President's Message
HOWDY!
We had a GREAT Conference in Redding. We visited the Old City Hall where we had a very interesting workshop on “Hacking the Millennials”, walking tour of downtown, Toured Turtle Bay Exploration Park (museum) plus the World’s largest Sundial and plastic floor bridge, Fort Crook (nothing to do with crook’s), Burney Falls (spectacular) and Shingle Town (museum). Plus some of the best restaurants and food that you can imagine. I wish all of you could have attended.
Next year in February we will be in Southern California at San Juan Capistrano. Please plan on attending and tell all of your history minded friends to join us (literally “Join Us”).
That is about all of the fun things, we also had our Regional Vice Presidents (RVP) and Board meeting plus Membership meeting at the Conference. We passed one more Bylaw change pertaining to notification to the Board and Membership for Special Called Meetings with 21 days’ notice (from 30 days).
All of our Board members are working diligently on their duties pertaining to the topics that we discussed at our August 9th Harris Ranch Planning Meeting. We will have positive results by next year.
At the Conference our Administrator Ben Wirick passed around a questionnaire titled “CCHS Membership Survey”. Attached to this message is a copy of this survey, please take a minute to fill it out and return it to our office. We would greatly appreciate it as it will help us “make your membership as valuable as possible”.
One of our RVPs Ralph Thomas put on a very good workshop on Saturday October 24 in La Verne. There were four topics: Membership Development-where to start, Membership Development through Market Research, Facebook made easy-for Membership Development and Marketing plus Archival Storage. All of these topics were very interesting and informative especially about “Facebook”.
I will discuss this at length in our next newsletter-stand by.
All concerns and complements are welcome.
John
John Lenau
President
Conference of California Historical Societies
[email protected]
(760) 249-4650
Second Vice President's Message
“Old timers, after all, tend to have unswerving views. They tend to believe in the superiority of the past.”—Sports writer Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal
Such may have been the case at the CCHS fall symposium last month in Redding. Our hosts, the Shasta Historical Society, one of our charter members, gave an uplifting Millennials’ take on history.
They left most of us with the impression that if we are not to stagnate with an aging membership but to grow, bridge the generational gaps, bring in younger members, involve the community and make technology work for us we need to change.
We wish more could have attended to learn about the success of this 1,000-member Shasta Historical Society.
Here, part of the seven paid staff gave CCHS guests some ideas on “Hacking.” It’s not driving a cab or trying to find one. It is the art of enticing the largest generation in human history to participate in extraordinary ways. From left, Kara Downing, curator of education; Nicole Espinosa, collections and archives registrar, Christine Stokes, executive director (and a CCHS regional VP and group leader), and Jeremy Tuggle, a Redding native, author and our informative tour guide on walking tours.
We all left in wonderment at what they are doing in the far north.
Museum, Research Library World Famous Sundial Bridge Shingletown Closing Dinner
Fort Crook Museum's Road Barn Oct 17, 2015 Some Museum Fun Burney Falls
Happy Thanksgiving. More to come in next report.
Michael Otten
2nd Vice President
Conference of California Historical Societies
[email protected] (530) 888-7837
