You may have spent your life blissfully unaware of and not needing videoconferencing software. Then the pandemic hit, and all you heard was Zoom, Zoom, Zoom! The easy-to-use service isn’t always as simple as it appears. We want to help during this difficult time with a free book that will help you master all the basics of Zoom while keeping all the hair you may still have this late in 2020.
Take Control of Zoom Essentials focuses on getting you quickly up to speed, even if you’ve already used Zoom before and felt like you didn’t know enough about being an effective participant in a meeting or reliably joining meetings. It starts with software choices, explaining the differences between native Zoom apps for major platforms and browser-based web apps.
This book pairs nicely with our other free title for the new age of remote work, Take Control of Working from Home Temporarily.
We also offer a full-length, in-depth companion volume, Take Control of Zoom. It dives into Zoom for more advanced and specific uses, including hosting a meeting, presenting effectively in PowerPoint and Keynote via Zoom, and recording meetings. You’ll become an advanced user after reading it.
This look at essentials then proceeds rapidly through important topics, like improving your audio and video, setting up yourself and the space around you to put your best foot forward in meetings, and how to connect to a meeting.
You also learn the various ways to view other participants and the host (there are several), share your screen to make presentations or demonstrate an app, and the best ways to interact and stay safe in meetings.
This free book will help you feel like you’re in firm control of Zoom, before and during meetings. For additional insight and help into all the topics covered in this essentials book, get a copy of the in-depth Take Control of Zoom, which dives in much further on setting up Zoom, working around roadmaps, using Keynote and PowerPoint in presentations, virtual cameras for presentations and mixing streams of media, and how to host and manage meetings. Where Essentials takes you to an intermediate user, Take Control of Zoom can make you an advanced participant and knowledgeable meeting host.
Here’s what you will find in Take Control of Zoom Essentials:
- Pick the right Zoom app
- Determine what audio and video changes you need
- Set up your workspace and surroundings
- Make yourself appear well lit and well distinguished on camera
- Learn all the ways to join a meeting and what to expect
- Manage Zoom’s many options for viewing people in a meeting
- Understand how to participate in a meeting
- Control how you view a shared screen from someone else and share your own screen for presentations and demos
- Stay safe in Zoom
About Glenn Fleishman
Glenn Fleishman is a veteran technology writer who has contributed to dozens of publications across his career, including Macworld, Fast Company, and Increment. He has also written dozens of editions of books in the Take Control series. He spent 2019 and 2020 building 100 tiny type museums full of real printing artifacts—a few remain available for purchase. Glenn lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.
