Weekly message from John Lynch, Finance Director

I would be flying back from Spain this week having cycled across Andalucía  had the virus not put paid to that. So you will have to wait till next year to read my cycling blog of my travels. Thank goodness for that I hear you say.

Virtual meetings case studies

We have added another 3 case studies to the website of lessons learnt in organising remote meetings. Thank you to Thanet DC, Fareham BC and Lambeth BC for their views of using Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Live Events. See link here https://www.adso.co.uk/coronavirus-updates/.  It has been really interesting  to see all the variety of approaches taken with meetings and looking at the various clips of meetings posted on the website. Keep up the good work. We are also attracting interest from our Dutch colleagues and from Scotland and have this week been discussing our experiences with regard to remote meetings with the Scottish Improvement Service.

ADSO on Zoom

Speaking of meetings you may be interested to hear that the ADSO Board have a fortnightly catch up using Microsoft teams. However we have just purchased our own version of Zoom so will start using that from now on. We will also be using this for our AGM later in the year. Colleagues are also looking at how we might start using webinars to provide some short briefings to members. We will let you know when that is ready.

Regional news

Keeping to the remote meetings theme. I will be joining colleagues form the South East Region using Microsoft teams on the 19th June for a catch up as we haven’t met for some time.

As mentioned last week, we now have a new virtual region  covering combined, fire and rescue and travel authorities, plus anybody else who doesn’t come from a traditional local authority. We are calling it the ‘Themed and Combined Authorities” region. Trudy Bedford (Liverpool CA) and Liz Kerr (North Tyneside CA) are the joint representatives and they will shortly be making contact with their members in that region. In the coming months, we will be reviewing the content of our training courses and qualifications to ensure that those authorities are properly catered for.

Conference 2021

I have been busy looking remotely at various venues for our 2021 conference. I think we are now shortlisting 3 venues in Northampton, Coventry and Warwick and just waiting to visit them in person once lockdown allows. Will keep you posted on that.

ADSO Forum

Interesting posts on the forum include:

Annual Council Meetings
Educations Appeals
Hybrid Meetings
Member Training in a virtual world

Stay safe everyone.

John Lynch, Finance Director

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