Remember the old days when you could have a VCR or BetaMax? If you were in analysis paralysis, you may have waited so long that the choices eventually went away. Where are you with video conferencing? Are you a Skype user? Do you rely on FaceTime?

I thought Skype was a miracle when it first came along, particularly because I had a daughter living and teaching in Japan at the time. The first time she carried around her laptop tuned to skype.com to show me her new living quarters on Sado Island, I almost cried. Seeing the tatami mat where she slept and mostly seeing her beautiful face, were incredible technological wonders. No to mention, the phone bill savings were amazing.

Video conferencing has come a long way. To compete with big companies was financially challenging. Most formats required year-long subscriptions at unreasonable rates. When I found out about zoom.us nearly a year ago, it was introduced to me by a woman who used it to see every member of my mastermind group and to share her experience with virtual assisting from her home office in San Francisco. She demonstrated her skills wisely by teaching all of us about this marvelous technology.

Next Thursday night I’m having a test-drive session to demonstrate the power of Mastermind Groups, and I’m using zoom to connect everyone. Picture the opening of The Brady Bunch where you see nine people’s faces – the 8 Brady’s, plus Alice, in three rows of three, all looking at the camera and smiling. It’ll be kind of like that on zoom. You’ll get to see everyone, yourself included, on the screen. Whoever is speaking gets a framed highlight around their square, but it’s a beautiful interface and all eyes will be on you.

We’ll have a similarly full screen with women from all over the country zooming in. There’s no cost to you for this experience. The visual and audio quality is terrific, and there’s the capability of screen sharing and recording. We won’t need those next Thursday, but when I run my longer programs, both will come in handy.

I’d had some technical issues as I was learning to use zoom, but the team there has been accommodating, available and happily instructive. I always want to blame the system, but as my brother said, agreeing with my mother when she’d had a mishap in her car and blamed the mechanics, “You’re right, Mom. It’s definitely the nut behind the wheel.”

If you’ve never experienced a Mastermind session or have a burning issue (not a crisis, please!) where wise guidance could be helpful, join me for this program next week.