July has been an interesting month. The weather is finally acting like summer
(I’m not sure if that’s good or bad). Our Wednesday lunch meetings have been on Zoom. The meeting on July 8 was a very good group discussion about how to handle our usual fundraising events this year. There were a lot of good ideas presented, but we know that this will be a very difficult year for fundraising. If you want to see a very good summary of what was discussed, please see John Golden’s summary on the website (July 8 meeting):
https://belfastrotary.org/Stories/july-8-2020-meeting.
For our Zoom meetings, we are now breaking up into smaller groups for a few minutes each meeting. This gives folks a chance to visit and chat in a more intimate setting. As I mentioned, for those who miss these meetings there are excellent summaries of each meeting on the website (belfastrotary.org). Starting this month, we will be doing “hybrid” meetings. Whoever wants to can attend an in-person meeting at the Shrine Club. Whoever is more comfortable attending remotely can continue attending on Zoom. I will be leading the meeting on Zoom, and the Zoom meeting will be projected at the Shrine Club so everyone can see it in real time. At the Shrine Club we will have proper safety precautions, such as social distancing (which may limit the number of attendees) and wearing of masks. Initially it will be bring-your-own-lunch, but that may change in the future. Thanks to Duke for spearheading this. And please be respectful of people’s decisions; we all have our comfort levels for ourselves.
As part of facilitating the hybrid meeting, we will be installing WiFi there. This is a long overdue upgrade to the Shrine Club, which will allow attendees to connect to the web, may allow Jill to do some things online there, and will enable us to project the Zoom meeting during the Shrine Club meeting.
I have formed a Public Relations and Communications Committee to help with (obviously) public relations and internal club communications. Some of the other Rotary clubs in the area do a good job at this and appear regularly in the local media. Meanwhile in Belfast, many in our community don’t really know who we are or what we do. This committee will focus on internal club communications (such as the Nairator), PR (such as local news media and social media), and reaching out to the community and especially to potential new members. There will be some synergy between these, such as stories in the Nairator being used as outreach PR. Many of us may have interesting stories, events, or other ideas for items that can be used, so please forward any ideas to Duke, who will be the central point of contact for this committee.
This will be an exciting month as we experiment with hybrid meetings. Everyone please stay safe and enjoy summer in Maine.
Yours in friendship and service,
Richard
