Talking liberties

Forest’s first Zoom meeting went pretty well, I thought.

As I explained yesterday, following last week’s disastrous experience on another Zoom meeting, I was advised to sit as close to the router as possible.

I’m not sure it was strictly necessary but I arranged things so I was sitting within a foot of it, in the sitting room, rather than in my office upstairs.

The good news is I had none of the connection problems I had last week so that was fine.

As for the meeting, huge thanks to Rob Lyons for chairing it and pressing all the right buttons at (mostly) the right time.

Had it been me I would have got horribly mixed up and would have muted and unmuted speakers at all the wrong moments.

That said, what I enjoyed about the meeting was its rough edges, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

I didn’t want it to be a business-like conference call, and it wasn’t.

Nor did I want two or three speakers dominating the event, and that didn’t happen either.

As much as it was possible, Rob and I wanted everyone to have an equal opportunity to speak.

We did give the meeting some focus by concentrating on three issues - smoking and coronavirus, the menthol cigarette ban and creeping prohibition.

But we wanted it to be like a pub chat rather than a formal speaker-meeting or seminar and - technical limitations aside - I think it worked quite well.

Although fewer than a third of the 33 participants (50 people registered) spoke, I think everyone who wanted to did so.

I liked the fact that we could see most of the participants, although some appeared to be audio only and instead of a video all we could see was their name.

I would have liked to hear people laughing - there were several funny moments - but that’s not possible unless you unmute everyone and that can lead to other problems, people speaking over one another, for example.

Sometimes the most interesting thing about an online meeting is not what people say but the pictures of them on screen.

No two locations are the same.

Gawain Towler, for many years Nigel Farage’s right-hand man and something of a Westminster legend, could be seen smoking in what appeared to be a very stylish living room.

On the wall behind him was a colourful painting of Farage that had echoes of The Simpsons.

Chris Snowdon sat in a large leather armchair with a Lucky Strike ad over his shoulder.

Dan Donovan spoke from his garden studio, a large shed also known as the ‘Moose Shack’.

Liz Barber, a long-time Forest supporter, sat at a desk in a bright upstairs room.

And so on.

If you don’t want to reveal where You are Zoom allows you to choose from a range of backgrounds.

John Mallon, Forest’s spokesman in Ireland, joined us from Cork and appeared in front of the Northern Lights.

He looked (and sounded) like he was about to announce the votes of the Irish jury in the Eurovision Song Contest.

The participant furthest away was in India, and we also had someone log in from America.

We were pleased too to welcome Frank Davis who has been writing about smoking and coronavirus long before the mainstream media.

We finished, as scheduled, after 60 minutes, but could have gone on longer. And that was good too. Always quit while you’re ahead.

Most participants seemed happy just to watch and listen, which is what I’ve done at most of the webinars I’ve taken part in.

Next time, though, we’ll try and squeeze in a few more people to the discussion.

To create a virtual pub atmosphere we also need more people to bring a drink to the meeting!

Watch this space.