Thursday evening, July 9, marked the Hawkins Squadron’s first venture into holding its regular meeting online, via Zoom. It can be fairly measured as a success. Attendance was about the same as at a regular, in-person dinner meeting, and the few small technical glitches were easily overcome. (Most of us participating don’t use Zoom often, or at all in a few cases.) Special kudos go to Adm. Jeff Kilgore, who hosted the meeting and helped us steer clear of a few potential pitfalls.
Our speaker for the program, Claudia Schinnie from the Seafood Safety Lab at Texas A&M University at Galveston, gave a great presentation that prompted a lot of interested follow-up questions from those attending – always a good sign.
Although we want to get back to holding traditional, in-person meetings of the Squadron, holding them over Zoom seems to be a solid, workable alternative. The more we do these, of course, the smoother they’ll go.
After the meeting, one member called and pointed out something that I hadn’t really considered. In a virtual meeting like this, the Squadron isn’t bound to either local speakers or the local membership as its audience. We should probably start thinking about both bringing together outside speakers and a wider, online audience to these events.
It warrants serious consideration, y’all.
Charles E. Hawkins Squadron 