I knew that I was worried about converting my trunk shows to online lectures during the pandemic, but I never thought about it from the guilds’ perspective! I recently put my profile on The Quilters Calendar and the owner mentioned that guilds were nervous about entering into the virtual world. She suggested that I collect a few endorsements from recent virtual lectures. I thought that was such a good idea! I have added them to my Teaching/Lectures page and wanted to quote a couple of them here.

I recently lectured for the South Florida MQG, and as their Treasurer said, “We did not want to be an experiment. We have 100 guild members and we need to deliver quality programming.” She did a little research, listened to my speaking voice on a podcast, and looked at my books. They decided to give it a shot and afterwards said, “As much as we wanted to go digital, none in our guild had used Zoom. Amy assured us that her presentation would work in the Zoom platform and she guided me on how to use it. Everything went perfect. Her slide show is well photographed with highlighted photos, she staged her “Zoom Studio” with great lighting, sound and background. We had Q&A via chat and live and for our first “virtual” lecture everything was perfect. We would highly recommend Amy for your guild for online or in person lecture or class. Amy’s lecture was well prepared from content to presentation. Our members were delighted and are now asking if she can come to the guild to teach in person. We all hope that is possible.”

I was supposed to visit the Great Lakes MQG at the beginning of the pandemic and we needed to pivot. I presented a virtual lecture on Intentional Piecing and this is what a guild member had to say, “In addition to her presentation being loaded with interesting and informative content, Amy was able to give us a trunk show via her powerpoint slides. Her slides were well organized and perfectly illustrated the concepts she was trying to teach us. In fact, I venture to say that her use of slides was so skillful that I preferred seeing her quilts this way as opposed to having her hold them up at the guild meeting. It can always be tricky to see well in a large room and from afar. Amy was able to zoom in on the details relevant to the issue she was talking about, and she was able to show multiple examples of the concept through her quilts. Her talk was incredibly engaging, and the hour flew by so fast!” It’s true that sometimes I can show certain details, or smaller items in my virtual presentations than I can in my inperson presentations, and there are no heads in the way of your viewing! Both formats have their benefits!

One thing that virtual presentations can lack is the interaction that we get in person. However, I am always happy to answer questions for as long as they last and chat with members. I enjoy it too!

If you are interested in reading more, just take a look at my Teaching page for the complete endorsements. We are all in this together, working through new formats!