Our Club conducted our first-ever online meeting on Zoom on April 9. This is in part a response to government’s social distancing guidelines and recommendations on avoiding large group meetings, and in part a response to Rotary International’s recommendation on moving all physical meetings to online platforms.
It turns out that many of our members are already quite familiar with the platform, and most had no issues logging on and joining the meeting. After the meeting room opened at noon, members started trickling in. Some arrived early to make sure that audio and video issues were addressed before the official start of the meeting at 1pm. Others just joined early to chat, just like our fellowship time before our physical lunch meetings. The Zoom meeting followed our usual agenda items, with members taking turns to report items of which they are in charge and/or managing. President Mark reported on the statuses of various District and Club events. Past President Grace explained and reported on the treatment of Annual Dinner Gathering Fund already received from members. Past President Webster explained the mechanics of Amity’s Walk for Living Water 2020, and reported that he already started to engage our youth to participate. Rotarian Kelvin gave timely insights on the pandemic and shared with members how his faculty at HKU and his team in particular are experimenting on a special coating that can be applied to surfaces to reduce the survival rates of bacteria and viruses.