| It's Summer in the Cities NACE Members!
We are nearly half way through 2009 everyone. As President, one of my jobs is to revisit the board goals we committed to in our January retreat. This year, in light of the economy, our biggest objective was to provide value to you as members as we designed our yearly calendar. To accomplish this, we set forth to bring an educational component to each meeting. In my opinion, we have upheld this objective with the programs the first half of the year. In February we brought in a speaker from General Mills to learn about Meeting Break Trends at the Radisson Plaza. In March we met at Graves 601 to discuss small plates, tapas and mini presentations. April (now proudly touted as our best educational conference to date) brought a plethora of topics too numerous to mention but included sales, trends, menu development, sustainability, design and management instruction. In May we met at Interlachen for a joint meeting with CCA that focused on buffet and brunch trends. Lastly, in June we were honored to have Ryan Hanson from Beevents to present the "Nuts and Bolts of Award Winning Events". By the way, the Hyatt was absolutely delightful as the host for our Awards Dinner on June 3rd. Kudos to them!
So...it is report card time. We will assess the first half of the year when we meet again as a board in July. We will be grading ourselves on how we are doing by revisiting our personal objective sheets for each position and our group goals. I find this group to be extremely thoughtful and very fair when examining the "state-of-the-union". I have no reason to think it will be anything but a productive meeting with a lot of reflection that will bring the inception of new ideas. As members, please give us your feedback to improve our chapter. If you are a "prospective" member or part time attendee we want to know what would persuade you to become a full time member. We are dedicated to developing this NACE Chapter to its fullest potential and we will also be focusing on our other objectives during the second half of the year. These include student mentoring, membership growth and community outreach opportunities for food based charities in the Twin Cities.
Please remember that we will take off July locally for the National Conference held this year in Charlotte, NC July 26-29. It is a fantastic conference and I recommend it highly. Firsthand, I can tell you it has enhanced my career. I know it is a tough year for everyone, so if not 2009, plan now for budget approval in 2010. Here is a video link from Philadelphia last year. It truly is as great as it looks everyone!
http://www.ccna.com/nace.wmv
Finally, we are close to wrapping up our programs for the second half of the year. In July's newsletter we will be giving teasers of the remaining shedule for 09 so you can all save the dates. For now, save August 5th at 5:00 PM for our summer off premise event hosted by Prom Catering at the Loring Park Community Arts Center. I wish you all a great summer!
Terrie Bulanek - President
tbulanek@saintpaulhotel.com |
