The Teleconference.

.....The Pelican Regional Teleconference, as a process, turned out to be interesting from a number of aspects. I will tentatively call it a win.

.....I set things up to start at 6PM. At my end were myself, Cedric and Brighid. Like clockwork, Master Ralg, Angharad, Althaia, Mir, and Isolde joined into the conversation. The Teleconference was set up for an hour. I probably should have made it for 7PM, but 6PM was the cheaper rate. And it was an 'introductory' special, so I was somewhat limited on the time and length of Teleconference time I could have. Eduardo phoned in at about three minutes until seven as his calendar had set it in the wrong hour.

.....The Good:

.....The process of calling into the conference itself was easy and straight-forward. There was very little that could go wrong. You simply dialed a phone number and then enter a bridge number when called. You were automatically included into the conversation at that point. Even from the stand-point of the moderator the only additional function I had to do was type in an additional four digit PIN when prompted.

.....The conversation flowed rather easily. The group did a great job of not talking over each other or each other's points. Even when things became a little excitable people only bunched up a time or two. And even then people rapidly backed up, apologized and moved forward in an organized fashion.

.....The conversation was in real time. There were no delays caused by any one individual's typing speed. It was like we were in the same room even though we weren't.

.....Everyone loved the fact that they didn't have to travel anywhere to attend the conference.

.....The Not-So-Good:

.....Our phone set-up. We ended up having to use Cedric's cell phone as our speaker phone. It had a great microphone on it. You could be across the room, speaking at a normal level, and still be clearly heard. However, it had a scratchy speaker. There were several times where we had to decipher what another speaker was trying to say. The next time we do this, it'll be worth the time and effort to find a real speaker phone.

.....The input. There were only eight people initially on the call. That is really no more than we usually have at a Regional Level Meeting, in person or not. Part of that was probably the time, 6PM versus 7PM. But no one complained about that aspect until the phone call itself. We've tried both an online and a Teleconference now and neither one has generated any more additional input than meeting in person has.

.....The bottom line really is that the best way to hold a Regional Meeting is face-to-face. It is easy to hold and control a conversation. You can read body language and have a more direct conversation. You are not so limited on time, as in, you can power through an entire listing more easily in person.

.....The next Regional is scheduled for a Saturday in October. I think I'm going to push it to be a face-to-face, which probably means we'll have to hold it somewhere in the Seattle Metropolitan Area. I'm O.K. with that, especially on a Saturday where I'm not checking my watch every ten minutes because I'm thinking about that 4AM alarm for work the next morning.

.....We're supposed to decide on dates for our Regional Meetings in 2013. We might also at that time make a decision about which meeting(s) might be a Teleconference / Online. With that much advance warning we might be able to generate a larger attendance. Although considering that all of the 2012 meetings were scheduled in December of 2011, I'm not sure if that is a help or not.

.....Only thing we haven't really tried yet is a Regional E-Mail meeting. I have not been a big fan of the E-Mail meetings we've held on the Kingdom level. But if we, as a Region, agreed on a more specific protocol and set of criteria that must be met, we might try it. We could have the Regional Meeting be several days in length, going over the agenda section by section. Must ponder that one a bit more. AFTER SEPTEMBER CROWN, I'll put a proposal together. It could be something we try out at our Winter, 2013, meeting.

.....Still, all in all, I liked the Teleconference. Good conversation that happened easily. Even with the issues involved, I'm still going to call it a win.

.....Aaron / Arontius.