Opportunities for online presentations
As one of the founders, I found joy when a member, who changed his jobs a few weeks earlier and would be moving to the southern part of Osaka, mentioned that his online speech at this meeting served as a great opportunity for him to practice online speaking.
Shin-Osaka Leaders started in October 2019, when every meeting was physical. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, no clubs allowed online attendance. With the pandemic, everything turned online. No club was meeting in person. We were lucky because our venue, KOKO PLAZA, was far more flexible in letting us use the rooms when the infection situation got better even just slightly. We started our hybrid meetings.
At that time, expectations were the COVID pandemic would cease before long and everything would go back to where it was. Despite the expectations, we decided during one of our meetings to keep our hybrid meetings because we thought the need for online presentation skills would never be obsolete. We thought that companies and other organizations would never give up the online meeting option as a way to save money. Thus, we would always need to keep our online presentation skills intact. That is why we have kept our hybrid meetings while some neighboring Toastmasters clubs turned fully physical. Now that some members have acquired some expertise in making online presentations, we can provide insightful feedback.
Still, we are not fully online. More people attend our meetings at the venue than online (with some exceptions of those living in distant places). This means we provide our members living close enough to the venue with opportunities to practice online and physical presentations.
Thanks to members who come to the venue quite early to set up the equipment, we can hold our hybrid meetings to benefit both members in distant places and members wishing to practice online and physical speeches depending on the purposes and occasions.
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