There is so much going on this month that it is difficult to know where to begin. So I would like to start by sharing with you some of the great things we accomplished last month.
Andy Woodruff made a huge effort planning and setting up our general meeting, featuring John Patrick’s excellent presentation, panel discussion, and book launch, for which the first 25 DACS members received John’s new book, “Health Attitude”. In addition to that, Andy supplied all the video recording equipment, speakers, and mixers. He recorded the video of the entire event (still editing), combining video from 3 camera angles to produce a very professional presentation for everyone who visits our website. Tom Zarecki also deserves a lot of credit for an excellent job, preparing and moderating the panel discussion, as well as Lisa Leifels and Steve Harkness, who helped set up and record video for the entire meeting.
The video recording of Tom’s April presentation on Social Media should be available on Charter Cable community access channel 192 by the time you read this. Check Charter’s link in the June meeting preview article on Video Production for the schedule. It may also soon appear on Comcast and as a YouTube video. I encourage everyone to attend the June meeting. You may (hopefully) want to get involved in video production of DACS meetings. It might be a nice creative sideline for you to enjoy and Charter will train you for free. With enough support from DACS members, I hope to produce recordings of our meetings as a regular occurrence.
Tell us what new presentations you would like to see or email us directly at programs@dacs.org. If you like what we are doing, please help to spread the word about DACS, our excellent presentations each month, our new video productions, and the growing list of workshops we run and co-sponsor with other groups throughout the month. Use social media to spread the word. Speaking of which . . .
The new Social Media workshop series will begin on Wednesday, May 27th at our Resource Center. The first workshop will be a hands-on boot camp to get you started using a few of the popular sites. Later workshops will explore more in depth how to use and benefit from each of the popular social media applications. I am looking forward to this!
DACS co-sponsored Workshops and Events – We have just finished an excellent series of three workshops which we co-sponsored with SCORE and Microsoft on using Microsoft Office. These workshops were well attended by DACS and I expect to see new DACS members as a result. There is a limit to how much can be covered in 3 sessions but there was a lot of interest in extending these into a series of DACS workshops. Stay tuned.
We are co-sponsoring another workshop, with the Danbury Library and SCORE, on Running a Restaurant. This is scheduled for Saturday, May 30th at the Danbury Library and described elsewhere on our website.
Excellent student presentation at WCSU – Lisa Leifels and I attended the last Marketing 315 class of the semester run by Professor Tom Zarecki. This class focused on Advertising and Social Media. Two teams of his students presented their class projects on how we might increase awareness of DACS and attract new members. Lisa and I were so impressed that I invited both teams to present their findings to the Board.
New interns coming to DACS – I have identified two areas where we can use some help – Marketing and IT Support. I must admit that I was so inspired by the capability and preparation of the student presentations that I was motivated to seek help from the University. Tom got me in touch with the Career Development Center at WestConn and I made my case for two student interns who will receive college credits. I will be reviewing resumes and will hopefully have the privilege of working with these students, starting in June.
25th anniversary – Let’s make this yearlong celebration a success. We want to create a much broader awareness of DACS as we participate in new activities, and create collectables of interest to DACS members and the general public. Talk about your ideas with Cathy Quaranta at the check-in table at our next general meeting or let her know by email.
From mobile to desktop, we inform, enlighten, and educate.
– Dick Gingras, President