Flying Lessons - Year One

This past weekend was my first workshop for my girls. The theme was Flying Lessons - Year One. I am still amazed at how awesome it all came out. My Chapter and my service group really went above and beyond all reasonable expectations to do a phenomenal job. The workshop was single tracked, since this was the first one so we were not worried about people needing a choice because they'd already seen some stuff. Next year, we want to multi-track, both because we have less than half the time and because we want to offer some of the same stuff for people who didn't have a chance this year and because we want to offer some new stuff too. We opened with a welcome, a run through the agenda and then introductions for the participants. In the introductions, in addition to the regular stuff like name, home chapter, etc., we asked the attendees to tell us about the health of their Chapters and then some personal stuff, like what they did for a living, what they do for fun when they are not doing Star and something about themselves that others don't usually know but would find interesting. Of course, there were a couple of people whose only answers to the question on something else they do for fun was "There's other things people do?" I sure know that feeling right now myself. :-) We had four seminar slots and taught about communications, listening skills, event planning and how to find answers in our governing documents. I had presenters for the four seminars so I could run around putting out little logistics fires before anyone knew there was a snag and because my presenters are awesome at presenting this stuff! I could probably have done one of the bits, but I don't know how people manage to keep everything smooth when they do the presenting too. It seemed like every hour there was one more little teeny tiny thing that just needed a moment of my time and yet one more trip up and down the stairs. Why is it that the person you need to speak with is always on the other floor from where you are at the time? Is it like a butter side down thing or what? If it is karmic, then boy have I lifted my burden, unfortunately at the expense of my calves. Thank goodness that Monday was in the hotel, so it was all on one floor. Whew! I cannot wait for the contractor to finish the remodeling work on my jacuzzi! Between the seminars, we had breaks and meals with table topics. These were the idea of someone special to me back in 2007, but they haven't been done since that I know of and I really liked the idea, so we did four sessions of table topics. Table topics are where you hand out at the table, over lunch or dinner or a snack or something, a set of questions on a particular, relevant topic of interest and ask the table to discuss the questions and brainstorm about answers. The attendees told me that they loved the table topics for two reasons. First, it gave a table full of complete strangers a common conversation to which everyone was expected to contribute, so everyone got to talk comfortably even though they didn't know the people with whom they were sitting all that well. Second, it gave them a chance to talk about the issues and give me their ideas and impressions of current situations in our Order. They said that they really enjoyed that opportunity for them, as members, to tell me as a leader person, where they were coming from on the topics. We had two or three questions on each sheet and the right side of the room and the left side of the room had different ones, but all on the same topic. The table topics were Statewide Communications, should we have them, what purposes do they serve, what format/method of delivery did they like, how we should pay for such things, and so on. We had one talk about dress codes and whether we should conform across the state and what their Chapters were doing. Another topic was dealing with change and how their Chapters react to change and if they had new activities and if so, how those got started. And we ended with our Sunday dinner topic, Ritual Instruction and Men, discussing how people liked to get their ritual instruction, whether they felt Grand Officers needed to be involved in it and at what level, what the role of the Worthy Patron should be in ritual instruction and whether the Chapters were ready for men as Deputies, although we'd probably have to change the name from Deputy Grand Matron to perhaps District Deputy. :-) Each table reported back on their discussion at the end of each reporting period and there was a lot of consensus in the room on a lot of the issues. I was expecting a bit more disagreement, since I had people from just about everywhere except Los Angeles. There were two ladies from San Diego and one from San Fernando Valley, but no Greater LA people. And there were people from fairly far north too. I was also expecting more disagreement because I had completely new first timers mixed with people who have done it bunches and bunches, a mix of newer members and long time members too, yet they still seemed fairly uniform on where the opinions fell. I don't know for sure that we had a truly representative sample, but it was diverse. For each new table topic and break out group, we rotated who sat with whom. Almost no one got to sit with the person that came with them and few people in the same association got to sit with each other either. And with four rotations mixing up who went where, everyone got to meet almost everyone else, so that was nice too. We gave all the attendees a list of everyone who came to let them keep in touch with one another and I think that people made a lot of new friends. I also hope they got the idea that they are not alone in this. Lots of people have the same concerns and anxieties. Everyone said that they had learned something and went away with a whole to do list of things to study and try when they get back home. And they all promised to read their Ritual book cover to cover before they finish their Conductress year. Maybe there will have to be a quiz. :-) Next weekend I am in Fresno for events on Friday night and Saturday night and a meeting Sunday morning.