At least 2 events per calendar year are required to keep any IEEE society chapter, affinity group, or student branch active. If you do not have any events planned, you can collaborate with other IEEE entities (local or regional) to complete the required vTools reports for a calendar year. All vTools reports must be completed to maintain the section’s vitality.
Reported vTools events can be virtual! This is an opportunity to invite speakers outside the section by asking them to devote a few hours of their time instead of flying them over (easier to schedule, no room booking, more accessible to attendees). As a suggestion, if you are leading a technical chapter, you can look at the list of distinguished lecturers (example DL page from IEEE ComSoc) for your society and reach out to one of them. The authors of any popular topic in journals and magazines of your society (on IEEEXplore) can also be invited to be your speakers.
Available Platforms
Google Meet platform supports up to 250 participants and is available for use with your ieee.org email account. Attendees do not need gmail accounts and the service comes with several features. Cisco WebEx Meetings with up to 1000 participants can be requested for free at http://site.ieee.org/vtools/tools-ok/webex/webex-registration/. IEEE MGA staff will process the request and provide WebEx session information within 3 business days. For more information on virtual platforms supported by IEEE, please refer to https://site.ieee.org/vtools/remote-conferencing/.
In addition, the IEEE Montréal Section has procured a Zoom Pro license (up to 100 participants maximum) which is available upon request for any event or activity within the Montréal area. If you need to set up a Zoom meeting, please send your vTools event URL (containing event title, abstract, speaker information, date/time/duration, Zoom settings) to the webmaster by email to receive the Zoom event link and hosting details. To publicize your events and webinars, don’t forget to share them on the section’s social media pages: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.
Before you request for a Zoom event URL, please ensure that your virtual event will not exceed 100 participants. Otherwise, you can use Google Meet or Cisco WebEx Meetings which support more attendees (refer to https://site.ieee.org/vtools/remote-conferencing/).
General Guidelines
The host should be available and the line should be open 15 minutes before the start of the meeting so that people can test their log in and talk with the host. This also provides for a bit of networking and socializing.
Registration for large and long meetings should remain open throughout the meeting so that people can register and join during the meeting. Make sure to send the link to these last minute people immediately and not after the meeting.
There should be audio and visual starting 15 minutes before. Again, this way people can test their system.
The hosts should introduce themselves as well the speakers.
Zoom Guidelines
In Zoom, we can establish participants who would like to participate or share their files as co-hosts and keep a single host. This helps smoothen the running of meetings.
Zoom allows participants to join before the host. This has to be set in the Zoom Meeting ID Settings (see screenshot below).
Zoom allows the recording of the meeting while setting up the Zoom link so that we do not need to click on the record button during the meeting (see screenshot below).
We can also disable the waiting room option in the Zoom meeting setting so that attendees do not wait for the host to be let in.
Single or multiple participants can also share simultaneously their content without being host or co-host. This has to be customized in the Zoom meeting setting (see screenshot below).
