President's Message – February 2009

This Month's Program is a stunner: our own beloved Dr. Karen Medsker, protégé of legend Dr. Robert Gagne, will present on his contributions of learning models and achieving outcomes. Included is video footage of him teaching—where else would you see that? This is a highly interactive session where participants will learn by using his principles. Reportedly handcuffs will be involved—come and see! ;) Seriously, this is a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study Gagne from an expert, intimate with his research, and the co-author of his last book. Please spread the word to colleagues and students! (Go to www.ispi-dc.org to register in our new online registration system!)

New Website Developments - John Faucher, John Fox, Sandy Henderson, and I have been working hard to make it a true avenue of communication and empowerment. This has been built off the hard work of Laura Anderson with help from Jeffrey Jorney. And thanks to former White House Press Corps photographer Cliff Crittenden whose beautiful images of D.C. grace our new, gorgeous home page.

First Online Program – is courtesy of extensive editing by relatively new Chapter member, Mark Boccia, for which he received the December Volunteer of the Month award. Both Mark and Dan Elbert did a great job of filming Dr. Paul Elliott's presentation on The Legacy of Joe Harless—including a call from Dr. Harless himself. To view it, click on Legacy Programs on the left column of the website. This is a great day for us! Even better, Mark has promised to try and capture our future programs and make them available online as well.

New Online Membership Management - June Fair and John Fox have worked with our endlessly patient website developer, John Faucher, and we are proud to announce our new membership database is up and running—and completely online, including a new online registration form. Now new members can input their data and register right at meetings or remotely through the Internet. Jim Govoni, our tireless and most excellent VP of Finance, has hooked us up to take checks and credit cards through PayPal to expand our services but for far lower fees than we previously paid.

Volunteer Leadership - Updating our membership database, contact information, payment, and online registration has been a major project involving many volunteers to whom we are deeply grateful. Realizing the database had been largely untouched for four years, Dan Elbert led a massive telephone outreach campaign after Jeffrey Jorney and team had mailed hundreds of letters trying to get people to refresh their member data. For this, Dan is due for a special award the next time he can come to a meeting (we hope your two little ones stay well for Feb. 11th!).

New Members Only Login
**** Please check to see if the contact information we have for you is current. To go into the membership database, click on the Membership Login link in the menu of our website. Use your email address as the User ID. If you do not know your password, click on the Forgot Password link to have it emailed to you. If that doesn't work, please contact John Faucher (webadmin@ispi-dc.org) and he'll help get things working.****

Check out Sandy Henderson's new draft mentoring program description. She is eager to sign up folks wishing to be mentored, desiring to be mentors, and ideas to improve the program.

PLEASE add your services and/or needs for Performance Consulting in our new directory, and if you are a CPT, provide your description so clients can find you.