NMEA Chapters Stay Connected in a Socially Distant World
We asked our Regional Chapters how they have been maintaining connections and building community during this time when the world is keeping us all apart. Several chapters shared their different ideas and strategies—and let us know what worked and what didn’t. If you haven’t gotten involved with your regional chapter, there’s never been a better time! If your chapter has been struggling to find ways to connect, read on for some inspiration!
GAME—Virtual Exportation of the World’s Ocean Habitats:
Due to ongoing concerns over COVID-19, the Georgia state chapter, Georgia Association of Marine Education (GAME), chose to hold its first-ever virtual ocean exploration event in lieu of the regular annual conference in November of 2020. Traditionally, the annual GAME conference is the one event members most look forward to each year, as seeing old friends and meeting new ones has been a treasured part of the GAME experience. In 2020, however, the GAME board had to get creative, finding ways to help bring members together in an nontraditional way while ensuring it was just as educational and worthwhile as past conferences.
Board members brainstormed ways of exploring the world’s ocean habitats in a virtual format, leveraging professional connections worldwide to bring GAME members programming from points as distant as the Great Barrier Reef and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary to those much closer to home such as Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary. We pulled together virtual resources for our teachers and enjoyed seeing familiar faces in a virtual setting.
The GAME virtual experience was successful in keeping membership engaged as per comments in our post-conference evaluation, which included a list of highlights such as: connecting with Australia's Reef HQ and learning about the programs they offer, the virtual dive presentation, and exploring new habitats and learning new was to adapt to our new virtual world.
[One of the highlights was] the flexibility to view and redeliver the speaker presentations at a later time with my students.
Feedback from the conference resulted in another virtual event in Spring of 2021 – a Soundscapes webinar with Gray’s Reef and Channel Island National Marine Sanctuaries where members were invited to explore concept of sound in the ocean. This follow-up event hosted over 30 GAME members which is well above the number of participants usually accommodated by any one of the traditional field trips hosted throughout a typical year.
MAMEA—Virtual Conferences:
MAMEA hosted its 2020 and 2021 annual conferences virtually. The annual conference is for all members, and includes guest presentations, concurrent sessions, and networking activities.
We had good participation at our conference last year, and despite hoping to host the conference in-person in 2021, decided to go virtual again due to limitations on travel, funding, and comfort level of our members.
MAMEA members attend an online conference session in 2020
We decided to host these events through Whova (same as NMEA 2021), including a pre-conference session on how to use the platform, and offered two different models for scheduling.
In 2020 we held the conference over three evenings (Tuesday-Thursday), with each night including speakers and an optional social event for networking. We also held our annual business meeting during one of the evenings and included a virtual auction.
We recently hosted our 2021 conference in our normal time frame of Friday evening through Saturday. We kicked off with a keynote address and welcome on Friday night, including a social activity. Saturday ran all day and included two plenary sessions, concurrent sessions, business meeting, and a closing event/social. This year we also offered an optional field trip on Sunday. We offered a reduced registration rate of $25 that included the $10 MAMEA membership fee.
NAME—Virtual Speaker Series:
The NAME Virtual Speakers Series is now in its second season. After a summer hiatus, we started the ‘21-’22 season with a talk about the wonders of beachcombing by our very own Alan Rammer, former NMEA Marine Educator of the Year. We had six presentations last season and are planning on nine this season. Talks occur on the first Monday of the month at 6:30 pm and are accessible via Zoom. Most of the speakers have been active NAME members, but some, such as the talk on seabed mining by Lee First of the Waterkeeper Alliance and Liz Schotman of Surfrider Foundation, were delivered by community partners.
NAME’s October Virtual Speaker Series featured the wonders of beachcombing with Alan Rammer
We advertise mostly through our social media channels, membership database, and the NAME email news blast, the Northwest Compass. We regularly get about 10-15 attendees, but have had as many as fifty. In the beginning, the talks were available to the public, but we have since decided that having these engaging speakers available as a benefit for our members (including any interested NMEA members!) could be a good recruiting tool for NAME. Each talk is recorded and made available to the public on our website following the live event.
One of the most challenging parts has been finding interesting presenters. We have four smaller chapters within our organization since we cover such a large geographical region (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska), so we try to make sure that the speakers are representative of our diverse and wide-reaching audience.
We’re tapping into our shared networks, and it’s worked well so far, but it would be good to have more input from the broader community to get a more diverse group of speakers.
SAME—Quarterly Virtual Meetings:
Our first virtual event was our fall 2020 annual meeting. In preparation for it, we actually sent out a survey to ask which platform (Zoom, Teams, etc.) worked best for each person. Besides one person that worked for NOAA, everyone was able to use Zoom. We’ve been using Zoom since then (including our NOAA person). So far, we’ve had no issues with using Zoom.
SAME members enjoying a Trivia Night
During that fall 2020 meeting, we discovered how easy it was to set up those meetings, and several people in the SAME membership voiced ideas about meeting quarterly to keep up the momentum of the organization. So we did!
Our officers decided to alternate “hosting” an event, so our first event in May 2021 included a guest speaker that our President invited. Our Secretary/Treasurer and President-Elect organized a Trivia Night for August 2021. On October 14, our Past-President hosted the meeting and invited a guest speaker.
Some things that have worked for us:
Sharing the responsibility of inviting speakers
Scheduling meetings at 4 or 5 pm
Advertising on Facebook by creating a specific “Event” with the Zoom link so anyone can join us
Canva! Several officers know how to use it and create their own advertising for their speaker event
Consistent number of attendees (~15)
Before going virtual, we met twice a year in person. We had our Chapter Lunch at the NMEA Annual Conference with a smattering of people from here and there, but there may not have been consistent, active members. Our SAME Annual Meeting each fall brought folks that normally don’t attend an Annual Conference. Those two opportunities were the only time we really had any conversation among membership.
Since the quarterly virtual meetings, we’ve had a lot more conversation and ideas flowing, and that’s been a huge plus for us!
SENEME—Virtual Board Meetings and hybrid events:
SENEME has been holding virtual board meetings since March 2020. The organization was able to keep vital objectives in place including our annual meeting, the production of newsletters to keep members informed, communicate events from our member organizations and others and support science fair competitions in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Say what you will about the Zoom experience—muted microphones, uncertainty about sharing screens, break out rooms and connectivity issues—it was the best way for our members to communicate during the pandemic.
At our 2020 annual meeting just one year ago, we had regular board members, life and retired members and unexpected guests show up to see what SENEME was up to.
Our multi-site horseshoe crab event held in June 12, 2021 was partially virtual and partially in person in several locations. The morning virtual session was held on Zoom at 9am. Jo-Marie Kasinak, the Project Limulus Outreach and Education Coordinator, spoke about why this ancient animal is important to our ecosystems. Organizers expressed some disappointment that 39 participants signed up for the event but only 12 people came to the webinar. There was some confusion about when and how to access the Zoom link—it was sent out with the registration information in advance but not in the reminder email. This was a glitch we can correct in the future. Two of the three live events were held (one was cancelled due to low enrollment). Pandemic restrictions were still in place at the time.
Our 2021 annual meeting will also be virtual. We are going for “FUN’ with a Sustainable Seafood Cooking Demonstration. Our goal is to pull our formerly active members back in and attract new members as we prepare to get back to in person events in 2022.
