Last Saturday week (20th June), the Rotary International Convention opened in Honolulu. Except that hardly anyone was there… You see, just like our District Conference, dozens of AFL and Rugby matches and ordinary club meetings, also this event could not be held physically. Modern technology allows the life streaming of the conference and this was the first ever where anyone could attend – free of charge! However, not everyone has the time (or inclination) to spend the better part of a week sitting at their computer, particularly if one of the most attractive components of any conference is missing: the coffee breaks, the lunches and dinners which allow you to network with fellow Rotarians from all over.Enter ‘Post Conference Streaming’. The whole lot is up on Youtube. You can watch the whole lot, or just selective segments. Even better: not meaning to be derogatory, but you can fast forward or skip what I (in streamed business seminars) used to call ‘Corporate Gumph’… Even better: if a speaker speaks (in your view) too slowly, you can run the video at 1.5 speed or even double speed. How good is that!
Click here to access the opening session on Saturday 20th June. Whatever you do, don’t fast forward past the contribution of the Australian Pop Opera Quartet ‘Aria’, dedicating a Rotary version of the popular song The Prayer (think of Andrea Bocelli with Céline Dion) starting at 0:59:00. Now, just in case it sounds somewhat weird: you probably need to set playing speed back to 'Normal'... ☺