Rotarians Zooming in on clubs
ZOOM – it is a word many of us had never heard of before COVID-19, but what a difference it has made to lives, clubs and businesses operating in isolation.
For Rotary Club members it has literally opened up the world – something Rotary Club of Burleigh Heads immediate past president Allan Barnett is taking full advantage of.
On the morning we spoke to him, he had already “attended” a meeting in Hawaii and a “Happy Hour club in The States, so while they were having drinks I was having breakfast”.
Essentially, Zoom is cloudbased video conferencing – the screen, as someone helpfully pointed out, resembling The Brady Bunch title screen.
With most Rotary clubs having adopted Zoom to keep members connected and meetings going, a spreadsheet of clubs was created with meeting times and links shared on Google Drive.
That allows any Rotary member to join meetings anywhere in the world – time zones permitting.
The latter is a hurdle Allan overcame by creating his own spreadsheet noting what overseas times coincided with “reasonable” times in Queensland.
However, he admits it has necessitated some early morning starts – about 4am in some cases – so just as well “you don’t have to get dressed up for it because you’re not going out anywhere.”
Allan said the Hawaiian club was regularly run as an online or “E-club”, something some Rotary clubs have developed over more than a decade to increase access and attendances.
“What surprised me was that club has members from all over the place – Russia, Japan, mainland USA, the UK, Greece, France, Shanghai, as well as Hawaii,” he said.
Over the past three weeks, Allan said he had “visited clubs” in the UK, Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, India, Trinidad and Tobago, Sarawak, the Cayman and Caicos islands, across mainland USA and now Hawaii.
In the process, he has made a good friend from a US club in Casper Wyoming, who was doing similar “drop-ins”.
The pair exchanged contact details after repeatedly finding themselves in the same meetings, and Michael Howe has since been guest speaker at a Burleigh Heads meeting.
To find out more, go to @burlieghheadsrotary1 on Facebook, call 0438 225 820, or for Rotarians from other clubs, join a Zoom meeting https:// us04web.zoom.us/j/495713560.