This week we had the pleasure of meeting our District Governor Nominee, Jim Ferguson and then hearing a recap by our former past president Peter DeNooy of the presentation on Best Practices for E-Clubs which was recently given at the Rotary International Conference in Toronto. Both Jim and Peter are members of the Rotary E-Club of Canada One. The members of this club are from all over the world and most of them are not able to meet the attendance requirements of a local club due to physical limitations, work commitments or extensive travel abroad. It gives them an opportunity to still be part of the Rotary family and meet the attendance requirements on their own time table. It also provides an opportunity for the fellowship that is an essential part of every Rotary club.
The E-club has weekly web-based coffee chats that can be attended wearing whatever, from their living rooms, from anywhere in the world. In addition it also presents monthly speakers, whose presentations can be viewed from anywhere in the world. Their club decided to contact other E-Clubs to try and come up with the best type of overall platform that could be used by E-Clubs. The full presentation can be viewed on their club’s youtube channel.
Peter said that their club had decided to try to improve their club’s practices by looking at how other clubs did things. They subsequently looked at the websites of three hundred other clubs and sent out e-mails asking for more information. They then contacted seventy of the clubs that responded for further information and compiled their findings. Once they had compiled their findings they thought that maybe other clubs might be interested in them and decided to make it into a presentation at the Rotary International Convention that was held in Toronto this year. The presentation, organised and hosted by Peter DeNooy, was ninety minutes long and included participation from ten different E-Clubs giving both live and virtual presentations on their various types of E-Clubs. The presentations covered the things that they have personally found that worked best for their clubs. A lot of the ideas presented can easily be applied to regular rotary clubs as well. There were a few technical glitches that had to be overcome prior to the presentation, but it went over without a hitch and was enjoyed by the two hundred and sixty some attendees. Their presentation was made on Monday afternoon, the first day of the conference and Peter was glad to then be able to enjoy the remainder of the conference worry free.
The presentation was recorded using Zoom software and then converted to a presentation that was uploaded to their club’s youtube channel where it can be easily viewed by anyone with a computer.
photos curtesy of Heather de Kok
