Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
COLFAX -- Whitman County Information Technology Director Lance Bishop announced Monday that the county will get out of hosting all of its Zoom meetings. Instead, he will set up individual administrators in each department to host their own meetings.
The change is being made to avoid time limitations and mix-ups in which a Zoom meeting is scheduled, with the expectation that the I.T. Department will host it, but the department has not been told about it.
The time issue is that, although anyone can host a meeting with a free account, without a licensed host, it cuts off at 45 minutes.
Bishop has now given out seven Zoom licenses, to the health department, emergency management, coroner, sheriff’s department, board of county commissioners, Superior Court and District Court.
“Without individual licenses, it starts creating problems, because I become the lynch-pin,” Bishop said. “I don’t want to be the lynch-pin.”
The county paid $200 for 10 licenses for 10 hosts.
“You would not believe how many Zoom meetings we have for the county every week,” Bishop said.
He and his three-person department, which works out of the building behind the Elections Office, will still host large county meetings, such as a fair board meeting in June (during the decision period of whether to cancel the fair) which attracted almost a hundred participants, Bishop managing three screens of users.
“As a licensed host of Zoom, I can mute your microphone for you, I can turn off their camera,” he said. “I can actually kick you off, not that I have ever needed to do that for anybody.”
Now these hosting abilities will be taken on more by individual departments.
Bishop, an information technology veteran, has seen shifts in the industry before and suspects video conferencing will be used more after the virus than before.
So why has Zoom been able to definitively take over video-conferencing?
“Because Zoom made it easy,” Bishop said. “Skype tried to be too much to too many people.”
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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