Continuing Rotary Fellowship

Continuing Rotary Fellowship – a guide for Clubs in District 1020

In these difficult times, all Clubs in District 1020 have now suspended Club Meetings for the foreseeable future. Rotary Events (local, national and international) have been cancelled or postponed – the latest casualty is the RI Convention, scheduled to take place in Honolulu in June.

For an organisation whose central tenets are Service and Fellowship, these are difficult times. I am sure that many Club members are thinking of ways that they can continue to provide Service to those less fortunate than themselves, although it is difficult to provide direct hands-on service at a time when increasing “self-isolation” is being advocated.

But there are certainly ways of continuing Fellowship, especially between members of one or more Rotary Clubs. I have no desire to “teach my grandmother to suck eggs”, as I have little doubt that some of you are well aware of how to keep in touch with each other. But, for those who are wondering how best to do this, here are a few ideas and practical suggestions.

1. Form a WhatsApp group for some or all of your members. Most, if not all, members, possess a mobile phone – some even use one! Installation of WhatsApp is free, easy and quick. Anyone with WhatsApp installed can form a group, who can then keep in touch with each other by free messaging (messages are automatically sent to all group members at the same time).
   
2. Free phone conferencing. Click on https://www.freeconferencecall.com/global/gb for full details. I have no direct experience of this myself, but our Public Image Team Leader, Callan Dick, does and I am reproducing here what he has told me about it:
   
   “Another option worth mentioning is freeconferencecall.com, which as the name suggests, is free phone conferencing. Many Rotarians do not feel comfortable trying to videoconference or don’t have the equipment, but this allows a meeting using their normal phone. Only the host needs an account, there is a free (0330) number participants phone, then they are asked to put in the six-digit access code for that meeting and that’s all there is to it. The access code is actually unique for the account holder, i.e. the host, so it’s the same every time for that host, simplifying things again.
   I can’t remember if there were any issues with more than one person speaking at once, but we used it successfully for some Aberdeen conference meetings with the conference committee in various locations plus the venue.
   
   There are probably other similar offerings, but this worked for me and is a possibility for the less tech-savvy to get together as a group over the phone.”
   
3. Use of Zoom for videoconferencing. Rotary District 1020 has, for some time, possessed a Zoom licence: this was purchased initially to trial the possibility of delegates attending meetings of District Council by video link. Zoom has also been used successfully by the e-Club of Southern Scotland, which meets on-line by Zoom every week, and, more recently, by members of the District Continuity Group (the “inner circle” of District: DG, DGE, DGN. DGNN, IPDG, District Treasurer and District Secretary), who have held several meetings using this method. In response to the current crisis, we have now purchased a further two licences, with the aim of allowing any Club in the District to hold a meeting (of its membership, Club Council, a Club Committee or whatever) by Zoom, should it wish to do so.

There is no doubt in my mind that the ability to see who is talking to you, or to whom you are talking, enhances the enjoyment of a meeting considerably. Additionally, the occasional impromptu on-screen appearance of a spouse, a child (or grandchild!), a pet, a bottle of beer or a gin and tonic, brings such meetings to life!

Attending a meeting on Zoom is very straightforward, so long as one has access to the internet via a device that has audio and video facilities (i.e. most modern laptops, iPads, etc). A separate docx File “Getting started with Zoom videoconferencing”), being e-mailed to you with this one, describes the process for potential attendees.

If anyone wishes to set up a Zoom meeting, I would ask that you contact me a few days in advance, giving me details of what the meeting is and when you wish to hold it: for instance, Rotary Club of Anytown, Meeting of Club Council, Monday 30th March at 7pm. I will then set up the meeting and e-mail you full instructions, principally a formal “invitation” to the meeting, which you can in turn e-mail to all intended participants. All they have to do is to “log on” to join the meeting at the scheduled time – what could be simpler?

I am anticipating that it will almost always be possible for Clubs to schedule Zoom meetings whenever they wish to do so; the only caveat in this is that it is not possible for a single account-holder to host two meetings at the same time; as we now have three accounts, each with a different account-holder’s name attached to it, this means that we can arrange for three (but no more than three) meetings in the District to be held simultaneously. I doubt whether demand will be so great that I will have to turn anyone down, but we shall see.

If all this sounds a bit daunting, please don’t be put off: the process is actually a lot easier than a description suggests!

So, why not give it a try? I am aware that some Clubs have experience of other videoconferencing systems, but this is the one of which we, as a District team, and I have most experience. I am waiting for your e-mails to flood in and will do my best to help you – after all, I’m neither going anywhere nor doing anything else!