Introducing a New Solution To Hold Virtual and Hybrid Meetings

by Ben Zelikovitz

Over the past few months, GetQuorum has successfully hosted over 400 virtual owner meetings. Since Ontario's Emergency Orders went into effect, we have been overwhelmed with requests for our fully managed virtual AGM service. With the end of the emergency orders, corporations that deferred their AGMs are now required to hold them by October or November.  The problem is that most of these corporations are having difficulty securing meeting dates due to the high demand placed on virtual meeting vendors, ourselves included.

This doesn't sit right with us, corporations used to be able to hold their AGMs any time they wanted.  Corporations already need to schedule their AGMs around the availability of their board members, lawyers and auditors.  They should not be beholden to yet another vendor's availability. Our clients should be able to hold their AGMs whenever they want and GetQuorum has created a solution to accommodate them.

Introducing GetQuorum's Live Voting Service.

GetQuorum's Live Voting Service is a super-simple turn-key solution that you can use to easily administer a live electronic vote during a meeting. It's designed for use in virtual-only meetings, in-person meetings, or hybrid meetings with both virtual and in-person attendance. GetQuorum's Live Voting Service works in conjunction with any video conferencing and/or teleconferencing solution so you can host your meeting using your favourite software (eg. Zoom, Hangouts, GoToMeeting, etc.).

The Live Voting Service is an add-on to our full governance suite which includes advance electronic voting (proxy or ballot), distribution of meeting materials, and collection of consents.

And you get the usual GetQuorum premium service as well: everything is configured by us so it's super simple for you to use. All that's required from you when you run your meeting is to hit a button to start real-time voting during your virtual, hybrid or in-person meeting.

The GetQuorum team already uses the Live Voting app for all of our Hosted Virtual Meetings, we've just made it available for everyone to use.

The Live Voting App in action.

Here's what you can expect:

  • Host your own virtual meeting using your favourite video conferencing or teleconferencing software (eg. Hangouts, Zoom, GoToMeeting, etc.)
  • Simple, turnkey live voting: we set everything up, you simply  push a button to enable real-time voting for owners in attendance
  • Access to a super easy-to-use online dashboard to see vote results and who's in attendance
  • Advanced voter eligibility tools to ensure accuracy of votes (ie. there are no duplicate proxy and live votes)
  • Instructional tutorials (live and previously recorded)
  • Practice demos
  • How to articles or step-by-step instructions so property managers can easily integrate voting into their virtual meeting
  • The usual GetQuorum service: from serving notice of meeting to proxies and live voting. Everything is configured by us.
  • Unlimited availability: Any time or date, you set your schedule, just let us know when and we'll be ready with your configured voting platform
  • Unlimited meeting duration
  • Run your meeting your own way

We are now accepting November bookings. Please let us know if you're interested by reaching out to contact@getquorum.com.

Why are condo corporations not holding their own virtual meetings now?

There’s a lot to that question. Pulling off a virtual owner’s meeting requires a delicate balance of technology, accurate voting, and an understanding of meeting procedures. First, consider advanced voting and owner apathy. Without an easy option to submit proxies, even virtual meetings run the risk of not reaching quorum. Next, consider the challenges associated with hosting a virtual meeting. For example, handling registration and attendance at a virtual meeting is a challenge.  Identifying who is present and who has submitted a proxy previously is integral in determining whether quorum has been met and who's actually eligible to vote.  Toss in the complexity of a few paper proxies and things get really fun to track! For a small corporation, this is potentially manageable. For larger corporations, the hosting of their own virtual AGM (without GetQuorum) is exponentially more challenging. Property Managers are known to have a variety of skill sets, but most have not organized large scale virtual meetings in the past.

Well, Phase 3 is here, why not hold an in-person meeting?

Well sure, if you have 50 units or less, perhaps you can find somewhere to host your AGM. If you have 200, 300, or even 700 units then GOOD LUCK, there aren't options available at this time to support attendance of that size. Can a 300 unit corporation limit in-person AGM attendance to only 50 people? That’s a more complex answer that requires lawyers to weigh in on.

Thank you,

Ben, JJ, Trevor and the whole GetQuorum team