Greetings Capital Chapter members! Happy New Year to all of you! The new year always brings us a chance to start fresh, make resolutions and be determined to make things a little better than they were in previous years! With that said, it was incredibly important for us to survey you, our members, and get your feedback on what was working well about our chapter, and what could use a little tweaking. An enormous “thank you” to all who responded — a great number of our members took the time to answer our quick survey and offer us feedback!
One of the resounding results of our survey was the request for more social networking opportunities. I’m excited to announce that we ran our first New Member Coffee of the year on January 29th. If you are a new member, you are due to receive a welcome email and an invitation to participate in these coffees. This is a fantastic opportunity to meet some of your fellow LMA members in a smaller group setting thereby allowing you to get to know each other better. Even if you are not a new member and would welcome the opportunity to network in a smaller environment, please reach out to me as we would love to have you! Additionally, we are planning a volunteer opportunity this year and at least two informal happy hours! Details will come out well in advance and we look forward to your participation!
Next, we found that many of you wanted to shake things up a bit and have a mix of programming at different times of day and in different locations. With that, we brought you our first January program at the Ronald Reagan building and plan on bringing some of the programming back to law firms this year. Additionally, we are introducing a brand new event series starting in March, called Follow-up Roundtable. This will serve as a great opportunity to discuss the most recent luncheon topic, plus allow you to network at a different time of day and in a smaller atmosphere! These gatherings are COMPLIMENTARY to members and will only cost $10 for any non-member. They will be hosted by member firms and will be scheduled for 6:00 pm. Pizza and sodas will be provided. Our first Follow-up Roundtable gathering will be held on March 4th at 6:00 pm at the offices of McKenna Long & Aldridge at 1900 K Street, NW.
Finally, we asked about our direction in programming and the most popular response was to have more focused sessions, targeted at particular job titles. As a result we are concentrating on best practices and ideas you can take back to your office and implement immediately, no matter your experience level. Upcoming programs include what the sales role really means in a law firm and how you can adapt strategies for your firm, sales role or not. In March, we will get ideas and training on how to coach attorneys to better marketing and business development results. This spring we will have topics on content marketing and the essentials of law firm economics. Stay tuned as we keep listening to your needs.
Our chapter is here to serve YOU! You are what we are all about, and being able to bring value to your careers is why our board volunteers its time in this organization. We are pleased to bring these changes to the chapter this year and hope it encourages you to attend monthly programming, volunteer with committees and get involved with all our other events throughout the year!
By Samantha McKenna, 2014 Membership Chair for the Capital Chapter and Senior Sales Executive, ON24 for the January/February issue of the Capital Ideas Newsletter.