Thanks to Mt Seymour For Hosting a Great Event!

Thanks to all our members who either shuttled or drove up to Mount Seymour last night for a Members Only reception and ski/boarding/snowshoeing event. What a great place to host an event. Our gracious Mt. Seymour host Jon, offered an amazing spread of food and beverages and free ski passes. You can check out the Seymour web site for the new spring ski passes that are on sale and info on snowshoeing (which I’ve done and is amazing) but what I didn’t know is that Mt. Seymour is also available for corporate day getaways that includes providing a room, food and beverages and snowhoeing as part of a team building package.

Breakfast With the Premier

We had a great event with Premier Clark last week who talked about her families and fiscal prudence at the sold-out event at the Delta Burnaby Conference Centre. Check out the whole photo album on Facebook .

The Diamond Ball Gala Fundraising Event

On Saturday night I attended the annual Diamond Ball fundraising event for the South Burnaby Neighbourhood House at the Firefighters Club.  This year’s theme was “Cabaret” with Bonnie Kilroe who sang and danced along with a number of burlesque performers to a sold-out crowd. The evening started with a martini bar and the opportunity to peruse auction items, followed by a fabulous 3 course meal. It was great to see the Burnaby business community come out to support Neighbourhood House which is a volunteer driven community service agency that provides important community building programs and services in response to identified needs. You can find more info on South Burnaby Neighbourhood House right here.

And last but not least thanks to “Cher” and “Tina Turner” for turning up to spice up the evening!

Breakfast with the Premier at the Delta Burnaby Hotel Conference Centre

Over the past year the BBOT has hosted an impressive roster of events  as part of our Distinguished Speakers Series. Tomorrow that list will be topped as the BBOT welcomes Premier Christy Clark at the Delta Burnaby Hotel and Conference Centre. Clark, who was born and raised in Burnaby is expected to talk about the recently tabled budget as well as the BC Jobs Plan.   If you’re not joining us in person, join us online using this hashtag #BBOTChristy. We’re looking forward to it! For more information on this event visit us here.

Social Media For Member Organizations – Chamber Week 2012

Paul and I went to the W.A.C.E. (Western Academy of Chamber Executives) recently and came back with some really great information. These conferences are important because they expose you to a wide range of best practices in the industry. The key is to take manageable, actionable items and integrate them into your core deliverables.
Breakout sessions could be roughly categorized into “Economic Development“, “Member Retention“, “New Members“, and “Social Media” and we definitely came away with some key takeways in each of these areas. In the coming weeks we will be implementing some of these into our own strategies so stay tuned.

One of the break-out sessions I attended was called Networking in the Age of Social Media: Defying the Myth that Social Media is Detracting From Personal Networking and Relationship Building. Speakers Lisa Farquharson, (Pendleton (OR) Chamber and Jennifer Wells, Camarillo (CA) Chamber both have a robust Facebook social media presence. So what is the key to their success? This is what I learned.

They have both figured out what platform really works for them and they focus their communication efforts in that area.

They are both extremely active in that space and use their personal warmth and voice to communicate to members and their community.

Top of mind always is  ” How can I communicate this out to our members?”

General rule of thumb for posting:

• Develop a plan
• Share your stories
• Build Relationships –  Build Community
• Inform and Educate

How does this translate into action?

• “Like” member pages
• Welcome new members
• Support business with “shout outs”
• “Check” into businesses (Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp if you’re using those social media tools)
• Comment on member posts
• Share event invites
• Share important news
• Focus on members

So what platforms work for you and what strategies do you use to build community and drive value for your members? I would love to hear from you!

So What Exactly IS a Board of Trade??

I’ve been asked this question a few times since I began working for the Burnaby Board of Trade just short of one year ago. It’s kind of a great question. After all, we’re in the business of growing our membership and not even our own website has a straightforward definition.

There are a lot of times in life when you come across a term/concept/idea/word you simply can’t define. Often, you’ve heard it mentioned many times before, but life’s experiences haven’t granted you the opportunity to quite grasp what it is. You don’t want to ask for fear of sounding dumb. If you really need to know, Google and Wikipedia are terrific resources, but even they sometimes skip over the basics and jump right into the convoluted detail.  Sometimes it’s nice to just get a simple straight answer.

Board of Trade is essentially a synonym for Chamber of Commerce. If there is any meaningful difference between the two, I couldn’t tell you what it is. For some people this is a perfectly sufficient answer. They know about CoCs, they’ve just never heard them referred to as BoTs (or vice versa).

For the rest of you, a Board of Trade (or Chamber of Commerce) is a business organization made up of a membership of local businesses in a community. These organizations work to bring businesses together to develop strong networks, to represent the interests of the business community to local government, and to foster economic development. They also usually provide a range of services and benefits to their members such as specialized or exclusive events and workshops, and discounted rates on common business expenses. In addition they often provide services such as business registration, business name approvals, and certification of Certificates of Origin.

Boards and Chambers also exist at the provincial or state level (such as the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce), as well as at the national level (e.g. the Canadian Chamber of Commerce). These organizations usually work to represent business interests to higher levels of government and serve to advocate on relevant legislation. More in-depth information on the purposes and different models of Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce can be found here.

So for anyone who wasn’t sure, now you know. I hope this was somewhat helpful!