Impressions of our first online Google Meet test

 On the advice of Raymond Wood of the Cycling Without Age Society in Sidney, BC I applied for a free Google Workspace suite for Non-Profits (almost $200 pa value from Google) so that we could start centralizing many of the functions, documents, folders and archives for our chapter.

As part of that I wanted to experiment with their conferencing platform, Google Meet, as the Zoom program I was familiar with had a 40min time limit for free usage while GM gave us an hour.  However, unlike Zoom, the meeting could not be recorded (or I may have been using the wrong profile) and what was supposed to be a test meet ended up being almost 90min!  GM unceremoniously cut us off after an hour and fortunately I had contact information for all the attendees to send out a new meeting code.  With Zoom, it is easier to log back into a meeting by using the same original code for another 40 min.

When I opened up the Meeting at 10am, Kris (Hammel), Ruth (Lima) and Anita (Acevedo) were waiting for me.  I tested out the screen sharing mode which seemed to work well and shared some pilot orientation power points that I had come across online.  Burlington/Hamilton CWA sent me their ppt file which I scrolled through quickly to give a feel of their presentation and organizational structure.  I found a Zoom meeting video upload for BikeAAA sponsored chapter in Annapolis, MD on YouTube (which you can view on their page here).  They are in the same position as we are preparing for their first cycling season this year.  

I am hoping to have our pilot orientation online this month so that we can schedule some actual training sessions early next month once this snow has melted and spring is in the air.  The plan is to do trial runs with staff and volunteers on the trails between mid April and mid May and start our season in the second half of May.

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