Posted by Mary Liu on May 13, 2020
Rotary Connects the World and in today’s new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place order, luckily, we have many online choices to stay connected with our members. One of the more popular choices is Zoom. Zoom provides video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars. Zoom isn’t new. It’s been around since 2011, and I’ve been using it since 2013. It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that Zoom propelled to become one of the most popular platforms for virtual meetings mainly due to its free option to get started and ease of use. 
 
The Rotary Club of San Francisco was one of the first clubs to adopt Zoom to host weekly virtual e-Meetings. Thank you to our amazing and tech savvy Club Secretary, Dora Dye, who helped set up the virtual meetings. Dora also offered her services to provide one-on-one support to help tech-challenged members get started using Zoom.  
 
In addition to our weekly virtual e-Meetings, Dan Joraanstad, Bob Hermann, Terry Pickering, and I share co-hosting duties for the Club’s Social Gathering every Sunday at 5:00 PM. All are welcome to join in this informal social get together.
 
Board meetings, Club Committees, Membership Educational Series, Vocational Business Networking events, and even the Rotary International Convention are now meeting virtually via Zoom. There are so many ways for you, the member, to stay connected to our Rotary community.

To get started or to expand on the advance functions that Zoom offers, here is a link to access Zoom video trainings. 
 
I am a hands-on learner and the way that I learned how to use Zoom was to have Zoom on my laptop and then watch the Zoom training videos on my cell phone. That way, I could follow along with the video and poke around the Zoom platform at the same time. If you have any questions about Zoom or need help to get started, feel free to reach out to me for support. Happy Zooming!