Friday, March 29, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Digital world preferable to the real one

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Column deadline night but also an invitation for a Zoom meeting on sheep breeding. What to do?
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Maybe I could do both simultaneously but let us first consider the landscape.

Many of us have been Zooming furiously for several months since the start of lockdown.

I’d never heard of it before March but captured by the technology and within a few days was a Zoommeister myself and issuing invites and hosting all over the place.

It worked well connecting family scattered around the globe. We have one son living and working in London and with covid-19 mayhem all around him it was good to be able to touch base and reassure his mother he was fine.

A cousin also living in London just a few weeks ago on Zoom told me because of their advanced age they hadn’t left the house for nearly four months. “The air outside is foetid with covid-19,” she told me emphatically. “We wish we were living in New Zealand.”

I asked her how they were managing to feed themselves and she told me they, like many others, have food delivered daily to their door. A grim existence we have been spared and happening all around the world that we are not even that aware of.

Then during levels three and four there was the weekly catch-up on a Friday night with a couple of mates. Alcohol was involved and they turned into debauched affairs but a lot of fun during a time when there were no other social dealings going on.

But the novelty of these social Zooming interactions has waned and they are now rare, probably because we can just meet up in the outside world again like in the old days.

However, I’ve had an increase in business related Zoom meetings and they suit me very well.

A Hastings company I’m a director of had no choice but to hold meetings via Zoom through the lockdown but now several of us can travel the hour or so each way to the meetings again we have elected to mostly do it on our computers. The technology has been stable and it is so much more efficient that the old catch-cry there is nothing like a face-to-face meeting doesn’t have the weight it once did.

So, here I am now tapping away while listening in on a Beef + Lamb Genetics sheep breeders forum showing sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.

Like everyone else other than the presenters, my camera and microphone are off so I’m not being distracting or annoying, both traits I’ve been accused of in the past.

This forum usually alternates between Dunedin and Napier and is a great way to pick up the latest in sheep-breeding technology but is also, of course, a good social get-together with fellow ram breeders. No socialising on this call though.

We are all competitors in a tough market but get on well. After all, like politicians from all parties who have more in common with each other than the rest of the population, a group like ram breeders has the same challenges and opportunities facing us all. We share and swap a lot of information with our competitors in the interests of the sheep industry.

Now I’ve jotted down these thoughts I can return to the digital meeting and give these presenters the full attention they deserve.

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