Lots of interesting comments and thoughts in this thread.
We have had an interactive remote demo (IRD) to our club venue, in fact three of them. The virus situation made us and the demonstrators realise we could beam "direct to home" and this is what we did for our last IRD.
But, with a difference! we had 5 clubs in the UK and 2 guests from South Africa involved on the one demo. Minor glitches to start but in the end 123 people enjoyed 3 hours of woodturning from Hawaii.
The 5 clubs have now started to talk to each other and the South Africans are considering using IRD's themselves.
There are many options: film your in house demos and beam them to members who cannot attend for one.
As for information, do check out
www.lucidwoodturners.com which, with over 600 members is the repository for all things relating to IRD's.
Although we started using IRD's in 2017, the UK remained behind the curve until the mid 2019's when we had more demos and other clubs came along to see what it was all about. Covid-19 has speeded up any clubs plans to use IRD's.
There are other video conferencing platforms available other than Zoom.
Just remember video conferencing technology is over 20 years old, been used in education for at least 15 years, so woodturning is late coming to the party.
It's now become part of the mix and our club events managers should consider the balance between live demos and IRD,s within their budget constraints.
You can run House Notices, Raffle, Show Table all within the Zoom meeting. Have the demo and then throw the mic open to members to chat to the demonstrator.
David