Procedure for Room Hopping Loop
A Zoom meeting with nine participants has been reconvened in four different virtual rooms in twenty minutes because the host keeps creating new rooms instead of sharing the same link.
Procedure for Room Hopping Loop Meeting Minutes: Virtual Room Migration Events, Tuesday 2:00pm
Meeting Called to Order
The meeting was scheduled for 2:00pm. A Zoom link was sent at 1:58pm. Two people joined the link. The host was not in the link. The host had created a different link and was waiting in it.
A second link was distributed at 2:03pm.
Migration 1: 2:03pm
Seven of nine participants joined the second room. Two participants were still in the first room. The host left the first room unhosted, which caused it to end after sixty seconds, which moved the two remaining participants into a lobby that no longer had a host.
A third link was sent at 2:06pm.
Migration 2: 2:06pm
During the migration, the host experienced connectivity issues and rejoined from a phone hotspot. The phone hotspot creates a new meeting ID by default, which the host did not notice. A fourth link was sent at 2:09pm.
Current Status
The correct room exists. It has existed since the first invitation was sent. The problem is that the host created three additional correct rooms after the first one, each in response to a problem that the previous room was not given sufficient time to resolve.
Procedural Note
Each migration requires a new link, a new wait time, and a new round of "can everyone hear me" to confirm the room has been successfully re-established, during which time no attendee is certain whether the audio problem has been resolved or merely relocated to a context where it is temporarily less visible.
Attendance Record
Nine people were invited. At 2:09pm, seven people were in the fourth room. One person had dropped off after the second migration. One person had been in all four rooms sequentially and had not yet spoken.
Item 1: The Agenda
The agenda had not been shared prior to the meeting. It was shared in the chat window of the second room, which is no longer accessible to the participants who migrated before seeing it. The agenda has three items. The meeting has been running for eleven minutes.
Finding
A virtual meeting room loop produces the same outcome as an unsuccessful attempt to hold the meeting, but with the additional property that all participants have invested enough time to make leaving feel impolite.
Adjournment
The meeting continued at 2:11pm. Item 1 was addressed. Items 2 and 3 were moved to a follow-up.