Outstanding Teamwork

At our fall board meeting, the various components of our rebranding project were presented, and because of the scope of the challenge, I chose to have the spring board meeting via teleconference because it was felt those involved with the projects would not be advanced enough to have a live meeting.
Boy, was I wrong!  The speed, dedication, and professionalism of this group is quite frankly astounding.  Because of where we are in the re-branding process, it is necessary to have a face-to-face board meeting.  I will describe later where we are in our progress. We feel this will be a most informative meeting, where we will all learn, and then in turn, the regional directors will be prepared to train the section leaders. I can’t thank all of the people involved and while I would like to name names I won’t for the fear of leaving someone out! Great job to each of you from all 20,000 members.
Over the past three months the Task Force sub committee of the Board members, Section representatives, National Business Office staff and other club members have working and meeting electronically to produce the new website layouts and membership enhancements based on the recommendations of the Brodeur report.
At the spring board meeting in St. Louis, the Monarch Digital representative and Brodeur,  along with the Rebranding Task Force, will present the new home page, Star page, and Store page to the National Board.  They will walk through the navigation logic, layout, button positioning, and color of each page.  Arriving at these layouts took many weeks of discussion using the best practices of the industry to ensure the new website will meet our member’s needs. Every decision made was tied back to the members’ needs as outlined in the Brodeur report and many revisions were made to ensure this.
One of  the most challenging aspects is the Sections’ website pages which will be a subject of great discussion at the Board meeting.  Currently some of the Sections do not have websites while others are quite sophisticated, and still others are evolving.  One of the Brodeur recommendations is to ensure all Sections have a consistant website/brand image that is consistant with the national website and is complementary to the image of MBUSA and MB Canada. To work toward a consensus on the Section page, we have asked some of the presidents of sections that have websites to assist in our conference calls to ensure the sections concerns are addressed.  Their input will be reflected in the Board presentation.  The implementation guide that has been developed by Brodeur will also be presented.  This is vital to changing the brand of your club internally and externally.  As always the results of the spring Board meeting will be covered in The Star.
Now for the fun side of your club, make your plans now for StarFest 2010 September 24-29 in Winchester, Virginia.  See you there!