13 Tips for a virtual owners' meeting

A month ago we had our first virtual owners' meeting in Meridional. This Virtual Extraordinary General Meeting, which we have named VEGM or Virtual Extraordinary General Meeting, has turned out to be a great experience and at the same time also a success. On the other hand, both the owners and our entire team (in 4 different locations) would not mind repeating it again.

Why virtual homeowners' meetings?

Our greatest interest is always to take care of the people who make up all our Communities of Owners. The current situation we are experiencing due to the restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 crisis has prompted us to develop this type of virtual owners' meeting as an alternative to regular meetings.

Despite the fact that virtual meetings of owners are not contemplated in any way in the current Horizontal Property Law (LPH), it is possible to propose that they be held under certain conditions, the first of which is the unanimous consent and agreement of all the owners.

Which online tool have we used for the virtual meetings?

At Meridional we have relied on ZOOM as a tool to connect the administrator with all the owners. We also decided at Meridional to do several tests the previous days to check that the room was working properly and that all the owners could connect without any problems.
On the day of the virtual owners' meeting, we opened the room from an hour before the start of the meeting in order to fix any problems that any other owners might have when logging in. We wanted to be sure that everything would go smoothly.

13 tips for a good video call

1. Make sure you are in a quiet place
2. Stay close to your wifi router
3. Have the charger for the device to be used on the call at hand.
4. Warn others in your household that you are going on a video call
5. Control other devices that consume wifi and turn off the ones you don't need
6. Confirm that your microphone and speakers are working properly.
7. When you enter the virtual owners' meeting, make sure you have your mic and camera off and activate them when you are ready and want to speak.
   specific recommendations for each neighbourhood meeting
8. Instead of entering the meeting with your usual zoom id, please change it to your block number, then your flat number and then your surname. For example: Bl 1 Apt 1 Mrs Smith. Here it is explained https://youtu.be/mxgiCD1tklc
9. If you don't have a Zoom account yet, please follow the instructions in the video below. It is very easy and intuitive https://youtu.be/xSVDQiby1DI
10. If you need to configure the audio and video settings of your device, here is a tutorial on how to do it. https://youtu.be/Cnyh0kN38ug
11. Take care of your privacy and intimacy when connecting the camera. If you do not want your home or other people to be seen in the background, you can place a virtual background. In this video we explain how to https://youtu.be/_lKe4tg37qQ
12. If you want to speak in the virtual owners' meeting, you have to raise your hand virtually and the moderator will give you the floor in the turns to speak that will be opened. To avoid disturbing everyone. The microphones will be silent, therefore, it will be essential to raise your hand to speak.
    In this video we explain how to raise your hand during the meeting. https://youtu.be/–PwGLZ-TNw
13. It may happen that, if you are using your phone for this meeting, an incoming call or message may interrupt communication with the room. If you do not want this to happen, set your phone to Do Not Disturb mode.
    

For security reasons, if you are already a Zoom user, please upgrade to the latest version available. Here is the link to Zoom's download centre https://zoom.us/support/download

Benefits of virtual meetings

More and more virtual meetings are being held in different Communities of Owners on a regular basis. What is surprising is that attendance at virtual meetings is being higher than attendance at normal face-to-face meetings.

It has also been very productive to see owners who were not in the city or even in the country all together and discussing. The residents have thanked us for making this possibility available to everyone.

Many times we have told you that Meridional is committed to the use of technological tools to help our Communities of Owners to move forward and be more operational. Proof of this is the implementation of MyCommunity which is constantly evolving.

Do not hesitate to contact us in this link and we will be happy to help you with this or any other matter.