Zoom!

 

Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, a former corporate vice president for Cisco Webex. He left Cisco in April 2011 with 40 engineers to start a new company, originally named Saasbee, Inc. The company had trouble finding investors because many people thought the videotelephony market was already saturated In June 2011, the company raised $3 million of seed money from WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman, and venture capitalists Matt Ocko, TSVC, and Bill Tai.

In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City. In September 2012, Zoom launched a beta version that could host conferences with up to 15 video participants. In November 2012, the company signed Stanford University as its first customer. The service was launched in January 2013 after the company raised a $6 million Series A round from Qualcomm Ventures, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang, WebEx founder Subrah Iyar, and former Cisco SVP and General Counsel Dan Scheinman. Zoom launched version 1.0 of the program allowing the maximum number of participants per conference to be 25. By the end of its first month, Zoom had 400,000 users and by May 2013 it had 1 million users.

On April 18, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. After pricing at US$36 per share, the share price increased over 72% on the first day of trading. The company was valued at US$16 billion by the end of its first day of trading. Prior to the IPO, Dropbox invested $5 million in Zoom.

Yuan is the son of geology engineers. He was born and raised in Tai'an, Shandong Province, China. In 4th grade, Yuan collected construction scraps to recycle copper for cash.

 In 2019, Zoom became a public company via an initial public offering at which time Yuan became a billionaire. His wealth has increased during COVID-19 pandemic, as Zoom has benefited from the shift to online work and teaching. On September 1, 2020, Yuan's net worth was estimated to be US$16.4 billion, a figure 360% higher than his net worth at the beginning of the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

 Brian and I are both substitute teachers, and we have been monitoring classes remotely (via Zoom) since the school year finally started sometime in October.

COVID19 has caused dramatic changes in our society, since millions of people now have the ability to safely work from home. Our niece in Atlanta is a psychologist, and the vast majority of her clients are in Los Angeles.

The sports world is a lot different than it used to be.

NASCAR started its season later than normal, with NO fans in the stands. Professional horse racing also had a delayed start, which caused a major shuffling in the dates for “the big three” events of the Triple Crown.

Traditionally, the Masters golf tournament is held in April, but this year, it was held in November.

Eating in restaurants virtually stopped in April, but is now available in most states, but with “social distancing” seating.

The vast majority of churches have stopped having indoor service, and weddings are a lot different than they used to be.

A wedding reception held in Maine in early August led to an outbreak of the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 50 people and resulted in one death, according to health officials in the northeastern state.

The Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had launched an investigation into the August 7 event last Monday, after 24 individuals who had attended the wedding reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket tested positive for COVID-19. On Saturday, health officials said that 53 infections have now been linked to the event and one person has died, Maine's The Portland Press Herald reported. 

 

https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-reception-leads-53-coronavirus-infections-1-death-1527006

Tomorrow, our son and his fiancé will be tying the knot, and the likely venue will be at one of the botanical gardens in town, and it will be an outside event. The presiding official won’t be in the same location, and the entire wedding will take place on Zoom.

To quote Bob Dylan, the times they are changing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WD_ats6eE