Virtual AGM with no technical hitches on Skype

I am a partner in a virtual business; that is to say that there are three partners: one is in Woking, one in Hemel Hempstead and one in Worcester. We meet once a year for an AGM at Oxford Services by the M40.

With the weather forecast for heavy snow running from approximately Worcester to Woking and bisecting Oxford, we decided that the pragmatic decision was to cancel the meeting. The trouble was, we had already called it off once before, when six inches of snow lay on the ground last week.

Thus, no further delays could be allowed, and we took the decision to hold the meeting "virtually". We have held such virtual meetings before - always on MSN. But that tool is creaky - crashing one partner's system, and throwing out members of a conversation at random being two of the problems.

Being a recent member of the Skype community, I suggested Skype to host our virtual meeting. Despite one of the partners not having Skype, she was able to download and install with ease.

We held a three-hour AGM on Skype without a technical hitch. All we used was the messaging feature; no visuals required - but it all worked perfectly.

Although it is useful to meet in person at least once a year, we are confident that we have a tool that can host our meeting in future. We felt very "green" (environmentally so). As for the weather - who knows what it has been doing along the M40. It sleeted here in Woking during the meeting...

Contingency planning required for snow

With the snow and ice continuing to keep Britain in their frosty grip, business leaders have urged the Government to convene a special conference to review bad-weather contingency planning.

With Britain at a “standstill”, the Federation of Small Business (FSB) estimated that the bad weather had cost the UK economy around £600 million a day, as staff struggled to get to work.

There should, say the FSB, be discussions between local authorities, transport and salt mining companies, schools and businesses to find solutions in periods of bad weather.

The FSB says that many small firms have been forced to close, have lost business or seen their supplies run out because of transportation problems, as many roads have been unusable. School closures have meant parents have had to stay at home to look after their children.

We Brits never seem to learn lessons from bad weather, and we haven’t done so, even with last February’s snow still in the mind.

The FSB urged the Government to put an emergency grant scheme in place for small firms adversely affected by the snow, together with mandatory guidelines for local authorities regarding salt, and increase the nation’s salt supplies.