What’s New with SITE SoCal

Elevate the Experience in 2015

Board of Directors

We have some exciting changes for the 2015 board. Some positions have been changed, and new ones added, to better reflect our commitment to the chapter via engagement, education and collaboration.

There are four Young Leaders serving this year. This will help us encourage leadership within the YL community with a long term goal of moving the chapter forward in a more integrated way. The rest of the board positions are balanced out with multi-generational seasoned professionals, from both the planner and supplier communities. You can see who’s who.(267.63 KB)

New Positions

Director of Event Logistics: this Director works with the VP Education and the Director of Young Leaders/Education to manage our educational event process. Working as a team enables us to provide our members through more advanced notice, better pre-event information, improved social media promotion and more consistent on-site service.

Director of Membership Recruitment: this year we have a team of VP Membership and a Director of Membership Recruitment. This gives us the flexibility and capability of better serving our community of existing members, while actively recruiting new members.

Director of Social Media: this director is an integral part of the team headed up by the VP of Communications & PR. Social media is a great tool for us to help expose us to a wider audience and let people know what we are doing as well as offering more benefits to our sponsors and partners. Our first full campaign will be for our educational event in March, so be on the lookout for that.

Director Young Leaders/Education: the previous VP Education position has morphed into a Director of Young Leader/Education role. With the YL education session taking place just prior to the main SITE SoCal, it made sense for a board member to not only represent the growing YL community, but to also co-ordinate the educational program to provide continuity and consistency for our luncheon events. This role will also help identify future YLs who are candidates to join the board in future years.

VP Leadership: this position was created with the aim to help board members develop their own leadership skills, as well as helping them create effective committees. We can achieve more for the chapter if we are to engage and involve other members on short- or long-term volunteer projects, and show a benefit to that.

Membership Perks Program

We have been thinking of ways to say “thank you” to our members. Without you, our chapter wouldn’t be the largest and well-respected chapter it is, so we decided to start off with a small gift. Members who attended our installation on January 20 at the Hotel Irvine received a voucher to redeem for a personalized gift. We wish to thank Deborah Meyer Drisdale of Travel Alberta for being our gift sponsor. Gifts will be distributed at our first educational luncheon of the year - March 26, at the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills.
– Click here to register.

Website Update

We are excited about the new website being developed and can’t wait to share it with you. You are going to find it infinitely more appealing, interactive and accessible. With the speed of technology whooshing along as it does, it doesn’t take long for anything to become outdated. We reached a point last year where our website data needed a substantial clearing out so we are taking this opportunity to completely re-imagine our website platform. Look for this by the end of the first quarter of 2015.

Because of this, we have decided to discontinue our newsletter that we instituted in 2014. Moving forward, we will email out the “Best of the Blog” on a regular schedule. This will become our new SITELines, another way of keeping you posted on what we consider helpful and newsworthy.

Marketing & Communications Strategy

So, what is our “elevator pitch”? How do you explain the work that you do and the industry you are in to family and friends? It is sometimes a challenge to encapsulate just what it is that SITE SoCal offers to its members and industry colleagues. Not being in the business of marketing and communications strategy, we were incredibly fortunate in having Bob Prewitt, President of Dana Communications fly out from the East Coast to spend time with the board to help us. Dana specializes in our industry, and has worked with IMEX America since its inception. The insights we gained were a tremendous education and a valuable tool for the future. We are working on developing the plan for the chapter – stay tuned!

Summary

So, lots of stuff going on with the aim of making SITE SoCal the go-to organization for your industry business, networking and educational needs! Come and join us – find your own niche and help us chart our course. We’re a sociable group and part of our goal is to have some fun along the way!

Thank you!
Geraldine

Geraldine Gatehouse, 2015 President, SITE SoCal & the SITE SoCal Board of Directors