LDE Almost Filled Up

We currently have 42 people who have registered for the Leadership Development Event we're holding on May 21. We'll likely put people on a waiting list once we hit 50. After all, we want some room to move around a bit, have space for the Hospitality we'll be bringing in, etc. So, if you're an MWM'er inclined to attend, make sure you RSVP soon. Deadline is May 7, but we may be full-up before then.

Happy Zombie

Mind Games (r) up in Albany was, by and large, a great success. Currently, I am more zombified than I've been in a long time, having stayed up until about 3am (again) playing games, and then I started doing some clean-up to make searching for "orphaned" game pieces easier... "re-fluffing" of the games started at 4:30am and went until 8:30am with a slowly increasing amount of help from a few others (ugh - I need sleep!).

Enough time to stumble to breakfast, and get to the main room early for good seating to see and hear well at the game giveaway. I was astonished at just how long all of my preferred games were still available during the giveaway (as usual, I was about 3/4 of the way down the list) -- I got my 3rd and 6th choice of game, and 3 of my top 6 games were announced as the Mensa Select (r) winners for 2011.

The Mensa Select winners were:
InStructures
Stomple
Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype
Pirate vs. Pirate
Pastiche

I am going home with a copy of Train of Thought (very funny game) and Scruble Cube (think 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube combined with Scrabble).

After lunch out of the hotel with some friends, I conked out in a chair in the hotel lobby for a couple of hours, but I still look and feel like the walking dead. I can't wait to collapse on my bed... in 4 hours. (ugh)

Once I have returned to the land of the living in the next day or two, I should be able to take a look at e-mail and approve any blog comments that may have been sent in over the weekend.

Questions?

So, do you have any particular questions related to the AMC, Secretary, AML, etc. that you would like me to answer here? Click on the comments link and send it/them in to be posted and replied to. (Some may get separated out into additional blog entries, even.)

E-mail address

Thanks to a helpful comment, I would like to correct an oversight on my part in having not included an e-mail address in my campaign statement. Hopefully some of the many people who navigated to my blog because of the e-mail blast that, coincidentally enough, came out on my birthday will be willing to return another time to continue reading (as there's a bit much for just one sitting). In addition to simply clicking on a "comment" link which would sent the comment to me for moderating and then posting onto the site in the appropriate location, you can e-mail me directly and it won't be something that gets posted to the blog.

You can contact me at locsec@mwm.us.mensa.org

ExComm Meeting - No Quorum

For any MWM'ers who may be thinking of attending today's ExComm meeting, be advised that we will not have a quorum and, hence, will not be able to conduct any business. This was only just confirmed a little while ago. Sorry for any inconvenience.

MWM ExComm Meeting

Items on our agenda for Sunday's meeting include appointing MWM's Election Committee (since we have our chapter election in October), appointing a new webmaster and editor, talking about the recent AMC decision defaulting the local group newsletters to electronic delivery and how it may affect us, and more on revising MWM's bylaws.

For those members of MWM who want a copy of the agenda, please contact me.

My Advice on Building a Local Group SIG

Earlier this evening, I had a phone call from one of MWM's members that, in part, was about one of our listed SIGs and the low number of members who belong to it. While I have sent an e-mail to the person who runs that SIG offering some advice for growing the SIG, it seems appropriate to share that advice more widely.

SIGs are different things to different people. Between the three groups I've been a member of in my years in Mensa, I have had, essentially, three different types of local SIGs:
1) Community-oriented
2) Mailing list-RSVP essential (a "lesser" version of the first type, IMO)
3) "SIG" as term of art

In the first instance, a sense of belonging, ownership, and membership is desired. You are getting together because of some sense of a common bond, moreso than "just" the activity at hand. To me, this is the appeal of such groups as the GenX, GenY, and other such "affinity" groups. Building these requires the most time and effort, as the ideal situation would have the SIG leader building and maintaining some online venue for conversation and discussion - yahoogroup, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Bring that online venue up in in-person conversations. Encourage people to join, get to know the others in the group, and come out to events that are held (be they scheduled on-calendar or impromptu off-calendar events).

The second instance seems, to me, to be a slightly less involved group than the first. This is what I used for my Bridge SIG back in New York and what I know the Bridge SIG here does as well. There is an e-mail list where advance coordination is necessary. In bridge, if you don't have full tables of 4, it pretty much kills the game. In New York, I struggled to have 4 people (from the about 10 or so on my list) coming in any particular week. If we knew in advance there wouldn't be enough people coming, we'd cancel. While intermittent non-SIG e-mails might have been sent, that wasn't the primary purpose of that SIG up in NY. So, while we got along, no sense of "community" was fostered. The only effort involved was sending out the reminder in advance and a cancellation when necessary.

The final instance is, essentially, what I do with the Tourist SIG. There is nothing "formal" about this SIG. People come to the events that interest them that fit into their schedule. There are times when I get about a dozen people. There are other times when it's just me. It truly is just a conceit/term of art using "SIG"; it's an excuse for me to get off my duff and do something I otherwise might not expend the energy on, and invite others to join me. The sense of community from the SIG lasts for the event, but is not an ongoing feeling, per se, in the context of the SIG. No e-mail list is maintained, and rarely is an RSVP of any sort needed (though they're usually requested so I can know if I should look for someone, or just march on solo or with a small group).

All of these methods work. It depends on the type of SIG that you are trying to run. What's more, publicity is also needed. The two primary methods of publicizing the SIG are: 1) putting an event in the calendar (using the SIG name in the title, of course), and 2) writing up an article (even if it's just a small paragraph) for the newsletter. Even when you are alone at an event you're running, write everything in the plural "we" instead of the singular "I", and you can make it sound like you had a large turnout for the SIG activity - which is always more attractive to fence-sitters than a group that sounds like there's no interest out there.


Interested in running a SIG? Contact our SIG Coordinator - Member-at-Large Chuck Divine - with the SIG's name, brief description, and your contact information to be included.

Interested in putting together a calendar entry, whether it's for a SIG or not? Contact our Programs Officer - Ben Paul - with that information. All calendar entries are due in by the 5th of the month for publication in the following month's CapM.

Interested in submitting an article talking about the great time you had host an event, whether it was for a SIG or something else in the chapter? Contact our Editor - Dave Aronson - with that. All submissions to the newsletter outside of the calendar are due in by the 10th of the month for publication in the following month's CapM.

Interested in having something related to your SIG (any of the above, or something else you may come up with) posted onto our website? Contact our Webmaster - Chris Rittweger - with that. There are no specific deadlines for submissions to the website, though the further in advance of your event, the likelier it is that it will be noticed by your target audience.

All of the contact information for the above individuals is listed in the inside front cover of CapM each month.