Happy New Year!

Hello everyone

I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas with your friends and family and now looking forward to all that 2012 has to offer.

Andrew and I spent our Christmas with his family in Canberra and it was lovely to see our many nephews and nieces all of whom must have had a growth spurt since we saw them last. We are now back at home and as well as dealing with his hot weather, doing various odd jobs around the house that were put aside simply because we didn't have time during the year. I'm looking forward to starting my new job at the bank on Monday 16 January so until then, I'm crossing off a long list of household and gardening duties that were left aside last year.

I'm happy to report that all our guest speakers for our Rotary 'Connecting Business with Community' business networking month for February are locked in. They promise to be quite interesting and engaging and I'm sure there'll be plenty of Rotarians in business who will also find the topics pertinent for them. I'm going to use the mornings of the next week to go around to businesses in my local area at Chesterville Road to heavily promote these events and get even more people to attend. I'd love it if I can get your help and support to promote it too. We simply need more people to get out there and 'be the face' of Rotary and personally invite people to come along.

All the information is currently on our website and of course, people can book their attendance online through www.trybooking.com/17704

These business events are slowly gaining traction and I have been asked by Tim from RC Ringwood to present to their club about how they can also do the same. Tim is looking after the committee on Rotary Corporate Memberships and I will also be participating in this committee to see how we can get the vocation back into Rotary.

Over the break, I wrote an article for the Rotary Membership newsletter that is emailed out to all Australia and New Zealand and our zones to inspire some interest in the concept of business events and it has been heavily advertised in Linked In - a social media professional networking online group to which I had been contacted by a Rotary Club in Cambridge UK for the tools and templates that we currently use to organise these events so that they too, can run them at their own club...so slowly, these are gaining some international momentum. Although the concept is nothing new - it's merely going back to the roots of Rotary - I strongly believe that our unique selling point is that we have an international connection of business men and women who use their knowledge, skills and talents to serve the community. There is no other business club like it in the world - so what's not to like?

On January 11th, I have been invited to the RC Ringwood to be a guest speaker to talk about the concept of the business events and also been asked by DGE Brian to have a more active involvement in bringing vocations back to Rotary. You may also be interested that our first guest speaker at our November events, Bruno, is also looking at how we can incorporate these events plus our corporate membership so with his contacts in business, we can widely promote Rotary.

So it's all baby steps now, but I hope that it re-opens a door that had been long closed and locked, to a new world of potential new membership opportunities within the business world.