Here's the 3rd Quarterly message from the Southern California CRS Chapter 2008 President Deborah Kniss, introducing the Board of Directors and sharing some information about the upcoming EDUCATIONAL and NETWORKING meeting to be held at Wilson Creek Winery on Friday September 26 in Temecula.

(I apologize that there were some issues with the tripod so you will hear some background noise)

If you attended the first two quarterly General Membership meetings this year, I hope you have already used your new tools and networking to increase your sales. As President, that is one of my stated goals for active Chapter members. In regards to classes, you will soon see information about a new two day class on Finance that is a must-have for this market, as well as special training on effectively maintaining an REO account – watch your email notices for more information!

This is the time, especially if “you don’t feel like it”, to get involved with the Chapter. If you would like to find out more information about the Board of Directors and what opportunities are available to you, please contact me direct. Real estate sales is all about staying cutting edge in your knowledge and skills, as well as staying connected with others.

I hope you will attend the next educational and networking meeting in Temecula – it is going to be a very important, fun event spread over two days. We will start with some fun on Thursday evening, September 25, at the Improv. Our General meeting will be held at the gorgeous Wilson Creek Winery on Friday, September 26, where Dick Betts (national speaker on technology) will be showing us how to start and maintain a Blog, how to text like a professional and much more. Of course you can’t have a seminar at a winery without doing some wine tasting afterwards!

This is also the perfect opportunity for you to ask questions about how to get more involved with the Chapter and network with a national representative from CRS, Ron Canning, who is flying in from Ohio to be with us.

Also, remember that by attending the meeting, your name will automatically be entered in a drawing to be in the “Member Spotlight”. The winner will be videotaped and profiled on our website and spotlighted in our next newsletter! I look forward to seeing you there.

Deborah Kniss, 2008 Chapter President

Stay the “Best of the Best” with the Southern California Chapter of CRS!

Here is our FIRST video for SoCalCRS, of the installation of the 2008 Officers. The quality is OK as is the sound (you may need to click TWICE on the arrow to start the video, and turn up your sound).

Thanks to RICH LOMBARI for managing the video while I was sworn in. Thanks for your help, Rich!

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Here are the Officers and the Board of Directors for SoCalCRS for 2008.

Deborah Kniss - President; Marlene Bridges - President Elect; Jeff Dowler - Treasurer; Debbie Browne - Secretary; Emily Link - Past President

AREA VICE PRESIDENTS:

Orange County - Donna Sutton

San Diego - Barbara DuDeck

Temecula - Vicki Puterbaugh

Santa Barbara - Joanne Schoenfeld

Ventura County - Susie Hafer

Victor Valley - Jeff Longshore

Riverside - Heidi Franklin

Palm Desert - Larry Griffith

San Fernando valley - Jim Ezell

South Bay - Louis McGraw

COMMITTEE CHAIRS:

Technology - Jeff Dowler

Communications - Rich Lombari

Education - Donna Sutton

Membership - Shirley Tenger

Programs - Roberta Trousdale

Public Relations - Mike Duncan

Sponsorships - Tom Tucker

ADMINISTRATOR - Kari Casarietti

Our final SoCalCRS membership meeting of 2007 was held yesterday in Hawthorne (Los Angeles) and attended by about 35 folks.

BOBBIE NELSON taught us lots of good stuff on networking - "Networking is a Learned Tactic - It's Not Who You Know but Who Knows You." More details on her teachings in a later post.

I was very pleased to be able to present the 2007 Have a Heart fund raising checks totaling $5000 to Vickie Puterbaugh, who accepted the $2500 check for the Temecula Habitat for Humanity Chapter (they could not be there due to the heavy rains in Temecula). I will be presenting the other $2500 check to the San Diego Chapter sometime this week. Thank you all for your generosity. We also raised about $250 more at the meeting in our fund raising.

The installation of the new officers of the Board of Directors was also held: DEBORAH KNISS, as President; MARLENE BRIDGES, as President Elect; DEBBIE BROWNE, as Secretary, and JEFF DOWLER, as Treasurer. (I am working on getting the video we took uploaded).

The highlight, IMO, was seeing EMILY LINK, our out-going President, receive the award as CRS of the YEAR. Congratulations, Emily. You are such an inspiration to us all.

The Board also held its annual planning meeting and retreat the day before. Much was accomplished, and we are all very excited about the upcoming year. You can expect to see lots of changes. It seems each year just gets better and better.

As always, if any of you are interested in getting more involved in the Chapter, please let us know.

The final meeting for our membership is this Friday at the Ayres Hotel in Hawthorn, November 30, from 8:30 - 2 PM.

And the last Board of Directors meeting of the year is tomorrow (where the new officers start their roles for the coming year). Hope you are signed up for the meeting - it should be a good one.

As you probably know I will be taking on a new role in the Chapter as Treasurer, after a fine job by Marlene Bridges who will be the President Elect for 2008. I will be moving out of my role as the Area VP for San Diego (but I will continue to be involved!!) and Barbara DuDeck will become our new Area Vice President for San Diego. I am very pleased about this, as I know Barbara is, and I think you can look forward to a good year for the membership.

I started having a quarterly Coffee Chat this year for the San Diego members (thanks, to Vicki Campbell, for her help in getting this started) which was met with some success. While the attendance was small, we had some good topics (mold, photography tips, investing using your 401k) , and the San Diego members seemed pleased to have something in the local area.

I did not sponsor a Coffee Chat in this last quarter primarily because of timing - the fires impacted lots of agents and their clients and sort of took over everyone's focus for a few weeks; the timing for our quarterly meeting was earlier; and the approaching holidays. Barbara and I have talked and I expect we will continue offering the Coffee Chats for our local membership. We hope you will participate, even if you cannot make the quarterly membership meetings. And if there are topics you want to hear about, please let me know.

You can look forward to some changes in our Chapter website, too - this will be discussed at our board meeting tomorrow, and our focus for the coming year will be on technology. I am excited about some of the things we are planning to bring you, our members, including a more effective site where you can keep up to date with what is going on. These changes will also benefit prospective CRS designees.

Finally, as readers, I hope you will feel comfortable participating in this blog as well. It's FOR YOU, no matter what region of our Chapter you are in. You can ask questions, share stories, ask for help, post ideas, and so on.

I also hope to see other members of the Board and some Area VPs participating too.

See you at the meeting and on the Internet. Thanks for reading!

The last membership meeting of 2007 for the Southern California Chapter of the CRS is coming up fast. Are you ready?

This should be another great meeting. We will have the installation of the 2008 officers, plus two great speakers. And I'm pleased to announce that there will be a special presentation to Habitat for Humanity.

WHERE: - Ayres Hotel, 14400 Hindry Avenue in Hawthorne

WHEN: Friday November 30 from 8:30 until 2 PM

SPEAKERS:

• STEVEN SPILE and NICOLE BRIGGS will lead a "Discussion of the California Association of REALTORS Strategic Defense Program."
• BOBBIE NELSON, President of WCR and California CAR State Director will talk about "Networking is a Learned Tactic - It's Not Who You Know, It's Who Knows You."

Don't forget to Register!!

The third quarter Board of Directors meeting for our Chapter will be held this Thursday, August 30 in Irvine.

If you have any issues that you would like me to raise, or have questions to be addressed, please feel free to post them here, or send me an email. We will be talking about the upcoming election of new officers (at the October 5 membership meeting in Temecula), the plans for the membership meeting and related topics.

Jeff

Well, here we are in Irvine at the second quarter board meeting (June 13, 2007).

These are held quarterly with most of the board present (President, President Elect, Secretary, Treasurer, all the Area VPs including yours truly and Chairs of the various committees including Membership, Public Relations, Strategic Planning, Website, Education and Programs, and Past President).

These meetings are very productive, and important decisions that affect you, as members, and our Chapter are made, including matters related to classes, increasing membership, ways to improve the organization and so on.

Please always feel free to pass along any feedback or questions that you have as a member so that a issues can be brought before the Board to discussion and action as appropriate.

Thanks

Jeff