Click here for photos from the 50th Anniversary Gala and Award Banquet - May 17, 2008

Outgoing President’s Speech FY’08

Presented by Jon Rao Papke, CSI, CCS, AIA

May 17, 2008

Good evening! This has certainly been a very interesting year. As a chapter, we’ve had some remarkable programs and great educational seminars. But we’ve also experienced the loss of a few friends, including Brian Schroder who passed away unexpectedly while serving on the Board as a Vice President. For me personally, there have been some very serious moments, responsibilities nobody ever warned me about, practical business issues to deal with, and the charge of leading a world class chapter into it’s 50th year. But overall, it’s been an enjoyable year with good friends and fond memories.

Normally the May meeting is the chapter’s award night. This year we are delaying the presentation of most of those awards until fall so we can devote more time to celebrating the last 50 years. But I do want to mention several people who have contributed to the success of the chapter as I give you the highlights of the past year.

The monthly programs are probably one of the most visible efforts of our chapter. Every program this year was a big success with exciting topics and good attendance. I had members complimenting me on the great topic or presenter after each meeting, as if I were personally responsible. The members on the Programs Committee chaired by Christopher Perego may be small in number – Bruce Saline, Chris Anderson, Terry Olsen, Ryan Babcock, Nancy Gulliford and Nate Semch, but their dedication is unparalleled. They have a long term commitment to the committee; the newest member has been active for at least 3-4 years.

The Professional Development Committee (formerly the Education Committee) did a fantastic job bringing seminars to the industry at large. Under the leadership of Nancy Gulliford and Jodi Wiedemann, their seminars have brought in double the expected non-dues revenues, offered a good variety of topics, and helped establish our credibility in the construction industry that the Minneapolis-St Paul Chapter of CSI can provide quality educational offerings. A large number of attendees were non-members. This is also a small but dedicated group of people. Joel Springer not only organized two for-profit seminars this past year, but was also a presenter at the Introduction to Construction Documents seminar.

Philip Leonard’s Certification Committee had the challenge of re-focusing some of their efforts on registration promotion and review class administration in response to Institute’s new electronic test format for the CDT exam. This group also organizes the CDT workshops, providing several of the instructors from their own ranks. We now have 18 new certified CDT’s due largely in part to their efforts. I would like to highlight Doug Lingren’s long time association with this group – he led the study sessions umpteen years ago when I took the CCS exam.

Bruce Saline and his committee did an excellent job retooling the Product Showcase with 2 quality seminar offerings and a new venue at the U of M’s College of Architecture. We still need work getting professionals to attend, which includes attracting those outside of our chapter. But Bruce was also able to establish a relationship with the College of Architecture that hopefully we can continue to build on.

The Awards Committee works hard every year to solicit award nominations from the membership. We have several chapter awards that will be presented in September. But they also handle the nominations for Region and Institute awards. Next month we will be receiving the Outstanding Chapter Commendation from Institute for the 9th consecutive year. Paul Scheid was new this year as committee chair, but was aided by long term committee members like Matt Strand and Jerry Putnam.

Of course, none of these great programs do us any good if no one knows about them; which brings me to the Communications Committee. I believe that we have the best chapter newsletter in CSI. Bill Enright was quick to point out to me that the lion’s share of the work is done by Diana Nguyen. She also publishes our membership roster and maintains the chapter website.

And you can’t have an organization without members. The Membership Committee, under the capable leadership of Gary Patrick, works hard both to attract new members and support existing ones. Some of their efforts you might recognize are the Membership Orientation lunches, New Member Spotlight article each month in Specifics, maintaining and updating the badges for the monthly meetings and staffing the CSI booth at our Showcase as well as the state convention for AIA Minnesota. Some of the things you might not be aware include working with Institute on record keeping and contacting non-members who attended chapter meetings, took the certification exams, or attended any of our for-profit seminars. This work is accomplished through the dedicated efforts of committee members like Doug Lingren, Joe Sporrer, Peter Weum and Allen Hoglund.

This is not an inclusive list of volunteers. There are several more people involved on committees and working to accomplish a variety of programs and tasks for the chapter.

I would also like to mention the Board. We have navigated a few tough issues together this year, and they all did an exemplary job of representing you. It was a lot of fun working with all of them, and together it made the job a lot easier. Some of the tough decisions we had to make involved the budget. Not every budget item came out as expected. The Showcase wasn’t as profitable as predicted and there were a few other surprises. But I am happy to announce that we should end the year at or below budget.

One of my goals at the start of this year was to increase the chapter’s presence within the construction/design community. From the comments I have heard from outsiders in general conversations and the number of non-members attending our seminars; I believe that we have made an excellent start on that. I’m hoping that we continue this trend to be “The Construction Educators” as our motto declares.

Let me finish by saying that it truly has been an honor and a privilege to serve you as our Chapter’s President for FY’08. I appreciate the responsibility that you have entrusted me with a lot more than I did a year ago. And in the spirit of tonight’s anniversary, I want to thank all of you for making our Chapter great over it’s 50 years and all the value it’s membership offers.