President's Message

Hola,

Our new Chairman, David Alvarez, is on a much deserved break, so I offered to switch publishing dates with him - so, here I am again.  The Chair's Message will be back in the mid-month issue.

I didn't know we had a "monsoon season" in Florida, but as the weatherman is saying - this is becoming the "new normal."  When I was little, my family moved to Winter Park for a couple of years.  Even though I was only 6, I remember it rained everyday at 4:00 in the afternoon - sound familiar?

During summer at the Chamber, we catch-up on what needs catching-up on from our busy "Festival Season," plan for the new program year and take much needed vacations.  We completed our first Membership Survey in recent history, and were very pleased with the outcomes.  One of the staff's pleasant surprises was that La Setima received very high marks.  Each of us puts a lot of effort into our section and we are pleased that you find it informative.  We are proud of our members, the many events in the District and our community leaders who volunteer their precious time and talent.

We had a great Board Retreat at the HCC Training Center on Davis Islands courtesy of our friends at Hillsborough Community College.  We all got "out of Dodge" for a few hours and came-up with some "fresh new ideas" for approaching some of our "same old problems."  Last year one of the outcomes of the Mini-Retreat was the freshening of our membership events such as Ybor @ Work, our business expo, and Ybor after Work, our evening networking event.  Attendance at both of these events improved substantially from suggestions made at last year's Retreat.

This year among other things, we plan to do a better job of letting our members and the community-at-large know of the good work we are doing on their behalf.  Bet you didn't know that the promotion of our special events produce major waves of positive publicity for Ybor City.  Or, that your Chamber won a Heritage Tourism Marketing Grant from the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners that resulted in a 30 sec. spot, 2 min. web vignette and a new theater presentation for our Visitor Information Center.

Now, on to my summer vacation - westward ho, young man!

Ciao, Tom Keating