There are times in our lives when we need to push outside of our comfort zones if we are to grow. I knew stepping up to the role of President of the Australian Technical Analysts Association’s Sydney Chapter in 2020 was going to be challenging. I had to balance well established routines with my many ideas for change.
One of my first speaking engagements as President was an invitation from the President of MetaStock, Kelly Clement, to promote the Australian Technical Analysts Association (ATAA) to delegates of a conference held in Sydney, Australia.
The first 2 Sydney Chapter meetings in February and March were held face to face. We introduced an online quiz to reinforce the content presented in an interactive and fun way to the enjoyment of many members.
Then, together with the rest of the world, we went into a COVID 19 lockdown.
Changes needed to be made. The first major one was the conversion of meetings to an online format.
I became the virtual President.
In April, we had the first online Chapter Meeting and continued this throughout the year once a month. We had a mix of guest presenters and also presenters from within the Sydney Chapter, in particular Peter Aubourg. Our guest presenters included Daryl Guppy, Peter Castle and David Villagra.
The Sydney Chapter Online meeting had a record webinar attendance in July with a special Q & A with Daryl Guppy.
The record was broken again in September with more people attending the presentation by Peter Castle. The Sydney Chapter proudly held the highest recorded attendance for any ATAA webinar in 2020.
An enjoyable part of my role was choosing to present regularly throughout the year, educating members in an informative, short style format of 10-15 minute segments.
Although these sessions were quick to present, many hours went into the planning of each meeting, creating the content and getting to know the presenters. Of course I did not need to do this but my standards and expectations of a quality meeting were high. The Sydney Chapter rose to the challenge of COVID lockdown restrictions and succeeded in providing members and visitors with good content, speakers and value for their membership in 2020.
Looking back, I am proud of the high webinar retention rates and consistently high attendance including the two highest attended meetings of the ATAA nationally in 2020. It made my year as a virtual President, in reality, one to remember.