out of the office

I'm not in the office this week so may have delays in replying to E-mails.
Any of the dates in January are fine - the sooner we decide the better though so holiday plans can be fitted in.
I reckon we have enough to sign off on a theme. Not stealing the show but to summarise on comments. It's looking like Aussie theme around the room, very casual, possibly wear something from your visited country but not a full national dress, with something representing visited countries on the tables (a flag) if we can get them.
Piece of cake - I'll start packing the esky.
Catch you all soon.

More on themes

I got a bit carried away and instead of publishing a new post, I submitted this as a comment. So here I go again.... (I'm still learning!)

I too like the Aust theme concept. This will keep the cost down as the materials will be easy to get. What if we have the invites, and decorations set to this but get the people to turn up in their uniforms (which I think might be a problem) or wearing something from the country they visited, ie, all the members of our team have "hey Jimmy hats"?

I think the 2 min talk might be a better option so that we don't end up with too many people speaking. Shall we also ask each team to maybe submit 10 photos from their trip and we then start putting them together for the background persentation (this way we don't end up with too many to work with).

Getting different flags might be expensive but they might be good table decoration. Shall we look into this once we know what the budget is?

Comments

OK I too agree with the KISS principle.... Always a goodie? !!!

To combine thoughts to date how about - Aussie theme with celebration fireworks and images of WA or something similar on invites etc? like a banner celebrating all things WA and the breadth of where GSE has been and come from?

Get the Rotary flags and stands to have around the walls (no cost) See if we can get table flags at no costs that represent the countries GSE has been to? say 2 flags a table? Probably at no cost.

Multi-media - I too like the idea of them sending in a few photos to represent their team and trip. I have a really good scanner and probably some staff that can help with that side of it. We can then put them together.

Micks Theme Ideas

Thought I'd better let you know what i look like. This was a hosts Harley in Myrtle beach that i had a pleasure of a short ride on.

Two approaches for me.

firstly I agree with the KISS theory. Keep it Australian theme on the tables and decorations and invitations. I also support the multi-media approach. We've had some get togthers and had photos rolling over in the background. (this may require some IT skills as the older teams will be on slides or may be hard copies that will require scanning) We'd also have to vet an amount per team as I know we had hundreds of photos.

Do we stick with just decorations or extend the theme to dress? If it's australian then we'd end of with a hundred swaggies i guess. OR dress from the countries visited.

Second choice would be if it's a sit down evening then I'd assume the teams would sit together, so each table could be made up in the colours of the country the team visited. This would take a lot more co-ordination though and probably cost more.

a question for me to close out on. Do we get a rep from each team to give a 2 minute presentation or simply pass the microphone around to each table for an informal hello this is who we are and where we went?

A Theme for Evening?????

The theme for the evening has to be something easy and relatively cheap to do??

It could be something that is built around featuring all the flags of the countries that GSE has been to. We could access the flags and stands from the Districts? and perhaps get table flags for each table?

Or it could be something built around Australia as the theme or Rotary. This was the background used on the slides for our presentation in the USA. USe of wattle and gum trees?

It could be just about colour blue and gold of the Rotary symbol - balloons and streamers?

We could have stars and helium balloons with little star confetti on the tables?

Reply with thoughts and what you think might work? Once we have a theme for the evening we can start working on the program

Hello From Joy

Hi everyone

By the looks of things, I am the odd one out - The Yanks out number the Scots 4 to 1! I promise to behave and be good (for a short time at least!).

I am looking forward to this new challenge and meeting all of you. The GSE experience was great. I have been back from Scotland for almost a month now. I have been slowly getting back to the swing of things - its hard getting back to reality after being spoilt rotten for 5 weeks. We had 6 in our team. Our members were from Bunbury, Harvey, Busselton, Albany and myself from Katanning. I stayed on for a week after the exchange in London and my wife flew over for that week. It was part of her birthday present.

A little bit about me - I'm a Chartered Accountant based in Katanning. I'm a member of the Apex Club and I enjoy socialising. Most of my time is spent with my 3 year old daughther who never stops talking. I am very happy today as I have nearly finished my GSE report.

Here is a pic of me at Loch Ness after scaring off the monster.

isn't technology amazing

Hey y'all,
the south carolinian accent is still with me even though we've been back since may 07.
it was good to hear the alumni got some legs. we got to share our travels with a team from wales and we all talked about the concept.
I still haven't been able to comit to formely joining Rotary yet but enjoy bumping into members on projects around the community.
I'm from Collie and the rest of the team were scattered fromKojonup, Kataning and Albany, so it will be interesting to catch up to see if we have some common friends.
I travel to Perth quite often for work so this may help getting together for meetings.

Haven't given the occasion any thought yet so will keep posted and I'm sure between all involved it will be an event that will create as many great memories as GSE itself.

that's it for now - i consider myself blogged. Will try for a photo next time.