A Year in the Great Indoors: A Retrospective

In March of 2020, the UBCO TWS held its annual spring general meeting. With the COVID-19 pandemic looming, members narrowly outnumbered executives at the meeting, and this was only days before the university announced the transition of all courses to online learning. The meeting briefed members on the upcoming executive elections, and with some of us future executives in the audience, it was very telling of what was in store for us the following year.

With only one executive, treasurer Chloe Wright, staying on board from the previous year, we were a completely new group of executives. Three of us were undergraduates with no prior professional experience working with wildlife and none of us had any experience running a club online. We knew that making the transition to virtual operations would be a struggle. Being a club that focuses on learning and developing relevant skills to wildlife professions, as well as appreciating wildlife and the outdoors in general, a lot of events required us to meet in person, like the trip to the BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops in early 2020. The main draw to this club is hands-on events related to wildlife, so the moratorium on all in-person events meant everything was off the table.

Initially, we were at a standstill when it came to planning for the upcoming year. The normal structure of events and scheduling that had carried over each year was thrown out the window. Running a virtual club was such a new and foreign concept that we had no idea where to begin. Even getting in touch and communicating with the new executives was slow to start. Without a definitive statement from SUO, we could only hope that in-person socially distanced events would be allowed which made planning for any and all events very precarious. Eventually, the prospect of in-person events was no longer an option, and we switched our focus to operating completely online.

Before we could even come up with possible online events, we had to figure out how to garner new interest in the club as well as bring back old members. On a typical year, orientation and club day would allow us to advertise to potential new members, but with the absence of both of those events, our exposure became a lot more limited. This was where having a strong social media presence, headed by social media manager Angel Goh, came very much in handy. His consistent posting, which included both updates on current events and educational resources kept our members informed throughout the year. Our social media presence this last year was the backbone of our club’s virtual success.

Thanks to our vice president, Kalvin Chan, we created a TWS discord for the first time in order to try and engage more with members virtually, since we couldn’t meet in person. In addition to just chatting with members and having another way to keep people updated on events and resources, we hosted identification challenges to improve ID skills and hosted weekly voice calls for members to chat with us and each other about wildlife. While it wasn’t as active as we had hoped it would be, it was still used quite a bit and we’re looking forward to using it as a platform for communication again this year.

Brainstorming ideas for our events was made easier thanks to Siobhan Darlington, our events and outreach coordinator. She was responsible for booking all of our guest speakers, as well as coordinating and filming our bird banding event from Rocky Point Bird Observatory. The bird banding workshop was an event that we wouldn’t have been able to conduct or even consider unless we were online. If there were any silver linings to going virtual, a larger scope for the types of events we could hold definitely was one. Another example of an event that we could only do online was our collaboration with the University of Alberta Student Chapter for a networking panel.

Our biggest event by far was our iNaturalist Competition that followed an introductory presentation on iNaturalist by Kiara Gannon. We challenged members to get outside on their own and record the wildlife in their backyards or in other wild spaces. Members would then post their observations on iNaturalist and the member with the most observations won a prize. Regardless of where our members were in the world, this was a simple and care-free event for our members to participate in.

Running the club online for a year has taught us a lot. For one thing, it’s more clear than ever that our communication, our drive, and our creativity in all aspects of our jobs is just as important as what we put into our events. Outdoor events like hikes are something we may have over-relied on in the past, and this year might see us lean more towards virtual workshops that are a little more nuanced, educational and offer opportunities we don’t have access to in-person. Additionally, our communication was more consistent and engaging throughout the year, rather than sporadic and usually to advertise upcoming events, and this is something that we are looking to continue in the future.

For the upcoming year, we are optimistic that we will be able to hold outdoor socially distanced events such as hikes at Myra Canyon and bring back previous events like going to the BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops. We also hope to transition events like the iNaturalist challenge and various workshops that we have come up with from last year into in-person events. This last year has been somewhat of a practice run for us execs who have stayed on the team, and a return to in-person events could mean a whole new beast to tackle. If we do have to return to a virtual environment, we are confident that we will be able to take what we’ve learned and make our second go-around even better than the first.