Club News February 2021

Hugh Macdonald

Upgrades to the AV system at Moorabbin

Our Moorabbin headquarters hosted its first in-person monthly meeting since February 2020 on Wednesday 2 February, when the combined February monthly meeting and AGM was held. Given the success of the online monthly meetings over the previous six months, where attendances have been averaging about 100, it’s been clear that the online format is popular. Therefore while at the moment it isn’t possible to have more than about 20 members in attendance due to social distancing, going forward the club wants to be able to support as many members attending remotely as possible.

So over the weekend of January 23 and 24 2021, Chris Hayes, Sean Clarke and Rob Brown were instrumental in performing some upgrades to the AV system at Moorabbin to allow this to take place. Technically this involved adding a USB capture card to the Bio Box PC to enable it to output the video content at Moorabbin to the Zoom meeting and running some cabling in the ceiling above the Borrett Room and repositioning a video camera to provide an audience shot of Moorabbin for those members on Zoom to see.

This was all done successfully and the hybrid approach of the meeting on the night worked very well.

Happy Retirement to John Swale

The Annual General Meeting marked the end of John Swale’s time serving on the committee, which in this incarnation began in November 2016. There was an earlier period where John served as well. As a token of the club’s appreciation to John for all the work he has put in over nearly four and a half years, Malin Robertsson presented him with a gift.

The Room formerly known as the Internet Lounge

The Internet Lounge is soon to be known as just The Lounge. Thanks to a magnificent effort from Stephen Zuluaga, Aiden Kelly, Peter Boin, Aavon Fernando and other members, there are now windows looking out onto the atrium, multi-purpose benches that can be used for catch ups, projects or personal work. There is also pendant style power plugs for powering devices and tools, and plenty of network points as well. There is more to be done, but the progress so far is impressive.