Leadership Ann Arbor, Day 2

I'm back home in Ann Arbor after attending the Leadership Ann Arbor Retreat. As I mentioned before, this retreat is all about learning to be a leader in the community. Yesterday was about being a leader within a group. Today was about leading as a group.

To that end we were placed in a group of six or seven. Pictured to the right are four of our six: Mike Williams of the Gerald Alcock Company, me (the "Webmaster"), Shannon Brown of the Ann Arbor Radio Group, and Tom Manning-Beavin of the Washtenaw Affordable Housing Corporation. Behind the camera was Karen Lancaster of the City of Ann Arbor. Our last member, Jennifer Cornell of Eiler Communications, had to leave early. I'll geta picture of her and Karen up here sooner or later.

Since the groups were chosen largely at random, our first task was to take a look at the members and the skills we each brought to the table. To be honest, I'm working with some very skilled people. As a group we are fairly well-balanced. Where some of us had weaknesses, there is someone else to take up the slack. An auspicious beginning for our group -- the "Avengers" (oh, did I mention that we had to come up with our own name?).

At the request of the Leadership Ann Arbor staff, several local non-profit organizations had submitted descriptions of problems that they were experiencing. Each of the groups was given a different one of these issues to work on. Our group is to help the local Boy Scouts of America Council. We were given two hours to come up with a strategic plan which we then presented to the rest of the class. Actually, I was elected to present it (darn my radio announcer's voice anyway!). Now we have to work on our plan and, in December, we will present it to the Boy Scouts.

I feel like I've been thrown in the deep end. I guess I 'd better start learning how to swim!