Advice on using Zoom

If you are new to Zoom, you can find many different tutorials online, for example on the Zoom help center. Below is some more specific advice for using Zoom during the workshop.

Access

The access information for the Zoom meetings will be emailed to you by the workshop organizers after registering for the workshop. (If you have not yet received it, please send us a message.) You can access the meetings either using the standalone Zoom client or simply using a web browser.

Audience members

If you want to ask a question during the talk, you can either use the "raise hand" button, or type your question directly into the public chat window. The session chair will wait until an appropriate moment and ask the speaker to respond.

To minimize background noise, please leave your microphone muted except when asking a question or thanking the speaker. You can choose to either turn your camera on or leave it off as you prefer, although speakers often prefer to see audience members' faces!

Speakers

The session chair will introduce you, and you will be made a "co-host" in order to give you the ability to share your screen. If you have prepared your talk as a slide presentation, you can then simply open your slides in another application and share you screen from Zoom.

Please make sure you have a good internet connection and microphone (and possibly headphones, to reduce feedback). You can choose to either turn your camera on or leave it off as you prefer, although audience members often prefer to see the speaker's face!


Advice on using Discord

Access

You can download Discord for free on desktop here, or through the Google Play store or Apple App Store on mobile and tablets.

If you don't want to download the desktop application, Discord also provides a web client to be accessed directly from your browser.

A URL containing the invitation for the Discord server will be emailed to you by the workshop organizers after registering for the workshop. If you have not yet received it, please send us a message.

Users who already have an account on Discord, can use it to join our server via the Discord desktop application or via the web client. The desktop application is highly recommended, especially if you wish to join on using your camera and/or sharing your screen (which are unavailable when using the web client). Furthermore, performance is noticeably better when using the desktop application.

If you don't already have a Discord account and don't want to make one, you may join via the Discord web client (which is accessed by inputting the invitation URL provided to you by the organisers).

When using the web client as an unregistered user, you will be prompted to input a username and accept the relevant terms and conditions of use. Please enter your full name so we know who you are! You may also be prompted to complete a reCAPTCHA test.

After doing so, you will be asked to input your birthday date. Finally, a prompt will appear for you to "claim your account". Claiming your account essentially amounts to creating an account for Discord, which might be useful if you want to later re-join the same servers; otherwise you'll have to retype your invite link in your browser of choice and follow the above procedure again.

If you don't want to claim your account, you may click anywhere else on the client screen and the prompt will disappear (leaving a banner on the top of your screen).

Once you enter the room, you have the choice to join the audio stream by joining the "Voice Channels". To do so, simply click on the voice channel you're interested in joining. A prompt might appear on your browser, asking you whether you want to grant permission to the current page to use your microphone. Doing so is necessary if you want plan to speak in the voice channels.

Microphones may be muted or unmuted by clicking on the relevant button on the bottom left of your screen (right next to your username). There's also buttons for deafening the audio and for accessing your user settings.

To send a private message to a user, right click on their username and click on the "Message" option.

Further information may be found by visiting the Discord Getting Started guide available here.

Participants

Our Discord server gives you the option to share your camera feed and/or your screen (only available when using the desktop application) or upload any file (available both for the web client and the desktop application).

Furthermore, a number of useful utilities are available, including LaTeX input support and OEIS sequence lookup.