Stuck in Committee

This past weekend was a great time to catch up on my filing, go through the twelve piles of stuff on my dining room table (each pile is for a different thing/some piles have more than one subpile) to make sure my to do list is up to date and assess just how far behind I am or am not.  Of course, the devil is in the details.

I also got the mighty Database of Standing Committees up and running, for the next great task in the process.  Now that most other things are in process, or stalled because I am waiting for others to get back to me, (which I confess can be just a tad frustrating when the next domino is dependent on the last domino and the last domino needs to be pushed over by someone else) the next great TASK is to get the committee members all lined up.

This has turned out to be something of a three part task because we have three different kinds of committees, Standing, Special and GCW (Grand Chapter Week).  Going backwards on them, the GCW committees are in some sense the easiest because most of those people know what they are doing or can learn what to do by the person doing it this year.  The work on some of those committees is all year long, but for many of them, it is only busy for a couple of months before the session and/or at the session.  Those people get e-mails asking them to serve because those jobs are pretty well defined and do not really change much from year to year.  And in many cases, the people doing the jobs don't change much from year to year.  We have some committees that I think the same person has been doing the job for decades.  If anything, the problem there is getting some new blood involved and getting new people trained up in how to do these things so that there are options.  I have a list now and just need to sit down and get the e-mails out.  I may be able to do that next week, while we are on the road (fingers crossed).

Then there are the special committees.  These are committees that are specific to the Worthy Grand Matron and work on particular stuff that she would like done.  There is no "list" as such for these, although sometimes it seems like you look at the ones for last year and then fill the same slots.  But each year, you usually have a project chairman and that changes each year, and some other special things change too.  I also noticed that we have some slots where I cannot for the life of me figure out what this person does and until someone tells me what the job is, I can't imagine asking anyone to do it:

Me:  I have this great job, I'd like you to do, Liaison to Neverland.

Member:  What does the Liaison to Neverland do?

Me:  Darned if I know.  Maybe you just go out into space forever and when you get to the second star on the right, they will tell you.
Member:  I don't know, that could take a lot of time.  I am not sure I can take on that job.
Me:  Well, maybe it won't take any time at all because there won't be anything to do, but you will be able to stand up when we introduce all the committee members and that's cool, isn't it?
Member:  Well, okay, I will do it because getting to stand up and be recognized is pretty cool, but I'm not actually going to do anything.  Is that okay?
Me:  Got it.  Thanks for the clarification.

So that list needs some work to pare it down to jobs with actual jobs attached.

Then there are the Standing Committees.  In some ways those are easiest and in other ways, they are hardest.  They are easy in the sense that our Constitution says exactly how many people are on it and the length of their terms of service and some of their duties.  But they are hard in that sometimes the number of people doesn't make any sense and you have to fill all the slots anyway and sometimes the duties in the Constitution are really vague and so you have to figure out what you really want these people to do and write it up so that they know what is expected of them when you ask them to serve.

Another wrinkle for me is that I will be sending letters to the members who were appointed in earlier years to make sure that they still want to serve, knowing the expectations for next year.  I figure that I would rather tell them what is expected and give them a chance to bow out than to have them get stunned when the committee first meets and say, "But I didn't sign on to do THAT" and have them resign after their name has been published.  But it does mean yet more letters, renewals rather than new letters.  At least I have the names and addresses for those.

This coming weekend starts a week long (really eight days) run of OVs and events.  I will not be attending Friday's event because I cannot miss part of my work day Friday when I will be out the entire following week, but I will be at everything else for Star, Bakersfield, Porterville, Beckwourth, Marysville, Mt. Shasta, Red Bluff and Eureka.  I will not be at the York Rite dinner.

Just a Few More Stamps

This past weekend was a home weekend, so I was able to get my spring letter out and with it the sign up sheets and order forms for our July workshop.

I usually get my spring letter out in April, but this one was held up a few days while we got some pricing for some of the items that are on the order forms in the packet.  I am once again struck by how truly blessed I am that many people have e-mail today.  I was able to get word out almost all of my Dragon Riders by e-mail, with what I thought was only twenty-six out of 178 needing to have their stuff mailed to them.  Isn't that great, I thought!  And how many copies and how much postage I have saved, not counting the wrist fatigue from folding all those papers.  Twenty-six copies, I thought, I can do that easy - yay!

But alas, my cheering was premature.  For when I sent out the e-mail to all the Dragon Riders (okay, technically, there are seven Chapters without Associate Matrons, so I sent an e-mail to those Chapters' secretaries in case they know who will be in the East next year and could pass on the workshop stuff, but let's not count them for now, since that was an easy e-mail), Lo, I discovered that I had ten bounces come back to me.  Ten of the e-mails on my list were rejected.  Now since serving in the Grand Line requires developing some tougher skin and making like a duck (letting stuff roll off your back like water), I did not take this personally. :-)  But I did print out the error messages and then I hand addressed envelopes for the people whose e-mail bounced (I don't have mailing labels for them because they are on my e-mail list and it is more bother for me to block copy all of them into the Word envelope) and stuffed the error message along with all the other papers into an envelope to let them know about the problem and in the hopes that they will get a new and working e-mail address back to me or find out what is wrong with their server.

Well, guess what?  My letter, with registration and order form happened to be five pages of paper.  Do you know what happens when you go to a sixth piece of paper?  You go up to the next mailing ounce and your postage goes up from forty-five cents to sixty-five cents. And unless you happen to have stamps with numbers on them (which I do, lots, so not so bad for me, but tough for others), you end up putting two stamps on and now you are paying ninety cents for that extra sheet of paper being in the envelope.  I think I managed to cut my losses down to seventy-five cents postage on each envelope, but hey, that's an extra dollar wasted.  Not a lot on the large scale, after all, compared to say six thousand dollars of fabric, but the little bits do add up over time.  And it's just the annoyance factor too, I suppose.

But at least the letters are off to everyone and I am already getting responses back - YAY!!!  The Associate Matron/Patron workshop is an annual fixture, so everyone is used to that and hopefully has planned for it and will come.  It is also usually the biggest workshop because both the ladies and the men are invited to attend, so I hope we get a great turnout.  We have lots of wonderful program planned, so it would be nice to have a full house to whom we could present it.

Next weekend, I am home again, to make a final big push on paperwork and organizing things and making up work hours at the office in preparation for doing the big nine day trip at the end of this month.

Counting Backwards

I have been trying to get this post up for three days, but technology has not been kind this week.  Sigh!

Last weekend, I attended an Official Visit in the Central Valley, but spent the remainder of the weekend on, you guessed it, more paperwork!  The problem is that everything has to count backwards and when you realize how far back it counts, it gets a little hairy.

For example, our Associate Matron/Patron Workshop is coming up at the end of July.  This is the chance for me and my partner to teach skills that our subordinate officers will need next year as they fulfill the duties of their offices and also for us to tell them about what we will be doing next year.  Well some of the things we are doing happen on certain dates, some even as early as this coming December (OMG!) and some events won't be until next spring, about a year from now.  So we want to put flyers for these events into the packet of materials that we will hand out at the end of the July, but while the dates are set, most of the places are not.  Without being able to tell people where a traveling event will take place, they can't figure out which date is theirs, so giving them the dates without the places isn't very useful.  But by the same token, people don't always realize that you need the place for an event a year ahead of time and think that they have plenty of time to find the location.  But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Even if we weren't putting all this stuff onto flyers, the Itinerary that is printed in August to be distributed at Grand Chapter in October should have all the places in it if at all possible.  I know that in lots of years the place information is empty in the Itinerary and that the stuff gets filled in when the Roster comes out.

Aside - Point of reference - the Itinerary is the little book that comes out at Grand Chapter and has contact info for all the Distiguished and Honored Members - the Roster is the big book that comes out in January that has all the stuff from the Itinerary in it, plus catch up stuff, plus the elected officers from each Chapter and the Chapter's meeting nights and locations.  The Roster can't come out until January because the Chapters send in their information on who their officers are in November (at least they are supposed to) and then that information has to be filled in and the whole thing sent to the printer to be run.  Itinerary - little book; Roster - big book.

But lots of people only get, or only buy, the Itinerary and since our web site is nice but not the most user friendly in the world, if the place and time and such doesn't get into the Itinerary, then there are often people who never get the information and don't come.  That is not to say that everyone who does get the information shows up, (if I thought that, you'd ask me what sort of medication I was on and whether it was time to speak to my doctor about changing the dosage), but it does help.

So back to the challenge of not only having dates for everything but places too - If we want to put this stuff on a flyer that is handed out at the Workshop, then we need it in time to get it copied and onto the CD that we hand out.  Those have to go to burn by the end of this month so that there is time to burn them and get them so that we have them in time to stuff the packets to be handed out to the participants and the workshop.  And thus locations for events that are six months to a year from now need to be figured out NOW!  AAAAAHHHH!

Lots of other things count back like that too.  Another example is Grand Installation invitations.  I am told that if the Associate Grand Matron and Patron want invitations that they can send out to family and friends (I know, another big assumption that anyone in the Grand Line still has any family or friends who are not in Eastern Star and/or who haven't had the date of the Grand Installation drummed into their heads over and over), those have to be printed up in the next two or three months, so that they can be mailed by August or September for the event in October.

This is why I wrote a time line a year ago for what had to be done each month since last October through the next two years.  When I started counting back the lead time on some items, it just started getting scary.  I've got things on the list that are finishing up now that I started a year ago, things that I started six months ago and things that I am just doing now and almost all of it has to be done by the end of July and the workshop.  What isn't due then is due in August or September or October.  I think by the time we get to Grand Chapter, all I will want is sleep!  I wonder if actually doing the job will be harder or more exhausting that planning to do the job?

Next weekend, the Grand Family has gone off to the Kentucky Derby while I am stuck at home doing, yes indeedy, more paperwork!