With the rapidly changing situation, we have pulled forward a decision on the
AGM▸ on 4th April - pointless waiting until a week before it was due to happen.
The Great Western Coffee Shop AGM on 4th April 2020 in Taunton is CANCELLED.
Periodic (usually annual) check point meeting such as our AGM are important milestones in organisations - but whilst they are important, they are rarely urgent. It is certainly not worth putting our members at any significant risk of catching infection by having the travel to Taunton. It would also be utterly unfair of us on the admin / moderator team to continue with plans that push members into making really difficult "attend or not" decisions for a meeting that is not vital in real life at this point.
The forum continues to run (member will have noticed this!) and indeed provides perhaps ever more useful information, discussion and social facilities now and in the period to come. Some members have gone very quiet as they deal with personal, work and family issues away from The Coffee Shop; other are here more rather than less - and it's to be celebrated that we're open and available. New members welcome too.
So is the AGM cancelled, postponed, or replaced by something else? I don't know; probability is that we'll have some sort of online checkpoint event/ meeting later in the spring - but a decision on the detail of that is a few weeks away. Most likely we'll use a "Meet the Manager" style session as "Meet the team", but pre-loaded with publications so there's little to surprise anyone on the day. One of the joys of the Coffee Shop is just how engaged member are all the time - our annual event is not "the one chance to meet the team" that it is at so many traditional AGMs.
