Happy New Year!

 

 

I can’t believe that we’re already 1/12 of the way through 2011! Your board has been really active, with our day-long strategic retreat on Saturday, January 8, and their agreement on an ambitious agenda on your behalf this year. I’d like to lay out for you our major plans in this letter. And I hope that you will be sufficiently impressed by what we offer our members – at $30 a year! – that you spread the word to your colleagues and friends about the great opportunities for them as members of ASTD-Tallahassee!

 

So – what’s on the slate for 2011? We’ll take a look position by position.

 

 

Professional Development

We had our first annual ‘State of the Chapter’ program the evening of January 20 at Dorothy Oven Park, thanking 2010 board members, installing 2011 board members, and having a great program with speaker Elizabeth Barbour, an “inspired” entrepreneurial and life coach, leading the year with a great demonstration of what it takes to be a coach.

Programs are always on the 3^rd Thursday of the month, and all but the January evening program are held from 11:30-1PM at the Capital City Bank Auditorium. Most of the rest of the year’s programs are planned – you can see what’s up in programs for the year later in this newsletter. We’ll also be hosting two different networking socials a couple of times this year – time and location TBA!

 

CPLP Study Group and Leadership Program Service Project

The Certified Performance and Learning Professional (CPLP) credential is valuable in this time of cutbacks to give you the added leverage in a tight job market. Director at Large John Rushing is in the process of planning a CPLP study group, with the goal of start in April. Keep your eyes open for that announcement!

The CPLP credential is earned through success on a 150-question test and a significant portfolio project. We are in the process of identifying a large community service project that should provide study group members a meaningful and visible opportunity to build their portfolio item, if that is of interest to them.

 

Special Interest Group – SIG

As part of the portfolio project, we are in the planning stages of a SIG in the area of governmental reform, and are considering bringing in relevant speakers on a bi-monthly basis that give us insight on what is going on in our government in the area of performance improvement and learning.

 

TechKnow

This year we are partnering with long-standing Tallahassee organization, the TalTech Alliance to co-produce a TechKnow Expo on May 4-5, 2011 at the stunning new FSU Turnbull Center. The evening of May 4, you are invited to a cocktail reception with hors d’oeuvres while you listen to a featured speaker and get to meet our exhibitors. Plan to spend all day May 5 at the Turnbull Center, starting with breakfast and a keynote speaker, followed by four different speaker tracks discussing various aspects of technology:

Expect also a plated lunch, more time with exhibitors, a scavenger hunt, and another evening reception, where fantastic door prizes – iPads and such! – will be given away.

We’re giving out “I’m In the Know” buttons at our programs – make sure you get several and pass them out to your friends!

Many thanks to Leesa Gibson, who is chairing this event, John Rushing, and Barbara Ann Cox who serve as the ‘triumvirate’ over a terrific group of member volunteers! If you want to be a part of producing this spectacular event – let us know!

 

Continuous Learning

We want to make sure that we support member performance and are using this year as an exploratory effort to figure out how to best support what program attendees take away from each event. At this time, we are recording all programs and making them available online. If you missed the program – no worries! If you want to hear the program again – with the slides – not a problem! Thanks to Director at Large Frank Broen for this growing effort!

 

Communications!

VP of Communication, Maurine Kwende, is working to make sure that you are ‘In the Know’ about what’s going on with ASTD-Tallahassee. She has taken up the mantle from last year’s VP Communication, Monica Lazo, and is full steam ahead with program announcements, these quarterly newsletters, and all the other communication-related activities that make this chapter hum.

 

Our Tech-Based Presence

VP of Technology, Dr. Melissa Mackal, has been doing a little wrangling with ASTD national regarding our web presence. Last year, if you’ll recall, we worked to transition over to a website-portal national provided, but we learned in December – just a couple of months after the transition! –that the portal was going away and in its place was a bundle of services provided by Wild Apricot, including a website. So, Melissa is doing the research and planning right now to build members an awesome technology-based set of resources – including website and Facebook – so that you can always be ‘up to the minute’ on what’s going on in ASTD-Tallahassee!

 

Money Matters

The truth is that running a chapter costs money, and if we are to provide regional and national speakers at our programs, it’s going to take more money than we typically bring in. VP Finance, Dr. E Shen, is hard at work building a sponsorship package for our programs and for our website.

 

Strategy Behind the Scenes

Director at Large Dale Weeks, Past President Denise Wilson, and President Sue Ebbers have been hard at work revising our ByLaws to reflect national best practices. We are sending them to you to review, followed by a link to a 1-question survey asking you if you approve these new bylaws. The bylaws have been modified to even better reflect the values we seek to portray and embody as learning and performance professionals. Please take a moment to go through them – they are 10 pages long, plus we’ve included the board position descriptions.

 

Get Involved

We could sure use your help! Every board vice president is required to build a committee of at least two others so that we can start developing a cadre of individuals who can be better prepared to step into positions as they come open. We also want to develop committees in the areas of student outreach and helping our ‘in transition members’ who have been negatively impacted by the economy. No amount of time is too small – please consider volunteering your time. It’s a great networking and professional growth opportunity. Contact me at Ebbers@changebydesign.us if you are interested, or simply talk with one of the board members at an upcoming program.

 

Again, Happy New Year – and hope to see you soon!

 

Sue Ebbers

2011 President

ASTD-Tallahassee