Steps To Moving Your Guild Online

Quilt Guilds can't meet in person and we really miss each other! With Spring meetings cancelled, we thought the world might be OK by Fall. We weren't worried about missing summer meetings, but planning must continue year round.

So, the first to go online were the Guild Boards. We tested two different methods for the boards. As time went on, however, we realized that Zoom met our needs. We really liked a format where we could both see and hear the participants. Because Zoom worked well for a wide range of devices, we chose Zoom for our Guild.

Next, we formed a "Zoom" exploratory committee to see what other Guilds were doing and how they were doing it. The Zoom committee met online and used those meetings as training sessions for ourselves. The committee then reported to the Guild that we should purchase a Zoom membership and take our Guild meetings online.

With over 300 members, how were we going to make this happen? The Zoom committee decided on the following:

• The Zoom committee members would offer educational sessions for different devices. Five teachers volunteered. Training sessions were offered on PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, tablet, Chromebook, and Kindle Fire. This table shows the number who asked for training on each device. Some people had multiple devices or wanted training to help others.
  42 - Windows desktop/laptop
  12 - Mac desktop/laptop
  1 - Chromebook
  37 - iPad
  25 - iPhone
  14 - Android tablet
  14 - Android phone
  2 - Kindle Fire
• The Guild decided to allow our affiliated Bees to use our Zoom account to conduct Bee meetings. A few Bees started to experiment right away!
• At the time of our next regular monthly meeting, we held a "meet and greet" on Zoom where members could practice signing into a meeting, using mute/unmute, and raising their hand.

The results were amazing! People as far away as Alaska were successful in attending the meetings. Members who thought that they could never master the technology had no problem at all! We had homebound members who were able to attend a meeting for the first time in a long time. We also gained members from other parts of the United States who had family connections to our Guild.

There is so much help online! Take advantage of the videos, Zoom training sessions, and blogs. My advice to other Guilds would be to jump in and "just do it."