EXCITEMENT MOUNTS WITH JOINT MEETING PLANNING

CAPT Mark Shafer, USNR (RET), President, Marin County Chapter is spearheading early planning for a joint meeting of at least Marin County, Contra Costa County, and San Francisco chapters sometime in 2008. CAPT Jim Torres, USN (RET), Director, Area 2 and President, Contra Costa Chapter and LCDR Steve Barber, USN (RET), President, San Francisco Chapter offered full support and will participate in the planning process.

Area directors frequently schedule periodic meetings for the chapter presidents or their representatives in accordance with bylaws provisions, but apparently this joint meeting is going to involve perhaps the three chapters and all their members.

The early thinking is that the meeting might be held aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet berthed at what used to be the Alameda Naval Air Station, a central location. The Hornet is now a museum, and Jim Torres serves as a docent. Already the group is looking into arrangements for a catered luncheon.

Here’s the Hornet link: http://www.uss-hornet.org/

Ideas for a speaker now range from Col Lee Lange II, USMC-Ret, Director, MOAA Councils and Chapters Affairs, to Senator Diane Feinstein, or perhaps VADM Norbert Ryan, Jr., USN (RET), MOAA President.

It’s going to be an ambitious undertaking and at this point in time everything is in the conceptual stage with nothing set in concrete. The current mood is to dream big dreams.

The joint meeting is something new for the Bay Area and different from a so-called area meeting.

According to the bylaws, “Area subdivisions of the Council exist to provide a convenient forum for meetings of the affiliated chapters between Council meetings, for communicating significant actions of the EXCOM, and to prepare state directors for subsequent Executive Committee meetings.”

Area coordination is important. It is often at these area meetings that creative new ideas emerge, that innovation rules, and that proposals are developed for later presentation as motions or resolutions.

The Area 8/San Diego meetings planned and hosted by MajGen Bob Butcher, USMC-Ret, have been held successfully on a regular schedule, and are now considered models for efficiency and effectiveness.

If yet possible, it is recommended that all area directors schedule and conduct an area meeting prior to the upcoming Council of Presidents Annual Meeting in San Luis Obispo, if nothing else but to identify and help plan for the outcomes they would like to see.

The Area 2 2008 joint meeting is an outgrowth of the recent Chapter Presidents Leadership Workshop at Vandenberg Air Force Base when then new Area 2 Director CAPT Jim Torres assembled the chapter presidents with an objective of meeting, getting acquainted, reviewing some of the currrent opportunities and challenges, and considering the possibility of a joint meeting of chapter presidents or perhaps even the entire chapter memberships. Even at that time there seemed to be widespread support for such a meeting.

A joint meeting involving all chapter members might assemble an impressive crowd as well as “One Powerful Voice.”

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