We bring you another guest blog post from the Summit, this one by David Dick.
Several things came out of this year’s Leadership Day: We are a community. We are a network. We thrive through the hard work and dedication of volunteers. Community leaders are critical to support their communities and providing opportunities for membership to meet other members and to enhance their skills. We recognized the winners of community awards and of the Distinguished Service Awards. We recognized the members of the Community Affairs Committee.
I am always thrilled at the prospects of meeting chapter leaders and SIG leaders, and discussing what is working well and what we can do better. I keep in mind that I am a member of a community and I am part of a network. In this way I never feel that I am alone.
Volunteers are critical to the success of every community. For this reason, STC has created a new pin to recognize volunteers. Each of us in attendance received the new pin.
An important discussion was about changes to the funding model of the International Summit Awards (ISA) competition. The proposal is to consolidate the publication competitions from the chapters under the ISA umbrella. The goal is to roll out a new model for 2013–2014 season. SIGs might be included in the ISA model. Many chapter leaders supported the idea, while others were not pleased at the prospect of losing a critical funding stream. After all, the money they earn from a successful publication competition is theirs to keep.
After a short break, we broke out into groups and discussed topics of recognizing volunteers, attracting new members, recognizing current members, ways that we can build an active community, and financial reporting—which nearly cleared out the room. Hey, somebody has to file the budgets and financial reporting.
Monday begins the sessions. I am so very happy to participate in this year’s Summit.