Looking Back on 2020 & Turning 70 in 2021

KanOkla’s

Photos from the 2021 annual meeting.

first (and hopefully only) virtual annual meeting was held on April 22nd. With the uncertainty of how 2021 would look and with the advance planning our annual meetings require, we made the decision earlier this year to switch to a virtual platform. We missed seeing everyone in person, but happily surprised at the number of attendees! We had over 185 people watching our annual meeting, and many of those were first time attendees. It is our plan to keep providing a virtual option with our future membership meetings, so that we can continue to reach more people. A large portion of this Chatter is dedicated to our 70th Annual Meeting news and topics.

Working behind the scenes to keep you connected has been the common theme for KanOkla throughout our 70 years, and 2020 brought the need for reliable connections to the nation’s forefront. Our member areas are no different than the rest of the country with broadband becoming a critical connection to healthcare, public safety, remote work, education, economic, and social connections. We worked extremely hard throughout 2020 keeping everyone connected and handling the 30% spike in extra capacity load, on our networks, with an especially sharp rise in the need for upload and download of content for live, interactive video needs. We had many of our team step up and carry even more workload as most of our employees experienced quarantines and positive COVID-19 tests.