Dear Members,
Welcome to our new website. I hope you enjoy it and find it a step forward from the previous site.
Everyone on the Board has been working hard through the Summer and Fall on the website and other major projects for the Chapter.
I would like to tell you about how the current IABC-Los Angeles Board intends to provide value to members and fulfill our goal of connecting business communicators in Los Angeles. It boils down to three things: Improving Online Resources, New Events, and Showcasing Members.
Improve Online
With our revamped website, we can now easily post our events calendar, showcase members, post news, and pass on best practice and resources.
If you attended any of our past events, odds are you found people to be friendly and welcoming. IABC is known for providing great networking and for attracting professionals open to helping one another. Unfortunately our online presence did not match this! The old website was static and painfully difficult to update, especially when our longstanding Webmaster decided understandably to move on after volunteering on the Board for several years.
We intend for the new site to evoke the friendliness and accessibility of our face-to-face events, while staying true to IABC. Now we have a website where great communication is possible!
We have taken up social media, too – please connect at our active LinkedIn Group, Facebook Page, or on Twitter if you have not done so already. We are using these tools to network, share knowledge and provide places to ask for help from fellow members and the wider communications community.
New Events
This year we are continuing our practice of holding regular meetings every month from September through June, rotating between Burbank/Pasadena, Downtown, and South Bay/Long Beach areas, so that members have at least 3 events close by each year. (At the moment we do not have anyone able to organize events in the Thousand Oaks-Woodland Hills area – let us know if you are interested!). We””””ll continue to have two major events a year within this schedule – the December Holiday Party and the June Annual Banquet.
Something new: we are organizing two events completely FREE to members as a way to say Thank You for staying with IABC through the economic downturn. We began with a free networking event in Pasadena on September 23rd, and will host a similar event in the South Bay in February 2011, to ensure at least one is accessible to all members.
This year, we are working more closely with other professional organizations such as Communitelligence and PRSA-LA, to pull in speakers and widen networking opportunities – sometimes our combined efforts enable us to tap into resources and people we could not reach alone!
Showcase Members
The Member Profiles feature on our website has been in demand – we will continue doing this, as many people have found it to be extremely valuable for career development and networking. Once all existing member profiles are migrated to the new site, we will put out all call for new profiles.
We intend to further showcase members by inviting them to guest post on the Chapter blog, providing their thoughts on a topic, raising issues, reviewing events or speakers, etc. If you are passionate about a communications-related subject and would like to contribute, please contact us – we may be able to showcase your thoughts in an article, video, or at a face-to-face event.
Your Thoughts?
All of us on the IABC Chapter Board are members like yourselves, who choose to volunteer to make the Chapter happen. Please let us know if you think we are heading in the right direction – we welcome your ideas, suggestions, improvements, critiques. You can write to individual Board Members, email or head to the Linkedin or Facebook pages to connect! And if you’d like to help run the Chapter, we warmly welcome your contributions.
Thank you,
President 2010-2011, IABC Los Angeles Chapter