We are facing some challenges in our lives right now. This is something no one could have planned for or foreseen. But how we succeed depends on how flexible we are in adopting changes required for a new way of life. We all hope that things will get back to normalcy sooner rather than later. And I personally am looking for the day when we all can get back together and share the cookies, brownies, and chocolates from Debbie and the Mackenzies. But until then we are looking for new ways of social interaction. 

Here is what SVW (and WBW) are doing to get back into the groove of sharing our passion, knowledge, and fun of wood turning. 

We have formed a task team with Bob Bley and Greg Peck as our leaders to do live interactive meetings using the Zoom platform. AAW also has proposed and discussed a similar format moving forward. There is a video on the AAW website that you all can watch to see the challenges and solutions available to go into a live interactive mode while sitting at the comfort of your home. You can find this video at:

Chapter Officer’s Toolkit – Resources for Remote Demonstrations

What we have done so far is have a small team of people do a couple of interactive test sessions to discuss and evaluate the feasibility of online meetings. It looks promising for a small gathering (7 people). We are still in the process of refining the process for larger gatherings. Our hope is that we can gain enough expertise to be able to guide all our members to become laptop/phone/iPad savvy in a short period of time from the lessons we learn in our test meetings. 

So please stay tuned for announcements from Greg and Bob on what is in the pipeline for the coming weeks. 

As part of this new challenge we will be using new jargons like sharing screen, spotlight, mute, un-mute, gallery view, etc. But that will all become second nature to you soon. 

On a totally unrelated subject, our search for a new treasurer has come to an end. We have found a new handsome and brainy guy as our new treasurer. Please welcome Jim Loney to the board of SVW and as our new treasurer. Given his strong finance background and cheerful nature we are in good hands.

~ Hari ~