The themed social lounges are an integral part of the Festival. They sit alongside the main programme of tastings, talks and panels to provide a more social element to the event. This is something we trialled at our Sober Weekender and it worked really well.
The aim is that the host facilitates a discussion on a theme to get the community chatting. So these events are not broadcast panels with comments but real-time social events designed to engage people in discussion and to meet each other.
Promoting your session
Please promote the session by directing people to sign up at mindfuldrinkingfestival.com. Please do not give out the Zoom link directly!
Each day people will get an updated agenda email with all the sessions at the Festival and information about the sponsors. This is important as it helps us cover the costs of this Festival and to keep it free for participants.
It also ensures that only people who really want to be there have the link, and we can avoid people who just want to crash a sober event and gaslight or abuse people. It will make your session much easier to manage.
Technical stuff
If you can, do this on a computer or tablet rather than a phone. It will be easier for you to control the meeting.
If you can plug your device into the ethernet cable to guarantee your internet connection a bit better then please do!
You will need full host controls so you need to login with our email address and password – we will email these to you.
The room you will use is Club Soda Mindful Drinking Festival Social Lounge (No: 832 7268 6959) for the day of your event. You can find it in the meetings tab. There is no password to join the meeting, but there is a waiting room. So you will need to let people in!
Accessing the room as host and adding a co-host
Note that only one person can be the host, but if you have a colleague joining you, you are able to make them a co-host on the day. To do this:
- Hover over a user’s video.
- Click the more icon
. - Click Make Co-Host.
You will have host settings. This means you will have control.
The waiting room is set up automatically and people will be muted on entry.
How to get the party started
We have found that it takes a short while for people to get into the room. So do welcome people as they come into the room and keep an eye out for people joining the waiting room a little late.
You need to keep an eye on the waiting room at the start and throughout the meeting. You do this by going to the Participants tab and admitting the waiting people. 
When you are ready to start
Welcome everyone, introduce yourself and the theme of the social lounge. Please do expand on what you have been doing as part of the wider mindful drinking community and share your social handles/website or product details.
Please include this at the start
We are pleased to be part of the Mindful Drinking Festival, a collaborative event that brings together everyone interested in drinking more mindfully – individuals, drinks and brands. The event is organised by Club Soda and you can find out more about them on joinclubsoda.com.
If you are not getting emails about the rest of the festival programme then do sign up on mindfuldrinkingfestival.com to get daily updates on the events and agenda for the weekend.
And this at the end
That is it. Thank you for joining us today. This Social Lounge is part of the Club Soda Mindful Drinking Festival.
If you are not getting emails about the rest of the festival programme then do sign up on mindfuldrinkingfestival.com to get daily updates on the events and agenda for the weekend.
Rules of the meeting
Always worth outlining these! Please feel free to add your own.
– If you want to speak please use the ‘raise hand’ function in the participants button on the users panel. That way we can see easily who wants to speak.
– You will need to unmute yourself before you speak
– Please respect each individual’s personal experience, it may be different from yours, but it is just as valid. Holding space for each other to share is a really powerful act of kindness. So please listen without judgement.
– Racism, sexism and discrimination of any kind are not welcome here. You will be asked to leave or be removed from the room if you break this rule.
– Please keep what people here say confidential and respect each other’s privacy.
– If you want to ask questions and don’t want to do so in public, then you can message your question just to me in the chat panel.
Icebreaker?
If it is a small group you could even do an icebreaker and get people to introduce themselves. Here are some ideas:
– we have enabled polling – so ask a question about the session that will help you along the way
– what they have enjoyed at the Festival?
– ask where people are from
– or their favourite alcohol-free drinks
Introducing the theme
Then introduce your theme and start talking about it/do your demo.
Please don’t plan your introduction to take the whole session. The aim of social lounges is to get people talking and using your introduction as a catalyst for discussion.
Muting and unmuting
Everyone should be on mute at the start of the meeting – you need to remind them to unmute themselves if they want to talk. Do check they have muted again if you are finding there is lots of background noise!
Using Breakout rooms
If you have a large meeting and you want people to discuss a topic in small groups then feel free to use the breakout rooms. We have enabled these and you can see instructions here.
Using in-meeting chat
More on the technical aspects of this here
Zoom bombing and bad behaviour
Screen sharing and file sharing is disabled. This should stop zoom bombing. But if you see any sign of bad or illegal behaviour then do not hesitate to throw a person out.
If someone is just being disagreeable and combative then you may want to give them a warning to start with, or mute them or just put them in the waiting room for a time out.
You can control all of this by pressing on the participants setting.