Keeping momentum working remotely

During the last two years, our meteorological society had to live with covid-19 measures restricting our in-person activities. The impact on society activities was significant. Of course, nowadays we have tools that facilitate work from home and virtual meetings, but one can be easily saturated with this kind of meetings and especially society activities suffered. In spite of this, Slovenian meteorological society increased the frequency and variety of activities. 

Zoom enabled us to carry out one scientific lecture per month and establishing a YouTube channel enabled us to reach a broader audience. Of course, most of our lectures are in Slovenian and this limits our audience. We took part in the national call for written contributions on climate change and severe weather in order to increase the outreach and awareness of weather and climate impacts on society among teenagers. There were some surprising outcomes of this initiative.  

While we were able to attract also members temporarily based out of country, we have lost interest of some colleagues who prefer in personal contact. The lesson learned is that the most effective way in future will be to combine virtual and in-person forms of activities.