b'18 Member News November 2020Digital futures as a response to COVID-19Webinarsthe new wayto attend IET eventsAs the COVID-19 pandemic spread across theWe also caught up with N Wales LN Chair, David Crawford: Clearly, world, in March 2020 we were forced to cancelwebinars are the way forward all local, physical network activity globally.and will be for some time, maybe forever. All our usual activities are However, we werent going to letat a standstill. Before lockdown the pandemic, lockdown or socialwe were finding that visits to distancing stop us from continuingWe ended up attracting moreindustrial premises were becoming to support the global engineeringmore difficult, arranging talks was attendees to our webinarbecoming more and more expensive community through great, innovativecompared to our in-personso it was an appropriate time to content. In April 2020, we launchedreinvent ourselves online.Zoom webinars for local networksevents, which was great to (LNs). Since the launch, over 40see, as well as attendees fromThe webinars have created a new webinars have been run by 21 LNs.outside of London. Followingway to reach our members as well With this new global platform, weveas many non-members who are now on from the webinar we haveenquiring about our work and our seen delegates join from across thehad great feedback frommembership.world. From an average attendance of around 50 per webinar in April tothe event and have beenOur move into the virtual world over 180 per webinar in July, overapproached by multiple peoplehas been a huge success. Were 4,500 attendees have benefited fromwho wish to join us on thecontinuing to seek improvements in the hard work of our volunteers. our process, delivery and strategy London Young Professionalsbecause we want to keep going. London LN YP Chair, VolunteerNetwork Committee. This isnt something temporaryLakshan Subenthiran, tellsanother 50+ webinars are planned us why he wanted to movefor the rest of 2020. One thing is physical events online:Lakshan Subenthiranfor sure, webinars are here to stay!With lockdown in London in fullVolunteer, London LN YP Chairswing and the pause of in-person IET events, we didnt want to stop meeting our objectives of providing opportunities for Young Professionals and Students in London to develop their skills and knowledge, so we decided to try and deliver these using digital platforms readily available. Check out all the upcoming webinars at: events.theiet.org/events'