I guess many of you are thinking “what a weird and strange title for an article, what has aviculture got to do with these new-fangled internet technologies?” Please bear with me, grab a coffee, beer, wine or whatever your poison might be and read on.
Internet technologies, as we are all aware, have become ubiquitous. They influence most areas of our lives, our vehicles are connected and rely heavily on microprocessors, banking and business is all online and reliant a range of ever more complex integrated computer-based devices and software. All communication that is not in-person is digital. Letters and cheques are a thing of the past, and even phone calls are now sent over the internet. Analog copper phone lines have been largely replaced by fibre optic high speed internet connections like our NBN in Australia. Not so many years ago we viewed Dick Tracey style video phones as impossible fiction, now commonplace on our wireless smart phones.
Has aviculture kept pace? Have aviculturists kept pace? Have bird clubs kept pace? Sadly, in general, we are lagging behind, in my view, this is to the detriment of aviculture. It’s not all doom and gloom, there are some shining lights, that present plenty of opportunities to embrace.
Social Media
Social media is a collective term, describing online community-based interaction. Facebook is probably the most well-known with Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn well known, but there are numerous others. Social media enables groups with similar interests to discuss, share and link a whole range of text, audio and video transparently. In recent years businesses have infiltrated social media in a big way to market and promote their products and track customers within and across multiple platforms.
Let’s focus on Facebook. There is close to 3 billion members globally of this popular social media application – a substantial proportion of the total population on the planet. Clearly optimising one’s presence on Facebook has the potential for massive returns, in our case massive promotion of aviculture.
Facebook includes three major components: profiles, groups and pages. A Facebook profile is an individual’s personal account. Profiles have a timeline where users can share updates, photos, videos, and interact with their friends. A Facebook group is a space for community interaction and discussion based on shared interests, which can be quite specific, mutation Gouldians, for instance, or more general such as Australian parrots. Facebook pages represent public entities like a bird club, or organization like CCBFA, pages allow for branding, promotion, and analytics.
Groups or pages?
Members of Facebook groups can post directly to the group, whilst only the administrators of pages can create new posts of a page. A page is likely a better solution for a bird club to promote its activities Have a look at CCBFA’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/CCBFA, it contains posts advising of our meetings, directing people to submissions, advising when new editions our journal are released and more critically sharing affiliate club flyers regarding their upcoming sales, shows, conferences and other events. Contrast with a typical group which allows all members to create posts. In both cases users are free to comment on posts.
The power of Facebook to get messages out lies in the ability to share posts, and then shared posts get shared and they get shared and so on. This results in posts going “viral”, meaning they have been shared exponentially, perhaps to hundreds of thousands, or even millions of users. The number of views and the number of users liking a post results in Facebook ranking the post higher, and hence is it is displayed to more users. Security options can be specified to prevent sharing, however enabling public sharing is the best way to get your messages out.
Consider an event, maybe a bird show, sale or expo. If the club advertises on its website then it is unlikely many will see the advertisement. If they advertise on their Facebook page without any sharing and few likes then much the same, few viewers. Same occurs when we advertise in our club magazines, only a select few readers. If we share widely to a range of Facebook groups and then members of those groups share to further groups, then thousands can be contacted at no cost. Social media is a fantastic tool for getting our message out to the masses.
Clubs can pay to boost posts, this enables the post to reach targeted members of the general public who are otherwise unaware of your club. When boosting, you are able to specify quite specific attributes of your intended audience, parameters such as location, age, gender, interests, family details, etc. can all be specified. The boost can occur immediately or over a period of days or even weeks.
Video conferencing and streaming services
If there was one positive as a result of COVID, it forced business, government and education to adopt video conferencing such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. On a personal note video conferences have changed my life. Previously I would routinely travel into the city or fly interstate to attend a single business or government meeting. Attendance at a 1 hour meeting essentially took a complete day, with video conference a 1 hour meeting requires 1 hour! Of course, online meetings are not the same as in person for a range of reasons, particularly for initial contact, so a balance is needed.
Streaming services such as YouTube are now commonplace with apps available on smart phones and now on most internet connected televisions as well as on computers. The ability to watch video such as TV and movies streamed over the internet using services such as Netflix, Stan or Prime has become commonplace. Our bird clubs can do similar using YouTube, Twitch and other services.
Should bird clubs embrace video conferencing and streaming for their meetings are other events? It depends. Let’s consider a few examples.
A number of bird clubs are now live streaming their in-person meetings. I was involved in sorting out the system used by the Finch Society of Australia that is now working well. Optimising the audio and video quality at minimal cost takes some initial work. I’m aware there are other clubs such as the Avicultural Society of South Australia and the Queensland Finch Society doing similar. If clubs require assistance setting up, please don’t hesitate to make contact.
The Finch Society of Australia
I can only speak from experience with the Finch Society of Australia. Initially the committee was concerned that members would no longer attend in person, preferring to stay home and watch online. Such concerns have not eventuated. In reality the bulk of viewers online are from areas too distant to travel to meetings, so in fact we are increasing our reach plus enabling remote members to engage. We use Zoom so online attendees can contribute, and we also stream the Zoom meeting live on YouTube. The YouTube version is retained so anyone can watch into the future. We often edit to remove the main meeting and retain just the presentation. For example, the May 2023 Finch Society of Australia meeting featured Bob Barnes speaking on foreign finch and softbill species we have lost in Australian aviculture or that we are in danger of losing. This presentation now features on the club’s YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/@TheFinchSocietyofAustralia
Canary and Cage Bird Federation of Australia (CCBFA) meetings
During COVID, CCBFA decided to trial running our meetings via Zoom. This has proved to be a real success. Prior to the availability of video conferencing such as Zoom, our meetings were in person at the Ashfield RSL club close to the centre of Sydney. CCBFA represents the interests of some 240 clubs nationally. Obviously only club delegates within an hour or so of Ashfield ever regularly attended, were we truly representative of the nation? No, not really. Using Zoom, delegates from all clubs from all over the Australia are able to attend and have their voice heard. We don’t yet have regular attendance from many clubs, but the opportunity now exists. Mind you, I’m not sure how we’d cope if 200 plus delegates logged in, but it would be a good problem to have. Please encourage your club’s CCBFA delegate to attend our meetings – all are emailed details for all meetings. I consider our CCBFA Zoom meetings to a real success. Zoom is well suited to administrative type meetings, particularly when attendees are physically distant from one another such that attending in person is difficult.
CCBFA did run a few composite meetings where we ran both in-person at Ashfield RSL and online via Zoom. In my opinion this was difficult to manage, as discussion with all delegates is common in such meetings (unlike most club level meetings). It is difficult to manage both in terms of the technology so that all present online and in person can hear and speak equitably. My preference is for Zoom only in terms of meeting management. CCBFA has floated the idea of having some separate social events for delegates – lunch in different regions, for example, as online meetings can never compete in a socialising sense.
The Avicultural Society of Australia conference online speakers
I attended the recent Avicultural Society of Australia conference in Shepparton, which was a fantastic event. I encourage all aviculturists to attend such conferences if they can. Amazing events where you get to live and breath aviculture for days and nights on end – what’s not to like? Many thanks to all involved in organising, presenting, opening their aviaries, etc. – very much appreciated.
There was some understandable concern by the organisers when two of their overseas presenters were unable to attend in person due to illness and work commitments. Video conferencing came to the rescue. I think all present would agree that both these streamed presentations were fantastic and in no way detracted from the overall conference experience. In fact, the online presentation by Dr Luis Neves describing and showing incredible footage of the new Bird Paradise attraction in Singapore opening as an upgraded Jurong replacement was certainly motivational. I think all conference delegates are keen to visit Singapore as soon as the new park is fully operational. Tony Silva’s online presentation was also, as one would expect, full of expert titbits to consider. Would in-person have been better? Yes, but video conferencing is now such that the difference is of less significance.
In my experience, the use of social media, video conferencing and streaming services by bird clubs and representative organisations is to be encouraged. We need to utilise such technologies wisely to get our amazing expertise out to the wider bird keeping community and to enable real time communication regardless of physical location. Encourage your club to embrace the possibilities.
By: Sam Davis – Animal Care Australia Bird Representative. Originally published: September 2023 ACE Newsletter.
