….from the Chair (March 2014)

In December 2013, CER had its first ever online assembly. Let’s see how it went.

Summary
Someone described the online meeting as follows. I’ve referred to this text before, and I still think that it is marvelous:

“it was a great success and I applaud the Committee and the Region for taking the brave step to give it a try. Although there are elements of face-to-face meetings that are lost in an online format, the benefits of much greater accessibility across the Fellowship and the significant savings of Seventh Tradition funds seem like fair trade-offs.” 

Positive: Nobody was excluded
Maybe because I work in IT, I expected lots of people with technical difficulties. I was surprised that we practically had no difficulties at all. More importantly: Nobody got excluded. Funnily enough, the only moments that we did have difficulties, was during voting: Someone’s computer crashed, and someone else lost her Internet connection. In both cases, we postponed voting until they joined again.

Positive: Easy and relaxed
Several people (including me) were surprised how easy most of the meeting was. I especially noticed this on Saturday when most of this day was devoted to reporting, which means long stretches of listening. Apparently, that is a whole lot easier done from home than from a strange place somewhere in Europe after a day of travel. As some people observed, a certain kind of negative energy that seems to develop during a face-to-face meeting doesn’t seem to happen during an online meeting. Someone mentioned that less ego seemed to be involved as well. This was probably what struck me most. I had not expected that an online meeting would be better than a face-to-face meeting in any aspect other than money and time.  By the way, the proof of this will be at the March 2014 assembly: During this meeting we traditionally discuss the Conference Questions, which again involves long stretches of time with mostly one-way communication.  

Positive: Democratic and flexible
One of the promises of online meetings, is that folks can join that would otherwise be excluded. That was definitely the case.  What was new to me, however, was that at least two of our Officers participated in the meeting from an entirely different continent.  

Room for improvement: Interaction
On Sunday, the meeting got more dynamic, with more interaction from various participants. That didn’t go as smoothly as we would have liked. For example, when someone else was Presenter (‘having the ball’) I couldn’t see anymore who raised their hands. However, some ideas for improvement are being developed.

 Just different: Elections
WebEx provides for secret elections. We realized that we couldn’t be sure that only people voted that were eligible to do so. Additionally, we realized that candidates could see the outcomes of an election, which traditionally isn’t the case.  After discussing this with some folks, including the Steering Committee, I have the impression that this isn’t good or bad, it’s just different, and it will take some more practice before we get used to it.  

In closing
In closing I want to say that I think we did an excellent job. We were all ready and prepared. We had an effective and democratic meeting, and we saved some € 6,500 of hotel and traveling fees along the way.  I look forward to meeting again in March.

 Jeroen S.

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