| Meet the RVC
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by Leah Kinder, RVC Region 2 |
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The Kinder Garden is finally beginning to recover from this summer's drought, although this week we seem to be getting into another. It poured last weekend when I was in New York City, but I hear not a drop touched the ground in Delaware while I was gone. By the time you receive this, my cool weather crops should be about due for harvesting. Mmm... broccoli... It's not just the season for cool weather vegetables in Region 2, it's the season for Gatherings! We have Liberty Bell in late October and Winter Solstice in mid-December. We also have a Leadership Development Workshop November 9-11 in Williamsburg, VA. Registration is free, and we'll be providing some of your meals, all you have to do is register in advance and show up! The rooms are only $70/night, up to four people per room at the same price. You can contact me or Marc Lederman for more information, or visit the webpage. The September Planning Meeting has now gone by, and our next meeting will be November 30-December 2 in West Palm Beach, FL. At the Planning Meeting, we talked about Planning in the Big Picture sense, about what our over-arching goals were for the next 18-24 months. The planning part of the meeting was facilitated by Jeff De Cagna, a Mensan from Metropolitan Washington Mensa, in our very own region. His company, Principled Innovations, works with the Boards of Directors of various associations to plan innovative ways to create value for their members. This is the statement that he put together that he thought encompassed all of our conversations during the course of the planning session: "Over the next 18-24 months, we will focus our attention on matching the reality of the Mensa membership experience with your expectations. To do this, we plan to make it much easier for you to participate in social and intellectual interactions with other members by clarifying and simplifying our structures, and by capitalizing on new Web technologies that build community. We're going to look carefully at how to update Mensa's business model for the 21st century, and we'll engage in open, authentic, and trusted communication, so you'll always know where things stand and how you can contribute. At the same time, we want to learn more about what you're doing, so we can effectively support your efforts to create the Mensa you envision for the future." The most important thing that happened at that meeting, in my opinion, was the creation of a Planning Committee, with John Recht (RVC8) appointed as Chair of that committee. I was a seconder for the motion to create it. I have high hopes for that committee, and for the AMC as a whole, to live by the things they said in their campaign statements and to work together for the betterment of Mensa. We can't do it without you, the members. I hope to hear from many of you with your ideas of what our future should hold.
Leah Kinder
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