[NFB-Talk] Presidential Release Meeting

[Michael Ausbun]

Hello Mark, 
President Riccobono apologized during the meeting for technical difficulties that were arising resulting in members encountering a participant limitation. He said that the limit had been priorly set to accommodate far more than what zoom had initially aloud; and, Federation leaders (Pam Allen, our first vice-president) or our national center staff were working on resolving these issues. They were fairly quickly resolved—at last count, I recorded 800 listeners. Although I agree the technical glitches are unfortunate and I'm disappointed more people couldn't be there because of them, I think it's only fair to our leadership to be forgiving and patient. The technical glitch was out of their control and any new endeavor (especially technology related) inevitably results in some kind of bug on first attempt. 
I'm hoping we continue to explore this delivery method in the future; and, I know our leadership will continue to work out the snags as fast as they can. 
Respectfully, 
Michael Ausbun 
Digital Accessibility specialist, Western Governors University 
member, NFB of Louisiana

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 2, 2020, at 8:01 PM, Mark Tardif via nFB-Talk <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello, friends.  We were asked to join the live Presidential Release meeting of April, 2020 this evening.  We were told this was a great forum to listen and ask questions of the president.  We were cordially asked to participate, and nonmembers were also asked to participate in this meeting.  However, when I tried to call in, twice, I might add, I was bounced out and told that the meeting was full as there were over 300 participants.  I tried using Zoom on my computer and was told the meeting had reached its capacity.  While I’m sure this was an honest mistake, this was an unfortunate oversight on the part of the Federation.  Obviously, the technology wasn’t researched properly.  Frankly that angers me, but what’s worse is that this was advertised as a meeting we could all participate in or at least listen to live.  To me this seems like a serious misrepresentation.  If people are new and interested, it will appear that we don’t have our “ducks in a row.”  Yes, I’m sure we can listen to Presidential Release 493 some time in April, that’s really not the point.  At the very least, there should have been some warning that the Zoom capacity for this meeting was limited, so we should have called quite early.  I didn’t see this in any of the emails concerning this meeting.  We talk about being a “Federation family.”  This hardly seems like a proper example of what that should be.  If we can’t do better than this, maybe it’s understandable that some blind people don’t particularly like us.       
> Mark Tardif 
> Nuclear arms will not hold you. 
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