President's Letter - March 16, 2009

At our February meeting, we mentioned to those who attended that our membership was significantly low - 50% lower than it has been, and that we were at a pivotal point in our ISPI journey. We encouraged people to renew memberships and for guests to join. For our March 10th session, we asked you to bring guests and you delivered! 35% of those who attended on Tuesday night were guests....and we had 9 members sign up that night!

Both our February session with Matt MacEachern and our March session with Julie Hamilton were hits! Those who came provided excellent feedback and there was quite a buzz both during and after Tues night's session..

Our interim VP Membership, Carol-Ann Fried has joined the team. Carol-Ann is full of positive energy, enthusiasm and brings so many creative ideas. We are so pleased to have her on board. We also have another new interim Executive member, Albert Hille who is taking over as interim VP Finance role. We are very grateful to have his expertise on our team and look forward to his contribution to the executive.

Both of these positions are key in supporting our executive decision-making according to the strategic priorities we identified during our January planning session.

News....

• Join ISPI Vancouver for half price - for $60.00 you can attend four monthly sessions (through Sept 31, 2009) and obtain membership discounts on any upcoming events. Click here to join.
• We are planning a Special Event in the Fall 2009. Stay tuned for more information - but we are working closely with ISPI International with the hope of attracting a leader in the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT - http://www.ispi-van.org/htm/about/about_HPT.htm) to come share their wisdom, experiences and tools with our chapter.
• Stay tuned for our marketing survey that will be coming your way in the next few weeks. We would very much appreciate your feedback as this will guide our strategic direction, our decision-making as well as ensure that we are working for you as effectively as we can.
• ISPI-Vancouver has a Facebook group!! Click here to join us online.

The ISPI International Conference is taking place April 19 - 22 in Orlando, Florida. Here are five reasons that you might want to attend:

1. Keynote presenters - Hear subject matter experts share their award-winning thought leadership. Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group and Frances Hesselbein, Leader to Leader Institute, will lead compelling discussions on topics of importance to successful organizations and their leaders.
2. Over 100 educational sessions - Broaden your knowledge with sessions focused in seven track areas: analysis, evaluation and measurement, instructional interventions, organizational design interventions, process or tool interventions, the business of HPT, and research to practice.
3. Complimentary career coaching - Meet with a career coach one on one to discuss your career goals, review your resume, practice your interview skills and more. Email Francis George at francisg@ispi.org to reserve your spot.
4. Networking opportunities with presenters - Educational session presenters will make themselves available at the end of each day in the Community Center. This provides an excellent opportunity to follow-up on discussions from the day's sessions.
5. Earn CPT re-certification and graduate credits - You can earn a maximum of 12 points for attending all three days of the conference. You can earn 3 graduate credits through Excelsior College by attending the Performance Improvement Institute (must attend all three days).

Want to register? http://my.ispi.org/myispi/Core/Events/eventdetails.aspx?iKey=AC2009

See you all at our upcoming session April 14th with Ramona Materi on the Best of Web 2.0's Free Content. Click here for more information or to register.

Happy New Year…Welcome 2009!

I chuckle as I think how a decade ago, I was sitting in this same seat- ISPI Vancouver President and writing updates for our members and members to be.

Our Executive team gathered on January 16^th for half a day to plan strategically for 2009.  We took time to assess our current and desired future state. Not all that different than when we conduct a front-end analysis to assess our clients’ needs and help them to improve their performance.

So here are the highlights:

Strengths:

• ISPI Vancouver provides a collegial culture and atmosphere
• We maintain a credible reputation in the community
• We’ve been active for 20 years
• We are able to attract quality presenters
• We provide good value to our members

Gaps:

• Our membership numbers have dropped significantly
• Our financial position is weaker compared to last year
• We have lost our ‘elders’ (previous Executive members)
• Unbalanced representation in our membership (i.e., lot of consultants; not as much corporate)
• We lack membership engagement

As a result of our assessment, our Executive identified 4 key areas of focus in order to:

• Ensure chapter sustainability
• Increase membership
• Ensure executive team membership succession

Our priorities for this year include:

1. Increase our membership
Our membership numbers have decreased by 50% since 2008. To address this, we want to establish a Membership committee. If you would like to play a role supporting this committee please email Carol Ann Fried at carolann@friedom.ca. We need our current membership to band together and help increase our numbers. Please consider joining!

2. Improve our financial state
Our bank balance is very healthy. However, the cost of regular programs and special events last year were higher than revenue generated through memberships and member guest attendance. To ensure we can maintain our bank balance, we are seeking to reduce costs by looking at other venues for our regular and special event programs.

We have reinstated a Position on our Executive, VP Special Events, which Cheryl Milner will fill. Her focus will be to organize and promote one Special Event per year with an International speaker. Our first one is targeted for May 2009. The intention behind this is to draw non-members who may consider becoming members and to generate revenues to address our finances. It is also a way to bring in top notch experts in Performance Improvement to share their knowledge with our membership.

3. Ensure succession plans in place for the Executive

To be discussed at a future Exec meeting

4. Build a Marketing Plan

To be discussed at a future Exec meeting

I am quite inspired by the Executive team we have. Several of our executive were supposed to step down this June (2009); instead they have committed to stay on for one more year to help our Chapter reach its goals.

If you are interested in being part of our Executive team or joining a committee and supporting some of our initiatives, please contact me at ericag@telus.net. This is a great opportunity to build your expertise in volunteering, network with like-minded professionals and apply your performance improvement skills.

If you have not renewed your membership, please do so now. We need to increase our membership numbers to help our chapter. If you have colleagues you believe would be interested in ISPI, invite them to come to a session as a guest, or encourage them to join. The cost of membership still offers six programs plus dinners for $120.00; a great deal.

I look forward to seeing you at upcoming ISPI sessions.