For the last week or so, I’d been preparing for my first virtual membership meeting. I am the executive director of a regional trade association, and I report to a board of directors and a group of members. We traditionally have two in-person meetings each year, one in winter and one in summer.
I was in the in the process of finalizing a location for the summer meeting back when COVID hit. It quickly became apparent to me that we’d have to change our approach. I polled our membership and discovered that, unsurprisingly, not many people were keen on taking the risk to travel and gather.
So we changed our format to Zoom. It’s been on the calendar for a few months, but I think the fact that it was virtual kind of caused it to slide in my mind a little. Such that when I realized a little over a week ago that it was coming up fast, I got into a little bit of panic mode getting ready.
From a technological perspective, it was a little more complicated than most of the online stuff I do. I usually am doing presentations and just sharing my screen, but this meeting would be a mix of presentation and conversation, and my first time really having other people share screens and presentations too.
And from a content perspective, I had to put together a summary of what I’ve been doing in the past 6 months to adapt to the pandemic landscape and continue to get our message out.
When the day finally came, I was a little nervous, but generally feeling good. Erin was kind enough to help me with a little technology test to make sure I had the hang of all the screen sharing options and functions. That squared away, I got myself freshened up and decided I’d even dress it up a little. Yes, everyone is looping in from their home offices and such, but this is still my members and our big summer meeting, so I wanted to put a good face on.
I even shaved, but I did that the day before to avoid the inevitable cutting myself to ribbons risk, which happened way back in the early days of quarantine.
Thankfully, the meeting went really well. We had more attendees than I was expected, there were some good presentations and great discussions. I got a nice shout out from my board of directors, and was relieved to hear that there was enthusiasm and support behind my proposals.
It was a nice quick rush, and felt good to have all that behind me. Afterward, I’ll admit I was pretty darn tired and a bit sluggish for most of the afternoon. But I did eventually perk back up a little and made dinner.
It was a beautiful evening, so Erin and I had a nice dinner on the back patio. The kids played and had their dinner in the slide.
Henry actually pooped out kind of early, so I stayed outside and played a little baseball with Amelia. She hit 7 “home runs” (balls that go over our fence), so the bats were a blazin’ that night.
It was a nice way to end the day, and Amelia felt super proud of the performance she put on. She went back inside and rightfully bragged about her hitting prowess. I had a decent meeting, and that’s great, but Amelia is definitely the home run queen of the family.
