News from NCR Conference

A few weeks ago the North Central Region Conference was held in Green Bay Wisconsin. The Fox River Valley Chapter hosted the conference and they did a great job as the convention hosts. The highlight of the conference was a tailgate party and tour of Lambeau Field. The Packers were also good hosts and even though I was wearing my Bears jersey I was only subjected to good natured heckling by the Packer faithful. Just wait till we meet again it Chicago!

The Fox River Valley Chapter provided a number of educational programs that included general education as well as leadership training. I had the pleasure of helping out with a membership program that was lead by Fred Burr and Lynn Javoroski. This session talked about the challenges of membership and involved the attendees to share their ideas on how to attract and retain new members.

We learned that out membership base can be much broader than we may think and we should consider how to widen our appeal to new members. Some of the potential members include architects, product reps, engineers, owners, contractors and code authorities were a portion of the pool. Concerns were raised that CSI should provide a talking points targeted to different potential membership groups that would assist in reaching out to new members.

Value of membership was also discussed. In these hard economic times, potential members are looking for value for every dollar spent. Each person that is considering membership will want to know what is in it for me! To attract and retain new members, we need to help new members find answers to these questions.

Our session ended with a lot of questions remaining to be answered. There were concerns on how we find the resources to attract new members. Fortunately some of these questions were answered by Joy Davis from CSI National. She made a compelling argument that we should look to the CSI mission statement for guidance as to how to present ourselves to potential members. The mission statement is the rudder that guides the CSI ship. As members, we should understand the mission statement and keep our own version of the statement in our head. We can them use inform potential members "what's in it for them".

Finally Joy asked us that all things CSI should reflect the mission statement. For each event planned by the chapters, we need to understand the Why, How, and What of the event and how that relates to the mission of CSI. Also for each program, put on by the chapter we need to ask ourselves what makes the program unique, what makes it valuable, what makes it excel. So please keep this information in mind and use it to plan all of you programs and check to see that you are considering the CSI mission statement.

Sheldon Wolfe would like to know:

Who's going to the convention in Philly? It's 11-14 May this year. Go to www.constructshow.com/ for registration, schedule, housing, etc.

Share Your Ideas

Here is a chance to share what is working in your chapter with the other chatpers of the North Central Region.  Let us know what works for your chapter that might be helpful to the other chapters in the region.  We can all help each other out by sharing best practices that work for you. 

To view comments  click on "comment" below.  If you would like to share with NCR fill out the comment box and add a comment or contact the NCR secratary to recieve posting permission.

At the Chicago Chapter, we have been holding a wine tasting event for the last several years.  New members and existing members that bring a new member could attend at a reduced rate.  I did not attend this event the first time that it was held and the second year of the event I was the president of the chapter.  I was tempted to axe the wine tasting event because I felt it was too far a stream from our core mission but, my board had nothing but good things to say about the event so we kept in on the calendar.

I made it a point to attend the wine tasting and I was amazed at how beneficial it was to our chapter!  I was able to spend more time talking to new members than I would at a chapter meeting which helped be better connect with membership.  We also had many people who attended the event that had not been to a CSI function before and some of these joined the chapter.

So the point of this is that it is good to think outside the box and try different ideas.  Sometimes we need to break from our technical background and hold events that may broaden our base in ways that may not be apparent.