The Mac User group I joined in 2003 hasn’t held a physical face-to-face meeting for two years, now using Zoom for its various meetings. Back in the day, we’d start at 9am and finish at 4pm on the first Saturday of each month, excluding January. The venue we used is a big Baptist Church complex & we used to hire three classrooms & an auditorium to run the interest groups held each hour in each classroom plus the auditorium for an hour-long main presentation conducted by our chosen guest speaker. Membership numbers have taken a big hit due to COVID and paying out over $1500 per day for that venue is unsustainable on just 300 members.
Nw we run the day on Zoom & members are missing the access to their friends and to the onsite café which the Church manned especially for us, normally it’s closed on weekends.
The Group’s management has come up with a hybrid structure to satisfy all needs as well as to save $1000 per hire day.
The interest group/classes will still be on Zoom on the first Saturday of each month, with no main presentation & a short lunch break, 30 minutes instead of the current 90.
Then, on the third Saturday of each month, we hire the auditorium for $400 for the day, run the main presentation for 90 minutes instead of the current 60. After that we can solve the problems of the world in the auditorium or café. The plan is to hire the room from 10am to 2pm only.
I really like this plan.