Democratic Club has success with virtual meetings

Nearly a year after the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Democratic Club of Longboat Key is in a groove with virtual events, though they wish they didn’t have to be. 

The group typically met for monthly meetings at the Sarasota Yacht Club, and when everybody first began staying home, all events were put on pause. It was several months before Zoom brought the far-flung members together again, said board member Lucie Lapovksy. 

“No one knew what to do,” Lapovsky said. “But since then, we’ve been very active and found there’s a lot of interest.” 

For a while, the club used webinars for its speaker events, but that didn’t allow members to interact with each other or with the speaker. They soon switched to Zoom, allowing attendees to periodically un-mute their microphones to ask questions and use the chat to talk amongst themselves the way they might in a regular meeting. 

At their most recent meeting, a celebration of the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, members filled the chat with one-word responses on how they had been feeling that day — overwhelmed, hopeful, joyful. Later, they broke out into rooms to talk about their plans for the party’s and club’s future in Sarasota, the way they might have at separate tables at the Sarasota Yacht Club meetings. 

The Democratic Club has been holding steady with attendance, President Ed Sabol said. Each Zoom event brings in 60 people or more, which is comparable to what their monthly lunches were getting before the pandemic, though it’s sometimes difficult to ascertain how many human faces are on the call as couples register on Zoom as one. 

“On the one hand it allows people to participate who maybe otherwise wouldn’t be able to because people’s travel schedules were also disrupted, so that was a positive side,” Sabol said. “But people like getting together, they like being in the same room at the same table and that is a challenge. Maybe it's a different mix of folks but for the most part, it’s people associated with Longboat Key.”

Switching to virtual events may be hard on the social luncheon aspect of the club, but it’s allowed organizers to get not only more frequent speakers, but also more out of town speakers. They’ve heard from Sen. Ben Cardin from Maryland and in April will have a speaker Zooming in from Toronto. 

“Even during the beginning of COVID we did one with the (Sarasota Memorial) hospital folks,” board member Lucie Lapovsky said. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten them in person, but they each talked for 20 minutes.” 

For the most part, members work their personal contacts to help get speakers for the meetings and have had a good success rate due to the ease of making it to a virtual event. 

“I think one of the lessons we learned is that even after COVID, we will continue doing Zoom events,” Lapovsky said. “We definitely will go back to in-person once a month, but will Zoom periodically, especially during summer when we have barely any events.” 

Lapovsky and Sabol estimate that the club won’t meet in-person until the fall, when vaccinations have been doled out and snowbirds return again. But of course, Zoom events will continue as long as they have speakers. 

“We feel it’s very important to keep the group together and keep it energized,” Lapovsky said.