Hello Area 46! The Hybrid Events Production was very productive and (I believe) effective in serving the Area for its first assembly of the 2026-2027 service rotation in Silver City! It was a pleasure to visit the town and things went smoothly, a few hiccups aside. We did have issues with the coverage of the WiFi at the school, which used a system that intentionally reduced bandwidth when school was not in session. That didn’t help, but with quick acting support from the school and our hosting committee, we were able to increase the internet speed such that almost no one noticed it was a problem. However, the school also has a WiFi coverage drop off right at the edge of the school’s physical building boundary and we were sitting right along that wall in the cafeteria, making the WiFi virtually unavailable to our main laptops up by the stage.
So, we learned a lot, including that we can operate several of our laptops over cell phone personal hotspots, if necessary. It’s just that the cell phone must stay by the laptop using it and not wander off with its owner! (Inside joke because this happened at the assembly and we lost online audio for a bit – my apologies for that).
I appreciate everyone’s patience as we all performed our best at the first assembly doing this work (for some of us), along with veteran helpers that are now “the team” for supporting these hybrid events. Many thanks to our online Zoom hosts, the in-person Zoom Helpers in the breakout rooms: you guys and gals rocked!!
Speaking of which, we could really REALLY use some service help in-person for the events. And we got a new person, fingers crossed! At the Assembly, I talked about this in our committee meeting and highlighted it again in my report on Sunday. The committee is planning an in-person training session for us to train up any new volunteers, so be on the lookout for when that will happen. If you are interested in helping us help, a service to those in service, please stop by our monthly Zoom meeting! It’s the 3rd Tuesday of the month on Zoom, link is on the Events calendar. Thank you so much!
In Love and Service,
Jon N.