At our August board meeting, we worked through several topics that require immediate actions and adjustments from our board and members.
Three key updates:
- Temporary Lunch Location Update
- Masking-up for Lunch Meetings
- Hybrid Meetings Suspended
At the August board meeting, we discussed our temporary meeting location Life’s Kitchen versus our ability to return to the Stonehouse or another downtown venue in the near future. The Stonehouse is not able to commit at this time for either September or October. We also have not yet been able to secure a different downtown venue (such as The Riverside). We are beginning to expand our search beyond the Stonehouse and the Riverside but are unlikely to have an alternative venue in the short term. We also don’t yet know the implications that the resurgence of COVID and the Delta Variant will have on meeting venues. Given all this, we anticipate continuing at Life’s Kitchen at least through the month of October as we look for downtown venues and track the evolution of COVID into fall.
Speaking of the Delta Variant, the board decided to require masks during our luncheons beginning August 17th to keep each other safe. As stewards of fighting disease (https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes/fighting-disease) we feel this is a necessary requirement to continue to meet in-person. I have asked the staff at Life’s Kitchen to adjust the seating arrangement to accommodate social distancing. Masks may be removed while you are eating/drinking at your table. We all hope this requirement is a temporary necessity.
We also evaluated the continuation of offering virtual attendees to participate remotely. After a month of trying to enable this meeting model at our temporary location at Life’s Kitchen, our conclusion is that the Remote Participant experience is quite poor. Additionally, trying to provide and manage the Zoom experience as well as the live meeting has been a drain on both the President and the President Elect. This has become a significant distraction to the overall meeting and hospitality to our speaker and guests. Finally, we have had very few people participating virtually. As such, we are planning to take a hiatus from offering the Zoom Meeting option through the end of October. If COVID requires the club to pivot to an all-virtual format again, we will resume using Zoom to bring us together.
We appreciate that our temporary location is not ideally located for some of our members. And that not offering a virtual alternative will make your regular participation more challenging. We hope that our new emphasis on monthly fellowship gatherings (3rd Wednesday in the evening – and outside) and our twice monthly service projects (1st Tuesday Lunch and 1st Saturday Morning Greenbelt Clean-up – also outside) will give opportunities to gather with your fellow club members.
Our club’s tenacity and perseverance will pull us through these challenging times. Thank you for all you to do as Boise Metro Rotarians and let’s keep on keeping on.
Shiloh Shaver
President