Whether you were laid off, sent home on reduced pay, needed to work harder or change what you do, we have all experienced major change during the COVID virus.
Personally, my biggest challenge was to take on the Technical Director role for Toastmasters D91 and use my understanding of Webinars, Zoom and TV Production software to turn a physical conference into a virtual one.
- 11 Speaker Presentations
- District Elections
- 4 Speaker Competitions
- Virtual Auditiruem for people to watch over 2.5 days.
- Adding Slides, lower thirds and other graphics (including the now-famous timer lights)
- Deconstruction and reconstruction of a website set up for physical booking to an online booking system with the ability to show the recordings afterwards.
This took around 50% of my total working time for over 2 months. A commitment not possible without the lockdown, but then, not needed except for the lockdown.
Now, in early June, we are looking at the future at last. Looking for a plan on how to continue as a business after lockdown. What new support and services will companies coming out of lockdown need.
We made the decision to stop billing customers for monthly fees and will start again in September, that means we have supported customers for free for 4 months. It is true that our workload dropped from many as they did less business and yet some continued as before and even upped their game.
We have had customers take on the challenge of upgrading their websites and other content. Jobs that were always pushed to the back of the pile have been addressed. People have also been taking on extra training in new or more advanced skills.
As we come back from lockdown, it will be interesting to see what happens. I am not taking any bets on any of them.
We will honour all existing contracts as before, although we are open to see a change in priorities and focus. However, I think the attitude of people will have changed, but how long it lasts in some is up to debate.
As with all big changes, there will be winners and losers, but we still have the same basic needs and skills and it is how we use them from here that matters.
Behind the scenes
We have invested a great deal of time and technology into our online presentation skills and will move more of our content into Podcasts and Videos. The blogs will be a shortened version of the content and a source to the references used in the other content.
Still Time
There are going to be a good few more months for this post-COVID world to play out new normality. Although I am not happy with the term post-COVID d because it is still around and influencing almost everything we do. (I like that my spellchecker suggests from covid to VOID) The aforementioned Toastmasters are now speaking clubs online.
