During the pandemic the WGCG employed Zoom to keep our education program going to members and friends. As restrictions eased the management committee were agreed to continue to employ Zoom to maintain links with our large following, at the same time as restarting our talks programme in person. In order to do this we had to change venues to Kenilworth Methodist Church (KMC). We had a degree of success with these hybrid talks but also a number of technical challenges, from which we learned a lot. KMC was not an ideal location and so we have reverted back to St Francis for our 2021-22 talks season. In order to keep the hybrid talks going we will be experimenting with mobile phone technology to achieve this goal.
One of our learning’s was not to interrupt the speaker to sort out technical issues as it has a number of ramifications. We will do everything we can to ensure our online audience get to enjoy the talks, but there will be a risk that if we have technical problems during the talk then they may miss part or all of the talk. The management committee are committed to being inclusive, serving our members and friends wherever they may be. Until we become more experienced using this technology we encourage attending talks in person if at all possible.