International (VIRTUAL) Travel Meeting - Sunday July 5 @ 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

I'm in!

(it wanted more characters - like I'm not one already!, so I'll go twice-)

I'm in twice!!

Nigel, that's great! I'm looking forward to seeing you and Carol again. I'll send out the Zoom invite after I get some more responses.

Yay Andrea!
Count me in.
SharYn

I'll send my info in a PM right away - thanks for putting this together!

Oh, what a great idea!

Great idea Andrea! I’m in - and i’m glad that Nigel will be there twice!

Me, too -- travel junkies, unite!

Great Idea, Andrea. count me in.

Sending my info your way!

Thanks very much for setting this up! Just sent you a PM.

I'm happy to know there's some interest for this. Maybe an international meeting should occur monthly as well.

Please include us if there’s room 😀

I'll see what I can do, Mona. 😆 This will make 3 meetings for us in a 2 week period.

If you're interested in this meeting please PM me with your email. If I don't have it I can't send you the Zoom link. This doesn't apply to people who know I already have their email.

I've sent the Zoom link to everyone who has responded, except I still need an email for catrinatravels. If you didn't get the email please let me know. I can still add anyone else who would like to take part in this.

SharYn alerted me that there was a problem with the invitation that went out. I deleted the meeting and will schedule a new one. Thanks SharYn

I scheduled a new meeting. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks Andrea!

Looks good! Thank you!

I've sent out 15 invitations. If you provided me with your email, or if you knew that I already had it, and you haven't received the Zoom link please let me know.

Anyone else? The more the merrier.

I will be there. Thanks for organizing this, Andrea. Looking forward to seeing everyone.

My schedule is open ;-)

This sounds like fun! I’ll see y’all there!

We are up to 21 people so far in 4 countries, including the U.S. Please remember that when you PM me you need to include your email address. I can't send the invitation without it. This should be fun!!

21 people? We may have to use the little raised hand icon to take turns talking ;-)
Looking forward to Saturday.

Lol Lauri, I was just thinking how to manage this. We might have to be more organized than usual!! I just sent another invite, and I wasn't counting me and Jim.

the conventional way of indicating that you want the mic or the floor in zoom meetings with high attendance is to put an exclamation point [ ! ] in the chat window.

If you want to use the blue raised hand icon the "host" needs to watch that and work it. It does allow people to speak in a strict first come first served order but it takes work.

We find in a small sized group if eveybody is using the Gallery View and everybody not speaking is muted, when somebody unmutes and waits a moment people will see the red mute go away and give some room informally. In a medium sized group like we will have it helps to have a moderator, who can change during the meeting, to call on people who have raised their actual hand in view of the camera. Again it is best if everybody is muted except for the moderator and the current speaker. The blue hand works best if there is also an off camera host running the list and not participating in the talking, and works efficiently in a business situation and large meetings.

What doesn't work is many people unmuted chatting at once...

Of course if a person is hiding, has their camera off or dialed in by phone, there is no physical hand on the nonexistent picture so there needs to be a way for that person to participate.

Okay, this is becoming more complicated than I was anticipating. This may be our one and only International Virtual Meeting. We'll see how this one goes. I will moderate, at the beginning anyway. Maybe we will each take a turn speaking, then open it up to questions and answers?

On my laptop I can see everyone in the gallery view. I did one Zoom meeting using my iPad and had to scroll back and forth between 2 pages. Hopefully everyone that has a desktop or laptop available can use that. If there are any couples, please share a device.

I think it will be fine. Really.

Really looking forward to it.

Good idea about asking everyone to be muted except when speaking -- it gets distracting to see the lighted border jumping around to denote the "speaker" when it's just responding to a sneeze or paper rustling (or a hunger rumble.)

I agree with staying muted unless it's your time to talk. We are up to 25 people now.

Speaking only for myself, I am just looking forward to hearing people talk about travel and see faces to go with names - not feeling pressure to talk myself. Ha!

at least 25 squares, even 30, fit nicely on one screen of a laptop. Not so easy on a phone.

Hey everyone, I think I have sent the Zoom invitation to everyone that has requested it. If you asked and haven't received it, please let me know. Right now we are at 28 people.

I've just been waiting around to be let in and duh!!! it's tomorrow!!!

What a bright boy!

@Nigel, Dave would have joined you this AM. He’s so programmed for Saturdays!

I would have planned it for today, but considering it’s a holiday I thought people might have other plans.

holiday? on a Saturday?

Nigel, 😂😂😂

The 4th of July doesn’t care what day of the week it falls on. 🎆

It’s been a very exciting day for me so far. I took my walk, did yard work and now I’m in the backyard reading for a bit before it gets too hot. And it’s only 9:35 in the morning. I suspect the day will go downhill from here. 😆

I would love to join! Representing the LA/OC group. I’ll send you a PM, Andrea.

You’re killing me Andrea with your early morning self... 😂 Being on Zoom at 9am (!!!) is gonna be a challenge for me 🤣

We got exciting news today... the puppy we’re on a wait list for might be available in 8 wks!

Claudette, my son and his girlfriend drove down to Huntington Beach yesterday, their first time there, staying til tomorrow!

Susan,

I hope they’re enjoying it down here in HB. I’m staying home but it’s gorgeous outside. Tell your son to go Mama’s on 39 for brunch. If they want good Mexican food, we love Las Barcas or Miguel’s Jr.

Hope to zoom with you all tomorrow!

Susan, come on! You can do it! If we do it on your time table the people in Europe will be sound asleep! I'm excited to meet your puppy!!

I'm looking forward to see/meeting everyone tomorrow. This should be an interesting experiment. I hope it works out okay.

It’ll be fun no matter what. Thanks for doing this Andrea. And yes, i have my alarm set for 7am - oy. ⏰

Claudette, thanks for those tips. I will tell them, much appreciated.
They are enjoying themselves, visiting close friends.
Looking forward to “meeting” you tomorrow!

Today's meeting went really well considering we had enough people to spill over onto a second page of faces!
Great to be able to connect names with those faces after so many posts and comments here in the RS forum.
Every meeting makes my list of must-do trips even longer...

Andrea, thanks again for organizing this! Lots of fun, and I look forward to future Zoom gatherings.

The 1st meeting just ended and it went better than I thought. Thanks to all who participated. As Avi said, it was nice to put faces to familiar names. We will continue to do virtual meetings on the 1st Sunday of each month and the consensus was that it should be limited to 25 people, so the first 24 people that respond will get the link to the meeting. I'll announce the meeting a week in advance. It was determined that having specific topics for each meeting would be beneficial and we already have 7 topics suggested. If anyone has other suggestions they would improve our virtual meetings I would love to hear them.

Thanks so much Andrea and Jim for hosting this, i know it’s hard work.
The meeting was really fun and it was so good to see everyone!

great job Andrea!

It was great seeing people I known by their on line name for years and being able to remember a face.

And see again old friends.

yeehah

Andrea, thank you so much for hosting this with your husband. I really enjoyed seeing everyone and, in spite of it all the limitations, this was a great way to get disparately located forum folks together on one call. I've been quite jealous of the Marin County brew pub meetings, what a great location that must be to meet up! Hope we see each other one day again!

Thank you again for hosting this meeting. I thought it went great!! Fun to meet you all!!

Thanks Andrea for organizing this! You did a great job hosting, too. I enjoyed it and it was great to put faces with names. I’m sorry I had to get off early-I had a birthday lunch to get to. I look forward to joining another one of these in the future.

Always enjoyable to spend time with fellow travel enthusiasts! I look forward to future meetings and topics. Many thanks for initiating and hosting this group Andrea!

Agnes, i’d love for you to join us sometime if you’re ever in SF. Marin Brewing is next to SF Bay and a ferry goes right to it from SF - will make it easy for you!

And to all of you, even if it’s not on our normally scheduled mtg day, i’d organize our group to get together to welcome you, so if you’re ever out this way, please let me know!

It was great. I look forward to joining when I can. I like specific topics too!

Thanks for hosting, Andrea. I am sorry I was only able to call in (without video) but
it was nice to finally attend a travel group meeting. Thanks for the opportunity.
I am sorry I had to leave the meeting early due to an airport run but I truly enjoyed listening to everyone's introductions and travel plans.

Adding my thanks! It was really nice to get to join a meeting since there are none in my area! Andrea and Jim, wonderful job and it is really nice to see real people to go with the names. :)

Thank you Andrea for organizing and thank you to the people who participated. It was great to connect with the names that I see on the forum. It was a fun event for this weekend especially since I'm not meeting any new people while traveling. A real day brightener.

Thank you so much, Andrea, for hosting such a terrific International travel meeting. I really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with so many like minded travelers from around the world. I agree with everyone else that it was great to finally attach faces to names on our fabulous RS forum!
Christine