Skype

The conference call worked for Sunday's crit group meeting.  Val and I had to lean in close enough that the webcam on the red laptop could pick us both up, but we got to see Stef, live and in real time, for the first time since she moved to Florida.

Skype was remarkably easy to set up, and getting connected was far easier than I'd dared hope.  Also, along with the built-in webcam on my laptop is a built-in microphone, so we didn't have to jury-rig anything in order to be be heard as well as seen.

I highly recommend distance crit group meetings via Skype, if you can't all live in the same place.  The only issue is that we can't just pass her a paper copy of our work to read at the meeting, so in future, we'll have to make sure she gets a copy ahead of time so she can do her crit prior to the meeting and send it to us.  We'll do the same for her, and then then at the conference call/meeting, we can discuss any questions any of us has about the others' crit and impressions.

I'd still rather we were all here in person, but barring that, Skype was a relatively trouble-free way to compensate for the lack of proximity.

Conference Calling

Now that only two of the Moxie remain in town, we're trying to figure out how to organize videoconferencing for our critique group so that we can continue to have meetings.  In our case, this means Skype and webcams.  If we do this, our original fourth member may also be able to join us for meetings.

I have a laptop with a built-in webcam, and wi-fi is readily available, so all that remains is for me to make sure I'm set up to do this.  I've never used that webcam before, so it will be something new to try.  I have all of two days left in which to figure it all out, but I'm sure I'll get it done.

Some days, with e-books and tech gadgets everywhere, I feel like I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into the...ah...which century is it, again?