Maintaining cohesion: Centre meetings in 2021
Online and physical Centre meetings maintain connections
Balancing the need to maintain Centre cohesion with Covid-restrictions and ‘zoom fatigue’, FLEET has used multiple channels, including physical and online meetings.
Centre cohesion has been a particular priority in 2020–21 for FLEET, as for many other organisations.
In addition to ‘fluid’ platforms such as Slack, regular weekly events emails, the Centre newsletter, and journal clubs, FLEET ran two major all-Centre meetings in 2021, managing hybrid, physical and online formats as safety and Covid restrictions allowed.
FLEET’s midyear strategy meeting was a hybrid event, with Melbourne-based members able to attend in person and interstate members attending online. The meeting reviewed and renewed FLEET’s research milestones and strategic plan. Governance areas (equity, research translation, outreach, communication and training) were also reviewed.
FLEET’s cut-back end-of-year meeting (FLEET2021) included relatively-brief scientific talks covering the broad research areas across the Centre, with all the research ‘detail’ covered in ECRs’ posters.
82% of participants said they have been able to maintain a strong connection with FLEET through Covid, in the Centre’s 2021 Centre-wide survey.
FLEET has continued experimentation with new online virtual-meeting platforms, trialling Kumospace and MeetAnyway to allow organic discussions and poster sessions. At FLEET2021 the MeetAnyway platform allowed 79 poster presenters to share their research detail, interacting with online poster visitors.
FLEET2021 saw 136 attendees engaging over the three days, culminating with an awards presentation and physical catch-ups.
I liked the FLEET2021 access dashboard, easy to access all the information and events, really well done.
FLEET2021 member feedback
Physical catch-ups were possible only in Sydney and Melbourne, but these allowed members from the four nodes in those centres a welcome chance to reconnect face-to-face with some Centre colleagues they hadn’t seen since 2019.
Talks were minimised in the end-of-year meeting in recognition of ‘Zoom fatigue’, with people under significant stress in and outside of work finding it increasingly tiring to engage online.
The casual schedule was good. End of year is pretty hectic, so it is nice to have something which isn't trying to gobble all our time via Zoom.
It was valuable to get an overview of what's happening in different research themes and groups of FLEET.
FLEET2021 member feedback
FLEET will hold a hybrid meeting in Wollongong in mid-2022, bringing together the entire Centre for the first time since the start of the pandemic, while also catering for international partners who may not be able to travel and any members reluctant to attend for health reasons.
I got to talk to a few poster presenters from outside my field. The research theme updates were very good at giving me an overview of FLEET's activities across all the research groups.
FLEET2021 member feedback