat only, IM, or post to my feed. The idea was to lower stress on everyone including myself.

Technical Hurdles

My zoom account from my employer would not be appropriate for this endeavor and although visit durations would probably be fairly short and sporadic I did not want to risk the limitations imposed by my free personal Zoom account. I wanted to host between 2 and 10 guests with no time restrictions. Here are the options and the winner.

Zoom — The obvious first choice. The industry leader that everyone is familiar with.

• Host up to 100 participants — I’m probably not having more than 6 at a time.
• Unlimited group meetings for up to 40 minutes — Meh, I’d hate for the three of us just having a good time and having to restart. That would suck the energy out of the conversation.
• Unlimited one-to-one meetings with a 30-hour time limit per meeting. — Deal breaker, I want to leave the session open all day.

Facebook Messenger — There are “rooms” in this app that must be downloaded, it does not run as part of the web app. This choice was a non-starter from the get-go since many of my guests are not on Facebook.

Microsoft Teams — I have this at work in addition to Zoom and it works fairly well. Like anything Microsoft, it always feels like they are catching up by absorbing a start-up, dressing in a suit and tie, and then having marketing remove the tie and add a sweater. The free account allows any size but is limited to 60 minutes. Better, but still lacking the ability to leave the session open all day.

NextCloud — This open-source file-sharing utility lets you run your own iCloud or DropBox server. One of the built-in features out of the box is NextCloud Talk which works a lot like Zoom. I already had this up and running with no limitations so it seemed like a good choice. More on why and how to install NexCloud is in this story.

Some additional research on how long a session could last found the application would choke after a few hours unless you worked with a NextCloud expert to configure an enterprise version. The other downside is nobody would be familiar with the application.

Skype — I had not thought of Skype in a long time, since the dawn of IP telephony in fact. Looking at the features listed, this became the clear choice. Name brand, no limit on guests, no limit on duration. Tying it out I discovered a few quirks, some surprises, and no deal breakers.

The Skype’s the Limit

There are two ways to use Skype, either via the website or as an app on almost any OS. I highly recommend the app version which I used on a MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone. The web version had a lower fidelity video but was perfectly functional.

During testing, I found the web version useful as I only had one account for the app making it difficult to assume the role of a guest. The best configuration seemed to be starting the host in the app and joining as a guest via the website. Watch out for feedback while testing your rig, the app likes to default to having the mic on, and with 3 or four devices on my desk, it was difficult to find the mute button device “A” while device “B” was screaming.

Having Skype open with a meeting and no guests did not consume much power but as soon as someone joined the call the CPU went full max and the battery started to dive. I recommend keeping everything plugged in.

Skype has automatic closed captions that work very well. Part of the accuracy is probably due to Microsoft owning Skype which they are using as part of the Microsoft Teams foundation. I also found the app flexible in the hand-off. It was possible for me to start the call on my laptop, join the call on my iPhone and then drive out of WiFi range and have the session move seamlessly to cellular data. Thus I could run to the store for a curbside pickup and not worry about missing someone calling in.

How Did It Go?

As I write this there have been several visits, the largest being a party of 6 from my office. The locations of the guests ranged from San Diego to London, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam. Overall I am pleased with the results and I liked the way the URL for a group call does not change, allowing it to be used in email invitations.

A few people had trouble getting connected or getting both audio and video to send/receive. I have a pet peeve with how blurred background is the default. and is difficult to turn off on the fly. This interfered with guests wanting to show something other than their face on the screen. In the desktop app, it is on the video button similar to zoom but in iOS, it is a menu setting and can only be changed while the camera is off.

Will I do this again? Yes, most certainly. Even without the pandemic, it was nice to talk to friends across the state and across the pond.