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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”” text_color=””]T[/fusion_dropcap]aking advantage of all of Zoom’s enhanced features – and using them to create 20 Zoom presentations every month – isn’t easy.
Kirby Davis, Membership Services Associate at the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches in Florida, however, is on top of her Zoom game, and is using the platform to expand the Chamber’s geographic reach while increasing its membership.
Check out how she does it, and feel free to comment below with any questions and I’ll pass them along to Kirby.
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You can watch the video interview above with or without subtitles, or read this transcript:
CHUCK: Hello there. Chuck Moran here. I am the creator of Online Video Mastery™, and I’m fortunate enough today to be joined by Kirby Davis. And Kirby I think of as the Zoom Manager Extraordinaire for a major Chamber in the Florida area, the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches. So , Kirby has been kind enough to sit in with me today to talk a little bit about her Chamber and how they’re using Zoom to support their members. So, Kirby, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
KIRBY: Well, thank you so much for having me and I am flattered by all of the kind words that you have said to me. I am Kirby Davis, like you said. My actual role at the Chamber is the Membership Services Associate. I am actually fairly new with the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches. I have been here only seven months. So two months in … a pandemic happened. I started this job thinking I was going to be doing one job. Boy, was I wrong! That was far from the truth, but I’m happy about it. I have grown so much, learned so much, so it has all worked out for the best. And for one Zoom saved my career. I have never worked harder in my life because of Zoom.
CHUCK: Job security, right? That’s really great. So what would your job normally have been, had you been able to stick to what you were hired to do?
KIRBY: So my job … I get kind of the fun job. I get to work with the committees that we have. So I help with the Health and Human Services Committee, our Science and Technology Committee just to name a few. Those kind of give some of our members some speaking opportunities to come and great networking opportunities for people to get together, have some lunch, have some breakfast, give out some business cards and listen to somebody explain their business and what they do. And again, just a great networking opportunity. And then when a new business comes into the Chamber, we offer a ribbon cutting, which is always really fun. So people throw parties and I come with giant scissors and really pretty red ribbon with our Chamber logo. And we take a nice fun picture and we do free marketing with it, and we send it to you and we post it a bunch places. And so I get to do a lot of fun stuff, and that’s, that’s just kind of the icing on the cake to my job. And then I do lots of paperwork and stuff with the membership.
CHUCK: Okay. Gotcha. So how long were you doing in person ribbon cuttings and that kind of thing before COVID?
KIRBY: Two months. So I did maybe four or five events before COVID hit, and then now I’m doing maybe 20 Zoom events a month.
CHUCK: Wow. That’s amazing. Well, I should say that I have a friend in Florida who told me about Kirby and told me about her Chamber. And she’s a member of the Chamber there. She was just knocked out by what Kirby and the Chamber are doing to support their members online. And I’m so I’m happy to have her on board so she can fill us in a little bit more about what the Chamber is about and then how she’s using the tools and that kind of thing.
But let’s start with some Chamber basics, Kirby. What can you tell us about the Chamber … when it was formed? How, you know, what your geographic area is and that kind of thing?
[bctt tweet=”We are a regional Chamber, so we have members in Miami and now we have people joining us from Argentina. So we have definitely expanded … #Zoom #ZoomPro #ChamberofCommerce” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
KIRBY: Sure. So we were founded in 1913. We are one of the oldest business developments in Palm Beach County. There are actually 14 Chambers in Palm Beach County. We are a regional Chamber, so we have members in Miami and now we have people joining us from Argentina. So we have definitely expanded, but we are Miami, Fort Lauderdale … Palm Beach County is our main focus, but we are everywhere now. So, so Zoom’s really helped us out.
CHUCK: Really. So the people who are logging on from Argentina, are they actually members or are they just dipping in for the content or what’s that about?
KIRBY: They are actually members. So they, they do have a residence here in Florida. They do have a business in Florida and in Argentina with everything happening with COVID, they are currently residing in Argentina, but when they get the chance, they hop onto our Zoom calls and they participate every chance they get. And they’re fantastic.
CHUCK: Wow. That’s really amazing. Cool. So you say that you do about 20 Zooms a month and are those the outbound ones, and then there are additional ones that are sort of in house collaborations … staff meetings, or is that 20 a month pretty much the total of everything?
KIRBY: 20 a month is our outbound meetings. So, like I said, we’re still doing all of our committee meetings. We’ve even converted some of our ribbon cuttings to virtual. We’re hosting webinars, educational webinars, and now we’re starting with, like, we started a tourism taskforce to kind of help some of the tourism industries here in Palm Beach County. So it it’s just really kind of taken off and trying to give those educational sessions keeps our calendar full because that’s what helps us stay busy and stay open.
CHUCK: Right. Gotcha. And then do you publish the sessions? Do you record the sessions and let people come into them later if they wanted to see them? Are they hosted on YouTube or someplace?
KIRBY: Absolutely. They are on our YouTube channel and on our website. I do believe some of them are private because they are restricted to members only, but there are some available that are open to nonmembers and members, which we have opened up more to members and nonmembers with COVID happening. So we have opened our doors to everybody.
CHUCK: Cool. So, let’s get into a couple of examples. What types of sessions do you do and how long are they typically?
KIRBY: So right before this meeting, I was in a committee meeting for our Women in Business Committee. It’s an hour long. We’ve found that anything more than an hour is way too much and people have Zoom fatigue. They can sit there and listen to you talk for maybe an hour. And that is still cutting it a little close. So, and with the speakers, we usually tell them to talk for maybe 30, 45 minutes, and then we let our attendees introduce themselves at the end. So it kind of gives them an opportunity to say something and gives them a reason to stay till the end and not just jump off immediately.
CHUCK: Oh, that’s a good idea. Yeah. In our Online Video Mastery program, we suggest that people take breaks every 20 minutes, even just stand up and stretch — just get a little movement going, kind of break up the boredom. But, that Zoom fatigue thing, we’ve actually got a guidebook on our website that people can download. And it’s all about Zoom fatigue and what the science is that’s behind it, as well as how it costs organizations in terms of productivity. And then, we’ve got some suggestions on how to defeat it. But man, there’s just new stuff coming out about all that a lot, all the time. So, what kinds of content do you convey in a typical Zoom? If I was logging on from just down the road or Argentina and I’m a member, what kind of content would I typically see?
KIRBY: We have — well, it also depends on the meeting that you’re going into. We’ve had webinars based on HR. We’ve have an election coming up. We have something going on regarding that. We have so many different topics and we try to keep it so there’s a topic for everybody. We don’t want to keep it — there’s only so much we can say about COVID. There’s only so much you can…so today, we had a speaker talk about schooling. We have a breakfast coming up that the superintendent is going to be speaking to us. And that’s a huge event. We’re going to have probably 500 people in that event. So, our smaller committees are max up to 30 people. And then we have our breakfasts, which are 500 people. So it just depends on which event that you’re going to and who you’re going to hear.
CHUCK: Gotcha. So the breakfast — do people brown bag, bring their own breakfast? Or is that the title of the type of Zoom it is?
KIRBY: Well, before COVID, we would actually go all to the Palm Beach Convention Center and have a big, nice breakfast and all get together and listen to this speaker. But now that it has been — and this is going to be our first one coming up — I think next week is going to be our first big breakfast. We have these care packages, I guess you could call it, that we’re sending out to all of the attendees that have registered for it. So we’re sending them their little brown bag. I wouldn’t call it a brown bag. It’s going to be nice and pretty. It has changed a little bit, but they are still getting a breakfast or a little goodie bag for it.
CHUCK: That’s really cool. So when you’re starting a meeting, I understand you’ve got some house rules that you show. Do you have those on your computer? Can we take a look at those? You can share your screen.
KIRBY: Absolutely. So, these are the house rules that we present to make sure that our meetings go smoothly because the worst thing is when somebody comes into the meeting and their microphone is on and your speaker is in the middle of their speech. So we like to make sure that people know that the meeting is being recorded and to make sure they’re muted. And then the “Webcams Off,” we change that every once in a while. So we’ll have them turn it on or turn it off depending on how our speaker likes it, but we change it and we have different slides. And our social media is very popular and very active. We get a lot of compliments and clicks on our social media. So, that’s just a few of our little talking points that we go through at the very beginning and end of our meetings.
CHUCK: Gotcha. Very cool. I’m going to check your social media out right after this, right after we record this and publish it. That’s really cool. So, you upload your Zoom recordings to YouTube and then the ones that are public, you put out on social?
KIRBY: Yes. Everything goes to Facebook, YouTube, our website, and we get so many responses on it. It’s amazing.
CHUCK: That’s really cool. One thing, a tactical thing…I was curious — do you publish an agenda ahead of time for attendees? Or do you just basically say, “We’re going to start at 10:00 on the 13th,” and people pretty much know what to expect, so they just show up?
KIRBY: So for the most part, people know what to expect. And if it’s a new member, I always give them a call and just be like, “Hey, this is how this goes. Just make sure log in a few minutes early. That way, you kind of know you’re in the right place. Just look for our logo. You’re there.” That’s just kind of the main thing that we do. It’s super simple. We don’t do anything too much for that.
[bctt tweet=”We’ve had webinars based on HR. We’ve have an election coming up. We have something going on regarding that. We have so many different topics and we try to keep it so there’s a topic for everybody. #Zoom #ZoomPro #ChamberofCommerce” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
CHUCK: Yeah. That’s another tip that I picked up from watching a webinar from one of my colleagues. Such an easy thing to do, and I hadn’t hadn’t thought about this, but for people who are facilitators for Zoom and routinely are bringing new people into a meeting, it’s a really good idea to just tell everybody ahead of time, “Look, if you’re new to Zoom, log on. I’ll be there 10 minutes, 15 minutes ahead of time. If you’ve got any kind of issues, I can use the remote control feature and reach through the screen and click on things for you, help you get your camera angle right.” So that you’re not showing up on Zoom with just the top of your head. I was talking to a colleague yesterday, and she was in a Zoom and somebody said, “That’s a really nice view of your neck, but we’d like to see more of you.” So, you can clear up a lot of those things just simply by having people come on early. And, that’s a that’s a really good idea.
KIRBY: Absolutely. And we try to keep it the same every single time, at least with the way that we send everything out. So with our Zoom logins, we keep it in the same format. We change up the wording to make sure that it follows the format of the meeting, but we keep it the same. And we make sure that they know, “Okay, this is for this meeting. This is for this meeting. This is for the breakfast. I know this.” So they kind of fall into that pattern, “Okay. I know that.” So that pattern, I think, helps a bunch for new members and the members when it comes to joining a meeting.
CHUCK: That’s great. So there’s a certain type of meeting that’s always on Tuesday at a certain time. So you can just calendar that.
KIRBY: Yes. Our committee is — I keep bringing up the committees. That’s my job. They are every month, once a month, the first Thursday of the month. And then, we have a Business Builder twice a month, every month. And then, every once in a while we throw in a random webinar. So there are meetings that are the same and then, there are special webinars that we host.
CHUCK: Gotcha. And what is the overall response from your members to the Zoom meetings? Because, I mean, we all pretty much got thrown into this. And I do want to go back and talk a little bit about how you got into Zoom, but while I’m thinking about attendees, what kind of response have they had to the Zooms? Because they were used to going to the breakfast at the convention center, and being able to drop by your physical facility and talk to people in person and everything. And then all of a sudden, they’re under lock-down and now, they’re wearing masks and they’re maintaining social distance and that kind of thing. So they’re forced to work with you online, but what kind of reaction are you getting from members about being on Zoom?
KIRBY: I think they like Zoom and as a whole, at the Chamber, we’re not getting rid of Zoom, even after the pandemic is over. I do know our members are ready to get back into in-person meetings. They like shaking people’s hands, and they like hugging people and getting to know people on that personal level, which is a lot harder to do through Zoom. But with Zoom, again, we are being able to open up our doors to people in Argentina. So again, we’re not going to quit doing Zoom even after the pandemic. And some of our members love Zoom and even after the pandemic is over, they’re going to continue using Zoom for our meetings because they’re not able to leave their office and drive 30 minutes to go to a meeting, sit for an hour, and then drive 30 minutes back. So it has helped a lot and, we’ve reached a whole new membership with it.
CHUCK: That’s great. Have you noticed any increase or decrease in Chamber membership since COVID, or have things kind of stayed about the same? What are your thoughts around that?
KIRBY: The Chamber has actually done very well during the pandemic. We’re getting new members every single day because right now, it’s a hard time and again, we are here to help. That’s what we want to do, and that’s what we’re trying to show. I think that people are seeing that, and they are joining, so it’s been nice.
CHUCK: That’s great. Well, I think other Chambers could certainly learn from what you all have done there. I’m really impressed with what I’m hearing. So, let’s dip into the type of features that you’re using in Zoom. Zoom’s coming out with new stuff all the time. I believe you’ve got a Zoom background. Can you turn on the background? I love the background that I’m looking at. It’s a very nice, neat cubicle office thingy that you’re in, but I’d like to see the branded background. Oh, that’s cool. Wow.
KIRBY: It’s my favorite. It’s so pretty and colorful, and the water behind me.
CHUCK: Yeah. That’s really neat.
KIRBY: This was probably one of our selling points on Zoom. We loved being able to hide the clutter in our background with the virtual backgrounds.
CHUCK: Yeah, that’s really great. And with Zoom 5.2 that just came out, you can do a lot of really interesting things. I’m just beginning to experiment with it, but you can turn your presentation black and white or sepia tone. You can put stickers on yourself so you can be a bunny rabbit. You can put a hat on your own head, dark glasses, and that kind of thing. Let me see if I can find…
KIRBY: I was about to say I haven’t seen — I haven’t been able to play with the new settings. It just happened.
CHUCK: Yeah, it just did. And I’m not really sure where they are, so I’m not going to take time to take time to look for them right now. So let’s see. There are a number of different features that I understand you’re using. So let’s just go through a couple of those. Let’s talk about breakout rooms. How are you using breakout rooms?
KIRBY: So, we have been doing some meetings where we have invited multiple speakers to come and join us for a meeting. And we like to split up and give each speaker their own room, put a few people in there, and swap people out. And it has seemed to work very, very well. The speakers love it. They get their own spotlight with a small group, and then they get a whole new group. And then, we have a Tourism Task Force that we just started –again, to help the tourism industry here in Palm beach County. And so, we break them out into breakout rooms. They get into these small rooms and they discuss some ways that they can help each other, some packages that maybe they can put together, and work together to build that relationship and to stay open and survive through this. So, that is just one way that the breakout rooms has kind of helped through that. It’s very helpful in one-on-one situations, small group situations. It’s been great.
CHUCK: That’s great. And then, do you set a timer so that everybody comes back in automatically at one particular time, like after 15 minutes or something?
KIRBY: Yes. And so, we do kind of the power networking — we call it power networking. It’s kind of like powered speed dating. You get one minute to introduce yourself, what’s your businesses, what you need, something fabulous that’s happening to you right now. So, you get one minute to do that. And we have a group called our Ambassador Committee that we get to volunteer that helps us, and they kind of hold up a phone with a timer on it that has one minute. And so you get that one minute, and you go around the table and you say, “Okay, I’m Kirby Davis. I’m with the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches. This is what I do. This is what I need.” And so that’s another reason we use the breakout rooms is for those small power networking opportunities.
CHUCK: It’s really neat. And how about polls? Do you do a lot with polls that you set up ahead of time and then publish during the meeting. I think that’s the way they work, correct?
KIRBY: We do. It’s a nice way to get the attendees interacting. So they’re not just sitting there with their arms crossed, with their hands on their face. They know they’re going to be asked a question. They need to be prepared to answer it. It’s a nice way to get them involved, so we do use them.
CHUCK: That’s cool. We’ve got a colleague that I was asking about how she gets interactivity going, and she has her attendees do something new every five minutes, which may sound like overkill, but it works for her. And what she does is she’ll just ask a simple yes or no question and say, “Please drop a yes or no in the chat.” She’ll also, every once in a while, have people change their Zoom name. So, mine is “Chuck Moran” right there, you can see on the screen. But she’ll have everybody in attendance change it to how they’re feeling. So, some of those little tiny things, those sorts of icebreakers, really help to defeat that Zoom fatigue.
KIRBY: I have not ever done that. That’s amazing. I’m going to write that down, and I’m going to use that as a best practice.
CHUCK: Yeah, it’s a good thing. We’re actually getting ready to publish a blog post, and I’ll make sure you get a copy of that because it’s an interview that I did with this gal, Kathy, where she talks about it. She’s actually an improv teacher. She does stand-up comedy and improv. And so, she helps companies lighten up, be more human and authentic in their interactions with each other, and that kind of thing. So, she had some pretty good tips. I’ll make sure you get a copy of that.
KIRBY: Thank you so much. I would love that.
CHUCK: Sure. So, webinars — are you doing a lot with those? And tell me a little bit about those.
KIRBY: So, we actually don’t use the webinar feature a ton. We’ve used it a few times, but we feel like we get more with the meeting option or meeting settings in Zoom. So that’s what we use most of the time. Plus, we like to see everybody in the meeting because that’s what our main focus is: networking and seeing everybody in the room. And the webinar feature doesn’t give you that. It takes everybody out of the room. So we mainly use the meeting option, but we have used the webinar tool, we just do not utilize it that often.
[bctt tweet=”… at the Chamber, we’re not getting rid of Zoom, even after the pandemic is over. #Zoom #ZoomPro #ChamberofCommerce” username=”onlinevidmaster”]
CHUCK: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The webinar features are really great for a one-to-many, one-way kind of communication. But I think a good thing to do at the end of those webinars is to bring everybody back into the meeting and then do a Q&A to kind of break that one-way type of communication. How about whiteboard and annotations? Do you guys use the whiteboard to illustrate things and doodle on it, or whatever?
KIRBY: I don’t use it that often. We are going to start here fairly soon, and we have a meeting coming up that we are going to use it for. So I’m going to start playing with that a little more and messing with that. It’s not one of our main uses just because most of our speakers have PowerPoints that they present. So we don’t use a whole lot of whiteboard.
CHUCK: Yeah. What’s cool — and I haven’t experimented with this, but I’ve read that you can do a PowerPoint and then actually add annotations on top of it. You could also share a screen and go to a web page, and then do annotations on top of it. This bears testing, so I can’t swear that it works that way, but I understand that it does do something like that. So that’s pretty cool. So, there’s a new set of reactions to that Zoom has just unleashed. It used to be that you just had the hand clapping and the raised hand, but they’ve added in a heart. Let’s see if I can put up some of those. I’m not sure if they’re going to show up in the recording, but I can put up the — can you see the laughing face on my side?
KIRBY: It does not show up.
CHUCK: It’s funny. Okay, and then I got the little celebration thingy. These are just regular emojis. I’m not sure if they’re making it into the recording or not.
KIRBY: I don’t see them.
CHUCK: Interesting. Yeah, they just last on the screen for 10 seconds. So I think it’s probably a participant-to-host sort of thing. So, let’s see. Is there anything else that you would like to share — recommendations to maybe to other Chambers and other similar organizations, like tourism bureaus and that kind thing? Any kind of organization that’s really trying to find new ways to serve their members?
KIRBY: Well, what I have found, especially with using Zoom, having so many speakers, and so doing so many meetings, is that doing a dress rehearsal either the day before, or at least 30 minutes beforehand, helps tremendously — whether it be you logging in with your speaker 15 minutes early, and just making sure that your speaker is on camera and in the meeting. It just takes away so much stress that can almost make your meeting go at least 10% better because your speaker’s there on time and you can test their audio. You can make sure that there’s nothing crazy in the background, and you can make sure that they’re comfortable because if your speaker’s comfortable, then you’re going to have a good meeting. With technology, you never know what is going to happen. And people are human. They’re working from home. Things happen.
CHUCK: Yeah.
KIRBY: That is probably the one thing, my biggest takeaway from using Zoom: do a dress rehearsal.
CHUCK: Great advice. Well, Kirby, I really appreciate you taking the time with me today to go through what your history has been there with the Chamber and how you’re using Zoom so effectively to support your members. So, thank you very much. I really do appreciate it.
KIRBY: Well, thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed doing this.
CHUCK: Alright. Well, I’m going to sign off here and we’ll look forward to seeing you. I would love to get down there and see you in person. So if we ever get past this COVID thing, maybe we’ll get a chance to meet, maybe six feet away, but it’d be nice to meet you in person.
KIRBY: At least shake a hand.
CHUCK: That sounds good. Well, we can do elbows.
KIRBY: Yeah! Alright, thank you so much. Bye.
CHUCK: Bye.
Please feel free to comment below with any questions and, I’ll pass along answers from Kirby.
Kirby Davis is the Membership Services Associate at the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches in Florida, USA. You can learn more at their website and by following on social media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Kirby moved from Texas to Florida in 2017. Prior to starting with the Chamber she worked in Real Estate, including Property Management. Kirby has been with the Chamber since early 2020, and in just a few months, she has helped the Chamber move to a virtual platform, helped start up the Tourism Task Force and taken on the Chamber committees for which she brings in industry specific speakers to provide educational programs. These committees include the Science & Technology Committee, Health & Human Services Committee and the Women in Business Committee. She also helps facilitate the Ambassador Committee and their involvement with Chamber events.
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