Introduction

Hi All

I am so excited that you have agreed to be involved with organising part of this fantastic event.

I hope this first entry will provide you with information and background as to what we are trying to achieve. With all of us located from Perth to Collie and Katanning it does make it a bit more difficult to get together and therefore hopefully this will replace the need for meetings over the next couple of months.

The purpose of the Alumni Dinner is to celebrate the Rotary Foundation Members and in particular GSE. The Alumni also includes Ambassadorial Scholars. Alumni Dinners used to be held annually and were organised by the returning GSE teams, although they haven't been held now for a number of years.

Background
District 9450 decided that 2008 should be the year to have another Alumni Dinner and a committee of Rotarians with representatives across all 3 districts has been convened to organise an Alumni Dinner most likely in March next year.

The event is required to be break-even and an overall budget is being drafted at the moment. Each District has been asked to provide some seed money to start the project off which will be managed by the Organising Committee.

A number of sub-committees have been formed including:
1) database and PR (updating all 3 district databases and creating the PR for the event)

2) venue and logistics program, (choosing the location and meals and organsing the multi-media equipment required)

3) invitations and decorations (us)

Our sub-committee is responsible for the theme, decorations, program for the night and also the invitations. It is made up of past GSE team members and at the moment there are 5 of us. I am hoping that we will have some reps from District 9470 join us as well.

I sit on the overarching committee and the other 4 members are as follows:
Suzanne Spitz - 9450 Team Member to California
Clare McMurtrie - 9450 Team Member to California
Joy Choudhury - 9460 Team Member to Scotland
Michael Hill - 9460 Team Member to South Carolina


Our sub-committee
Our role is come up with the program for the night which should include how we can acknowledge the long and colourful history of GSE during the evening and encourage people to attend and participate in the event.

Through this blog I hope over the next 2 months we will come up with all the ideas etc for the event and then to meet one weekend in late January to look at how we put these ideas actually in place.

Specifically we have to:

1. Identify a theme for the evening and associated decorations (on a very limited budget)
2. Design invitations that can be emailed and also posted
3. Liaise with the Database sub-committee
4. Come up with the program for the evening ie does it involve speakers, multi-media presentations, information etc

There is another meeting of the Organising Committee in early December and I need to take some information back to them about what we are thinking.

The crucial steps in the timeline are as follows:

• Database updates due end December
• First notices of event to be promoted early Jan.
• Invites to go out early February

The specific timeline will be emailed to you and hopefully posted to the blog for you to download when I work it out. So stay tuned.

Your commitment and involvement

As promised I am hoping that this means we won't need to have lots of meetings and it won't take up too much time.

From now until early Jan, it will be blogs and possibly emails, with a meeting in late Jan and then some work via email etc between then and March.

I look forward to working with you and your involvement in what will be a great event.

Rebecca