The future of strata meeting management and voting

0:00 – Speaker Background and Strata Complexity

0:00 Ryan Grant: First we have Craig Moore, co-founder of Property Flute, covering the topic the future of strata meeting management and voting. Hello Craig.

0:12 Craig Moore: Thanks for the introduction Ryan, and welcome to everybody. That was a great introduction for me, because I'm going to be reminding all of our viewers today of the challenges we've had in the last many years with technology, and why it's so different today, and what the opportunities are. I'm going to mention some things that we know from the past. They're obvious, but they're worth mentioning again, because I, as a property manager, experience these things all the time with the users and attendees at meetings.

0:50 So I'll start quickly with a bio about myself, and by doing so, give everyone some thoughts about why our industry is so complicated, so complex, and why we need sophisticated solutions. I've been a senior strata manager for quite a while, and a managing broker in Vancouver. As Ryan mentioned, I'm a co-founder of Property Flute. As a subject matter expert I'm familiar with the systems of several management companies, both as an employee and as a client at three strata complexes.

1:30 I've managed and participated in all kinds of strata corporations: residential, commercial, mixed use residential and commercial, with and without sections. And for those who aren't aware, strata corporations can be divided into separate legal entities, so they've got separate councils, separate budgets, separate trust accounts. It's like three or more strata corporations in one, so that provides its own complexity. It can have types. Now, that doesn't necessarily affect voting or some of the more sophisticated issues of managing a strata, but it's another level of complexity that the technology needs to address.

2:20 I've managed bare land strata corporations, resorts and hotels where there's a residential and commercial component. I've assisted with resorts where there's a fractional interest — so that's different than fractional voting that Ryan mentioned, but fractional interest, where you can have two, three or four separate legal owners of one strata lot. And of course there are strata corporations with air space parcels that just make the whole strata world more interesting.

2:56 And I've been on a strata council for several years, not at the moment but many years in the past, so I've seen it from all sides. And I'm fortunate to have been involved with many very good management companies, both in Vancouver and in the interior of BC. So Ryan, I'd like to have my presentation up, how do we do that?

3:20 Ryan Grant: Perfect, yeah, that's great, here we go.

3:25 Craig Moore: Here we go. So that's the bio that I just ran through, and I'm going to move on to the next slide. I'll touch briefly on why we think this conference is important and impactful. Well, for the first time it brings together organizations and researchers that are bringing new and innovative tools and knowledge to the BC strata industry.

3:51 And of course it's available to everyone across BC no matter what their location is, which is what's making our industry very interesting these days, because people aren't staying in their strata lots, they're moving around, they're living elsewhere, they're travelling to their resorts, they want to have this service and access to their strata wherever they are. Some of the companies presenting today have been around for a few years, and to a degree it has been a struggle for them to gain adoption.

4:24 But I'm happy to say that that day is here, and the demand for these services is growing. It's evident because councils and general ownership want to be more informed and to feel as though they can have better, faster decision making. So again, as a property manager, I see this all the time, whether it's a client that I have or somebody who wants to become a client. They're demanding more from their managing agents, they want these services, they're looking for them, they're doing their own research and they're becoming more sophisticated.

5:01 I've seen that sophistication level grow quite significantly over the years. And of course more and more property management companies and self-managed strata corporations are looking to use online cloud-based tools for managing documents and day-to-day matters, and for managing their meetings.

5:18 – Digital Tools in Strata Management

5:27 Craig Moore: What does the digital world bring us? Again, this is simple and obvious, we all know this, but it's worth reminding ourselves that strata council decisions by email are now commonplace, and the demands brought on by owner communication emails is insurmountable at times. And the reality is, since COVID came along, more groups are realizing that digital tools can make their property management better and more effective, and management companies and other organizations are continuing to implement platforms that provide extended service to clients.

6:04 Examples are issue trackers, notice distribution, online document storage, discussion forums, and access to third-party payment solutions. Challenges with the early technology: well, I remember clearly some very distinct challenges while I was trying to get my councils to meet by teleconference or online.

6:22 – Challenges With Early Meeting Technology

6:34 Craig Moore: Many of them didn't think that it would be effective meeting that way. Once they took the opportunity to have a teleconference they realized it was very productive, and now the same is coming on with general meetings. It has been a large challenge, but the tools we've got these days, communication tools, online voting tools, are making it much more acceptable. Early on the video communication platforms were very basic.

7:08 I'm thinking about Skype: when we tried to do council meetings by Skype it seemed very awkward for a variety of reasons. But now we're all using much more sophisticated platforms such as Zoom and Teams and WebEx. So we've got these interesting new tools, but I feel as though we're still at an early stage of development, and there's a need to bring more sophisticated applications to strata corporations, and in particular with our application Property Flute, which is a meeting management platform.

7:50 Fortunately internet and Wi-Fi speeds are much faster today, and devices that can be used have improved dramatically: smartphones, tablets, intelligent cameras and microphones offer new opportunities for digital meetings. This may seem obvious to many of you, but individual users are still learning how to use many of these tools and are having their very first experiences with them. So, our story for Property Flute: Ryan and myself, we were working together.

8:28 – How Property Flute Was Created

8:31 Craig Moore: Ryan's been on a council that I was managing, two councils, because he lives in a section strata. So I was working with Ryan closely for a few years, and he had someone that he had met through work who's a developer, and ultimately the three of us got together and developed Property Flute, the online meeting and voting platform. It did get spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic, because all of a sudden everybody didn't want to be together.

9:07 But the challenge there was, there was just a lack of tailored Canadian and BC based solutions, things that just did not work particularly well for many strata corporations in particular. So, factors that have changed how strata meetings are conducted. Simple answer is that holding online general meetings has been awkward, time consuming and laborious. Council members have learned to appreciate being able to meet remotely, and now many owners want the same thing.

9:47 COVID-19 propelled the acceptance and demand for remote attendance at both council meetings and general meetings.

9:51 – General Meeting Check-In and Vote Counting

9:55 Craig Moore: Big challenges at general meetings, however: check in, registration. It's a tall order for some people, council members, property managers and voters. We have to provide the facility to allow for owners with multiple units, and proxies representing multiple owners. That alone was a major driver of why we created Property Flute. Precise counting can be slow and cumbersome, especially for a large strata. We recently ran a meeting for a strata with well over 600 residential and commercial units, and the voting process went exceptionally well.

10:42 It was easy and quick, and it meant the council didn't have to laboriously scrutinize the voting during and after the meeting. An advantage of electronic voting is that we've been able to make sure that, if there are multiple owners attending for one strata lot, or perhaps a proxy that's attending representing a strata lot where the owner also shows up, our software makes sure that you don't ever get a double vote.

11:21 You will only record one vote from one person per strata lot. That's not always easy to guarantee when you're in person. Even if you have ballots it can be a little tricky for somebody counting to make sure they've got it right and that they're only counting one vote per strata lot. So, what hasn't changed? Technology is changing things, but some things haven't changed with regard to general meetings.

11:55 The chair is still required to conduct the meeting. We have to make sure that all the things the chair has to do are provided for, so it's a process that we help strata councils follow. All the requirements of the Strata Property Act remain in place and they must be followed. Although there have been some changes recently, we still have to follow all those rules. And at general meetings everyone must be able to hear and communicate with all other meeting attendees, so that is a bit of a trick, and fortunately technology's helping us get there.

12:39 So the technology opportunities are that it's bringing people together who might not normally attend a meeting. I've seen attendance change dramatically simply because they can attend online. It gives voters confidence that vote counting is being done correctly and effortlessly. It makes sure that owners with multiple strata lots can easily vote separately for each unit, and it provides structure to the meeting that isn't always present with perhaps an inexperienced property manager or self-managed strata.

13:16 Or even experienced strata managers are challenged making sure that the meeting runs properly, flows correctly, that things aren't missed. So I'm going to get into some features of Property Flute, and at the risk of repeating ourselves, I am going to mention a couple of things again, and it's because we put so much effort into accommodating these necessary features, making sure they work well and giving people the confidence that it is what they need.

13:44 – Property Flute Features: Proxies and Quorum

14:07 Craig Moore: So again, we've accommodated owners with multiple units and proxies representing multiple owners. The large meeting we did recently, there was one council member that had 80 proxies. That's a challenge at the best of times, but it went extremely well, and Property Flute will handle all of the owner proxy combinations. It streamlines the check-in and enabling process. So with respect to what the chair must do, certifying proxies, making sure owners are who they say they are, we assist with that process and make sure it's as smooth as possible.

14:54 We're able to handle fractional voting, for mainly commercial units. Residential stratas don't typically have any fractional voting, although I have seen it. Property Flute will have you identify the quorum level and track that, and if there is a time when you fall below quorum, people leave the meeting, it'll prompt you. When voting is done you can proceed as an agenda has been entered into Property Flute, but it's not forcing you to do the votes.

15:32 If for any reason you want to skip a majority vote or three-quarters vote, etc, the software allows you to do that. It also allows you to redo a vote if necessary. So we've made it flexible and provided lots of opportunities to amend votes, to enter quick votes into the system for anything that comes up. We also allow for secret ballots. So that was a big issue when we started Property Flute, and I'm going to skip around to a slide that shows secret ballot submissions.

16:09 – Secret Ballots and Council Elections

16:24 Craig Moore: So we're not required to force people to do secret ballots, but we put a lot of effort into this originally, the feature is still there, if for any reason a strata corporation wants to provide that for their owners they still can. And votes remain completely secret, nobody knows how anyone voted, and even if there's a meeting manager utilizing the system they can't uncover how somebody voted. They can only determine that they did vote.

17:18 Property Flute will of course handle council elections. They can be very, very simple, or they can be a little complicated if more people want on council than there are seats for. And with regard to all voting, it's instant recording of movers, seconders and the votes that are cast as well. It's all done simultaneously and very effortlessly. Once that vote is enabled, users can't vote until the vote is enabled, and once it's ended, of course, they can't go back and change their vote.

18:07 And it will compile votes as fast as people can select yes, no or abstain. For the person running the software, that we call the meeting manager, they'll see the number of votes cast, and when a vote is complete it displays the results with percentages. And there are auditable live results, they're recorded permanently and provided on request from the strata corporation. So all of that comes together to potentially significantly reduce meeting time and remove many of the headaches for strata corporations and property managers.

18:41 – The Meeting Manager Role

18:53 Craig Moore: So, I mentioned meeting manager. We refer to the person running the platform as the meeting manager. That could be anyone, it could be the property manager, a council member, or a Property Flute certified third-party consultant. And the software allows you to have assistants. So maybe it's an assistant that's helping to check in voters. They may be there to provide effectively a scrutineer position, although that's to a large degree irrelevant because it's all taken care of through the technology.

19:37 And the assistant can be enabled to see what is happening in real time, so just like a meeting manager. So if the strata corporation wants to get a warm fuzzy feeling that maybe the third party consultant or the property manager is not playing tricks at all, they can be in the software and watch behind the scenes just like the meeting manager would be. One thing that we have found through putting on meetings is, help is required.

20:13 We've been involved in every Property Flute meeting, and that seems to be a trend that's not going to go away, even though the opportunity is there for a council member or anyone else to run the software. Until all of us are more familiar with technology, getting online, using our microphone, using the video, logging in, etc, it's likely that an assistant from property management, from Property Flute, is going to be required, and we're happy to provide that service.

20:52 There are different service levels. Our website indicates pricing models for those, and that is at propertyflute.ca. Something that we haven't experienced in the past, or if it's been done it's been awkward, that's hybrid meetings.

21:10 – Hybrid In-Person and Online Meetings

21:13 Craig Moore: Hybrid meeting is somewhat of a misnomer, but it is being used. It simply means you've got people sitting in a room and you've got people online. How are we doing that? Technology these days is making it much, much easier, and people can either have the meeting entirely online, or they can do it in person and use online voting tools. So they could use their phone to vote, or the meeting manager, who's in the room or even online, can record the votes manually for those who aren't on their device.

21:53 So the opportunities are essentially endless now, and that keeps everybody involved in their strata as much as possible. So I've got a few screens that I want to show you.

22:11 – Software Walkthrough: Setup, Check-In, Voting

22:11 Craig Moore: This is really not intended to give you an entire tour of Property Flute, but it is just to give you an idea of the look and feel. So when you're setting up a meeting it's creating the community, defining the meeting, establishing the agenda, resolutions, voting thresholds, etc. So this is going to be typically done by a meeting manager. Importing of owners and voting entitlements is extremely easy, all you need is a comma separated value file.

22:58 And it's particularly easy to do that if you have that good information you need to go in in a spreadsheet. It's very, very simple, anyone could learn how to do this quite easily, and you can modify it once it's in the platform. Once you've got your meeting set up and your links for communicating, whether it's a Zoom link or otherwise, Property Flute will allow you to send out an email invitation to everybody, and it can allow you to send it to one person or multiple or everyone.

23:37 And you can do it as many times as are required. People tend to lose their emails, they don't read them, they go to junk mail, whatever. So if you need to come back in here at any time, even during the meeting, and send somebody information, you can do it. Property Flute works on meeting phases, and the meeting manager has control over those. It's a way to control the process and make sure that essentially nothing is missed.

24:19 Voter list interface shows the meeting manager whether people are online, whether they're enabled for online voting or manual voting, and this is the control centre for all of the registration process and enabling people to vote. You work with the chair on this: the chair has to advise the meeting manager that somebody is allowed to join, and it can be as thorough or as simple as you need it to be.

24:56 Go to check in: if there's just one owner with their one strata lot, and they're going to vote online, they would appear here and you would enable them, very quick. If there's somebody who has multiple units or multiple owners that they're representing as a proxy, that can all be set up in advance and they would be listed here, and enabled, that person being able to vote accordingly.

25:34 So once voting occurs — and by the way I'm skipping over a few steps here, as I said, this is just to give you an idea of what the software looks like — once voter submissions occur, the meeting manager can see what's happening. They can tell who has voted and who hasn't voted, encouraging people to get their votes in, and track the meeting. If it's not a secret ballot it will tell them how they voted.

26:07 And very simply put, it's transparent to the meeting manager when everyone has voted and when the vote can be ended. So often it's a meeting manager who's communicating with the chair to tell them, we've got all the votes, shall we end the voting process? And all this is tracked and saved in the background and presented as an audit trail later on. We discussed secret ballots before. Council election is often very, very straightforward, don't need a lot of technology for that.

26:46 But in case you have tricky situations, more people who want on council, or again somebody who has got several units that they're representing, and then perhaps there's a precise count requested for council votes and there's a mixture of votes from the different proxies, Property Flute will handle that very, very well. And then finally, once you're all done, the meeting's ended, there's an audit trail, and that can be made available to the strata corporation, to the property manager, whoever needs it.

27:26 And on that note, we consider that the data from the meeting is owned by the strata corporation. It's not our data, it's yours. You have access to it, you retain it, and you tell us potentially when to delete it. As soon as the meeting's done, if you want us to get you the reports and delete the data, we can do that. So finally, we do have some improvements coming.

28:04 – Upcoming Improvements and Integrations

28:04 Craig Moore: We're going to further streamline the registration and login process. We're going to implement pre-authorized links for one-click access. That's going to help people who are having a tough time, perhaps people who are just not savvy with using computers. We still face that, and for many of you it's perhaps incredible to understand that there just are people who have just not used video and audio systems to join meetings, and then voting is another level of complexity for them.

28:42 We're going to take that to the next level, that's our next phase of programming, and we know that it will make quite a difference. And we're going to potentially integrate with communication tools such as Zoom, or we may create our own, we'll see how that goes. There's pluses and minuses to utilizing one given tool, but that's in our future. And lastly, if you do want to see a full demonstration of the software, you can go to VISOA's website and search under seminars and events, you'll find online voting platforms for stratas.

29:30 So that's my presentation, Ryan, and I am open to questions now. I'm going to ask you, Ryan, to jump in as you see fit to answer questions as well.

29:43 Ryan Grant: Sure, so let's open it up on the screen here.

29:46 Craig Moore: Sure. So question one: can a strata council make purchasing decisions?

29:53 – Q&A: Security, Notices and Adoption

29:53 Craig Moore: Oh well, let's try and get our questions related specifically to Property Flute here. Let's see. There are groups of owners meeting in one place, some of our elderly owners don't have the capacity to do so on their own. Can it work for voting? Yeah, absolutely, and that's what the so-called hybrid meeting is about. Get the people in the room who aren't comfortable on the technology, and everybody else can be online.

30:30 What you may require is some added technology so that everyone can hear each other. That really is the hard part now, making sure you've got that set up properly. They don't have to see each other, but they do have to hear each other, and there are new devices out there that have improved that situation dramatically. Does the meeting invitation replace the meeting notice? Absolutely not. So that's what hasn't changed as well: the notice is the notice.

31:04 It can contain the information about Property Flute or Zoom or whatever tools you're using, but the email from Property Flute is just to provide links to the meeting. So there's a question about security. We took that to heart as we were doing this, and that's actually what led me to saying we're going to improve the registration process. We've created quite a foolproof system for logging in. Up till now you needed a code.

31:44 That is posing some problems for people, it's just a challenge, people who aren't used to doing that. So we're reviewing that process, and we're going to maintain the high level of security but make it easier for people to get into Property Flute and utilize their communication software. We've tested the software. We haven't had a third party test it and provide a review per se, so feel free to offer that service to us, but we have tested it ourselves and feel that it's very, very secure.

32:33 Question here: if we find users have difficulty just using Zoom, for example, watching the slides and seeing the presenter or other participants, how are you finding them having to manage both Zoom and yours too? Yep, that is a challenge, there's no question about it, so we're streamlining that process. And here's the interesting thing: you put 100 people into a meeting, it's the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of them have no problem at all.

33:00 That's good news, most people are just fine, even with a demographic that is older, most of them are fine. It's a small number that are having challenges, and they're going to continue having challenges, and it's not necessarily age related, just somebody who's not familiar with the system. So those things will persist, yes, for Zoom, for Property Flute, for other tools. Fact is though, more and more, as the younger generation comes up, that's less and less of an issue.

33:43 Yes, another question about security and privacy. We've taken great care with Property Flute to make sure information is secure, and the secret balloting process, although it's not as relevant anymore, we made it as secret as it could be. Really it just is up to the users of that to make sure that the data is secret, but within Property Flute it is definitely hidden. Yes, thank you to somebody for mentioning there's always video.

34:20 We did a demo for them and had it recorded, and it's posted on their website. So for motioning and seconding, what will happen in the meeting typically is the chair or the meeting manager will say, we're going to open voting now, or they're going to open for the motion and second to get the discussion going, depends on who's running the meeting. So it's just a matter of a single click for the meeting manager, and then for the users a window pops up and asks them to motion and second, and it happens instantly.

34:59 Everybody seems to know quite easily that they can and want to do that, so motion and second is done virtually instantly. And then discussion usually happens on the resolution, and then voting is open. So nobody can vote until after discussion is done. The chair will say, we're open for voting, it's then open, all the votes are cast. Of course there should be no more discussion at that time, and the meeting manager will tell the chair everybody's cast their vote, or maybe there's one or two stragglers, and the chair will direct the meeting manager to close voting at the appropriate time.

35:39 And it's done, and it's tallied instantly. The number of votes and percentages are presented in the software, so the meeting manager would simply say so many for, so many against, and total votes. So, interesting question: do you foresee the platform expanding to do more than manage meetings, issue tracking, compliance submissions, etc? We've talked about other opportunities. We really want to nail it down perfectly for running meetings.

36:21 Getting registration right now is the big challenge. Our software works fine doing it, but we want to implement better processes for our clients and help them with that, because it is such a huge issue. But yes, we created the name Property Flute because we wanted to provide other services beyond voting, and ultimately we would like to tackle needs that aren't being met right now. I myself have been a programmer in the past, and I've implemented sophisticated accounting systems, and I've had ideas as a property manager of what I'd like to see.

37:10 I think there's still lots of opportunity that isn't being addressed by anyone yet, and certainly in the strata world.

37:21 Ryan Grant: All right, thanks a lot there Craig. Looks like we've run into the next segment now, for Tony.