Does your chapter offer members the option to attend chapter meetings remotely?

[jinxpuppy]

Can your chapter members attend your meetings remotely?

I want the option to allow members to attend chapter meetings remotely, but found resistance.

What are the reasons for not making the meeting available for remote attendees.

The reason I am given is that if members are allowed to attend remotely, the in person attendance will drop.

I do not agree because in my opinion, allowing members to attend remotely will increase total attendance and allow members that cannot attend in person the opportunity participate.

Please share your experiences and opinions.

Thanks,

Niloufer Tamboly, CISSP

MembershipChair

(ISC)2 New Jersey Chapter

[rslade]

> jinxpuppy (Viewer II) posted a new topic in Chapters on 07-17-2018 02:30 PM in

> Can your chapter members attend your meetings remotely?

We've made (almost) all of our meetings remotely available for a least five years
now.  (Actually, it goes back farther than that, since we experimented for some
years doing teleconferences, so that remote sites could use the slides (sent ahead of
time) and listen to the presentations.)

>   I want the
> option to allow members to attend chapter meetings remotely, but found
> resistance. What are the reasons for not making the meeting available for remote
> attendees. The reason I am given is that if members are allowed to attend
> remotely, the in person attendance will drop.

We may be a bit of a special case.  The Vancouver Chapter
( http://www.infosecbc.org/ ) tries to make our meetings available to people and
groups in Victoria, Prince George, and, soon, Kelowna.  (And there are even a few
in Seattle.)  They wouldn't be able to attend our meetings in person anyway.  (Or,
it would be very difficult.)

However, some of our members find it useful to be able to attend meetings
remotely when they are travelling or ill.

We haven't seen any drop off in in-person attendance.  There are all kinds of
extra benefits to attending in person.  (We always have a fair amount of
"networking" time at meetings.)

> I do not agree because in my
> opinion, allowing members to attend remotely will increase total attendance and
> allow members that cannot attend in person the opportunity participate. Please
> share your experiences and opinions.

We've also been able to build an archive of the video recordings of the meetings.

Being a security group, we've always had a concern for confidentiality, particularly
for presentations or discussions where company issues may arise.  I said we
broadcast almost all of our meetings: our policy has been that the decision to
record and broadcast is left to the presenter.

If you want more details, you can drop a line to rslade@gmail.com,
and I can put you in touch with the person in charge of our video team.

[jinxpuppy]

@rslade thanks for your prompt reply.

Like you I believe in leveraging and expanding the area we serve.

Will reach out to you.

[CraginS]

The local Northern Virginia chapters of ISSA, INCOSE, IEEE SIGs,and ASQ have all supported remote attendance for several years and all of them continue to have robust attendance in person as well as engaged remote attendees. I suggest you dive into remote attendance support with enthusiasm.

One aspect that has worked well for these chapters is to set up remote-connected group locations such as on a university campus or cooperating sponsor company location, so the remote attendees can be an a group session, not simply all connecting individually from home or office. 

Note that the strong attendance at these chapter meetings is likely due to a strong program series with relevant topics and engaging speakers and panels at each meeting.