How many of us have had the thought, “Gosh, it would be nice to have some shares in Zoom right about now!”? As the world shifted to all things on-line during the pandemic, I began speaking about Zoomer Burnout as I learned to teach from my living room, jumped into classes taught by Nia friends around the world and tried out a host of other opportunities to learn and engage while being on lockdown, connected with family and attended business meetings. It quickly became a little too much!

Zoom benefited with a 418% growth in the first 2 months! Eric Yuan built Zoom as a company that was customer and employee-centric, and his team built a product that sells itself. They were in position to roll things out smoothly and effectively for their customers as the pandemic hit. According to Forbes, Zoom users have surged from 10 million last year to 200 million today. The company has quickly taken steps to increase its security, hiring people such as former FaceBook CSO Alex Stamos as a consultant and ramping up its bug bounty program. It’s even addressed concerns about data being sent to China by adding the option to choose where your data is routed.

Nia teachers, and other fitness teachers, all over the world considered their options and scrambled to serve their students, and in many cases to save their livelihoods. Our students responded with patience and generosity. Of course for some, the idea of dancing in your living room by yourself and watching me on a small screen, was not worth the effort. But for many of you, once we got the technology right (I purchased a new mic and mixer and got coached by a Sound engineer) there was ease at my end. And beyond the occasional moments of slow wifi, barking dogs or releasing the MUTE button things have run pretty smoothly at your end.

Together we’ve created a lovely feel of connection and community over these months. I love seeing your faces, hearing your voices before and after class but understand that some prefer to not be so public on-line. Our classes are low on the radar for scammers but if you have concerns, when you do use Zoom, turn off your camera and mic and make sure you have a webcam cover too.

Thank you for supporting me through this time as I made sure that those impacted negatively from Covid 19 could pay what they could or ride for free. I even had a couple of you donate money to cover some of our community’s classes. So grateful! I likewise have been making donations to Arts Organizations that are really struggling right now. Together we can get through this.

I’d love to hear from you with your experience of Zoom and how you are making the most of your at-home time, dancing through this Pandemic.

For Whom the Bell Tolls