I hosted my first remote meet-up. Here’s what happened.
I had had a meet-up on the calendar for over a month. Then.. well… the circumstances changed. Empower Collective meet-ups are all about bringing people together, yet here we are in a world where there are government mandates to stay home. I rescheduled, pushing it out two weeks in hopes that we would be able to go about our business. I’m sure you did the same with your own plans and can guess how that went. We were one week out and I had to make a decision. Do I cancel? I can’t have everyone over to my house as we typically do, but I also can’t let these circumstances get in the way of the importance of what we do. Our goals don’t stop simply because we’re in our homes. So, the decision was made: I’ll host the meet-up remotely.
First, for the logistics:
Still held on a Sunday morning at 10:30 am. This timing worked just as well as it always does.
Followed the same format I typically do (download the guide to hosting meet-ups for a sample agenda)
I decided to host the meet-up via Facebook Messenger.
The pros: Because I set up my event invites for every meet-up via Facebook, I figured this would be the easiest. I also like that Facebook shows many faces at once rather than flip-flopping based on who is talking. Facebook Messenger calls also allow screen sharing.
The cons: It wasn’t as simple to call a group chat as I thought, so it took a few minutes and I ended up calling one person and then individually adding everyone else to the call. In addition, although I had tested it prior, when I went to share my screen and show the video I had chosen to kick off the discussion, nobody could view my screen so I ended up not being able to share the video as intended.
Other options: Facetime, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Go-To-Meeting
We did experience the natural hiccups of video calls. Lags, speaking over each other, glitches when the wifi momentarily cuts out, “can you hear me?” “you’re muted,” “sorry, go ahead.” These are minor bumps and simply the reality of being remote. For those of us working from home currently, we’re experiencing these in meetings so often that it’s become normal.
The verdict? It went really well and I would absolutely do it again. Sure, you can’t beat the benefits of connecting with people face-to-face, but given the circumstances, it was a piece of cake and resulted in a really successful meet-up.
I expected this meet-up to be significantly shorter because, due to the setting, I expected it would be a less natural conversation, plus we wouldn’t have as much of the chit-chat time as people arrived and as they trickled out before and after our main discussion. In fact, I was worried it would be too short and wouldn’t be valuable or feel significant. Luckily, I was wrong. Our meeting went for about 50 minutes (my meet-ups are typically an hour and a half start-to-finish). We were able to spend some time at the beginning and before logging off to simply connect and check in with one another, which nicely bookended what ended up being a perfectly rich discussion.
What was really cool about the virtual meet-up was that we were able to bring people from five different cities together. Typically, it’s only those who happen to be in town who are able to make it to any given meet-up, but this time it was different. Friends of mine who had been wanting to see what Empower Collective meet-ups were all about but live in different states were finally able to join us and participate. Bringing women together, despite geography, created a phenomenal sense of community. In a time when we’re hungry for human connection, it brought a powerful tone to the discussion.
Just like normal meet-ups, it was an opportunity to connect in a meaningful way. Keep in mind, people are in a different mindset. They are hungry for normalcy and human connection. It ended up being a breath of fresh air and took me back to what meet-ups are really about – connecting with other women, removing barriers, and lifting each other up.