Group Leaders' Bulletin November 2023
Requests
Beacon Calendar
The Beacon calendar still contains very few details about upcoming meetings of IGO groups. The diagram to the right shows a section of the calendar as seen in the Members' Portal, and those which have provided additional information, (highlighted in yellow) are still very sparse. I’ve blurred the calendar so as not to point fingers.
Detailed information about what the groups are doing at each meeting is very useful both to existing members, and also to people who are thinking of joining the groups.
One of the outcomes of our recent IGO members’ survey was that members would like more reminders of when upcoming group meetings are - a complete calendar would be very helpful in providing this. Members can create a calendar and download a calendar from Beacon which lists only their own groups.
There are a few groups which do not appear in the calendar at all – I have not been able to add them because I need additional information:
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Parliamo Italiano
Recurring Zoom Meetings
A member has asked why some recurring meetings have a single Zoom link, while for others, the link changes with each meeting. It would be simpler for both members and group leaders if all the meetings of each group had just one Zoom link rather than having a new link for each meeting.
Using the “recurring meeting” in Zoom allows the same link to be assigned to all the group meetings, here you can read a brief document showing how to set up recurring meetings on Zoom for anyone who is unsure about how to do this. All IGO Zoom meetings are set up this way and I will be setting them all to run up to June 2024 in the enxt few weeks. I will send the links out to all group members via Beacon to reduce admin for group leaders – this applies only to groups using IGO Zoom.
Some group leaders may prefer to change the Zoom link every meeting and of course this is fine, if they are using a non-IGO Zoom account.
Beacon – people on the waiting list
Beacon has recently changed the way people on the waiting list are shown. It allows group waiting lists to be displayed chronologically as well as alphabetically.
You can use this to ensure that members are admitted to the group in the order in which they joined the waiting list.
Please check your Beacon group regularly to ensure that nobody is waiting unnecessarily.
IGO Zoom
You can also find:
- Updated guidance on using the IGO Zoom accounts.
- IGO Zoom calendar for November
- Generic table for IGO booked slots
If you have booked a slot on the IGO zoom account, and it does not appear in one or both of the last two, please let me know and I will amend accordingly. Any such error is more than likely (but not necessarily) due to a transcription error on my part.
Emergency contacts
People signing up to IGO are asked to give an emergency contact number but this is not mandatory. Without an emergency contact number, it would be difficult, or impossible to summon help for a group member who became ill during a meeting. We will be asking all members to consider providing an emergency contact number on Beacon, and recommend that group leaders are familiar with how to find this.
Requests from group leaders
If there is an issue which you would like to see discussed here, please let me know.
Information
Venue on Beacon
I decided it would be helpful to add “Venue” information so have added “Zoom”, “Whats App”, “email” and “Facebook”. I have added these to a few groups but am leaving the rest to individual group leaders or not whether they want to use this feature.
Images for group web-pages
We are now working to add an image to each group page, but this will take some time. If there is a particular image you would like to use, please send it to us – it must be an image produced by a member of the group.
Number of groups and members
We now have 96 active groups and 1364 members – well done everyone!
As always, a big thank you for running our IGO groups – we would not exist without you.
Best wishes from Catherine, Groups Co-Ordinator, on behalf of the IGO team