Well, our April Business Conference is ‘in the books’, and the best word that I can think of to describe it is ‘INCREDIBLE’! What an honor to have NAR 2016 President Tom Salomone join us for two days. Tom was SO involved, spending time at a bunch of meetings and attending the RPAC Auction Thursday evening and the BOD meeting Friday morning. He showed us his leadership, AND THEN SOME. We were also pleased to have Vince Malta, NAR REALTOR® Party Member Involvement Liaison join us for three days. Vince, a huge baseball fan, attended the Cardinals game with us Tuesday evening (a gorgeous night), spent Wednesday with us as we trained for “All In to Win”, and sat in on several committee and output group meetings on Thursday. JoAnne Poole, candidate for next week’s election for NAR 2017 1st VP, spent much of the week with us, as did NAR staffers Jean Maday, Erin Stackley and Shannon Burke.
We had 60 first-timers at the ABC, on top of the 110 that attended Capitol Conference/January Business Conference in Jefferson City. So, after our September Business Conference at Tan-Tar-A, I think it is safe to say that more than 1% of our total Association membership will have come to a conference for the first time in 2016. That doesn’t even consider the great crowd we expect at THE SUMMIT in August. One of the ‘Os’ in O2 is ‘Outreach’, and we have concentrated on reaching out to the membership and getting more involvement. Looks like we are accomplishing that.
Embassy Suites and the St. Charles Convention Center was a great venue for our event, and the energy level was sky-high all four days. That is a long time to be away from our families and businesses, but I think some of us were ready to stay on a while longer and do some more great things.
I cannot close without mentioning the Marge Pfaff RPAC Auction. Another fun evening of camaraderie, silliness, and wonderful fund-raising for one of the things we do best, to the tune of $61,737, another new record! Thanks to everyone who made the event such a success. And BTW, check out the photo library of Commercial Day and the April Business Conference that was just posted. Hundreds of awesome pictures of Association members working and playing hard, sharing the passion we display better than anyone.
So, remember that I used the word ‘INCREDIBLE’ back in the first sentence. I intentionally didn’t use it again. Now go back and read this post again and figure out how many more times I could have used the adjective ‘INCREDIBLE’. I DARE YOU!
Miles F. Noennig
2016 President
Missouri REALTORS®