Greetings IABC Leaders!

Hi IABC Leader,

I’m Melissa Dark, and I’m the newly appointed Director of Communication and Member Services at IABC. Some of you may already know me, because as well as having spent my career in a variety of communication roles in all kinds of organizations, I also come from a strong IABC background: I’m a former chapter president, have served on a number of local and international committees, and I’m a previous Gold Quill Chair.

It’s exciting taking on this new role helping to support chapters to deliver value to all our members. I truly believe IABC has been a great benefit to me in both my career and in my personal life – introducing me to new people, new ideas, new ways of thinking. I’d really like for every member to have the opportunity to get the same experience out of IABC as I have had.

I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at the Leadership Institute in New Orleans in February, and even more at World Conference in June. Feel free to give me a call (+1 415 554 4752) or drop me a line (mdark@iabc.com) at any time if there’s anything you’d like to suggest or discuss.

Cheers,
Melissa

It's Almost Here...

New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. | 6–8 February | Loews New Orleans Hotel

What does it mean to be an IABC leader?

Find out when you join IABC Chair Robin McCasland, the international executive board and IABC staff in New Orleans, Louisiana, for Leadership Institute 2014 on 6–8 February.

Learn the ins and outs of chapter management. See old friends. Meet new ones. Find clarity, focus and empowerment. Celebrate the best in chapter management. Best of all, build your leadership skills.  The date is fast approaching, so be sure to register today at www.iabc.com/li.

New for this year’s Leadership Institute is the Executive Leadership Seminar on Thursday. Register for the event and take advantage of high-impact training that will add even more value to your IABC leader experience.  The Executive Leadership Seminar features Adrian Cropley, ABC, and Gregg Lederman, CEO of Brand Integrity and author of the bestselling book Engaged! Outbehave the Competition to Create Customers for Life. Join Adrian to explore your leadership skills and earn a certificate in strategic leadership. Gregg will deliver an inspiring keynote at lunchtime and lead a half-day workshop where you will learn how engaged employees lead to engaged customers and bottom-line results.  Register for this exciting event here: http://www.iabc.com/education/els/.

Chapter Financial Reports and Board Updates

It’s time to report your 2013 chapter’s financials to the international office.  We would also like to have your most current board roster.  Each chapter should return the documents found in the Dropbox link below.  U.S. Chapters: please note that you have a different finance agreement form to fill out.  Return all forms along with a pdf of your 31 December 2013 bank statement to leader_centre@iabc.com by 15 February 2014.  Be sure to include your chapter name and region in the subject line of the email.  If you have specific questions, feel free to email leader_centre@iabc.com.  LI will be another great opportunity to have all your finance questions answered.  We’re here to help and we look forward to receiving your documents.

Link to Financial Report and Board Update documents:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ol5s33elv36fq12/A3lnYFcyRA

Leader Training on NetSuite

We are diligently working on rolling out our new website.  Along with that comes a great new membership system for all of us.  Yesterday we held a Webinar on NetSuite, the system that will replace MMA.  We covered all the important features and functions.  Thank you to the leaders who were able to participate.  Hopefully it was a thorough preview of what’s to come.

Missed it?  Not to worry, it was recorded and can be found here:

NetSuite Webinar Recording

We highly recommend that at least one member of your chapter’s board views this presentation and familiarizes themselves with the content before you use the system.  The content will be most helpful once we have a live system, stay tuned for that date!

Questions?  Email leader_centre@iabc.com – we’re here to help!  We will also be available to answer NetSuite questions at LI so register today.

Lapsed Member Campaign

Next week we’ll be kicking off a lapsed member campaign to encourage members who’ve lapsed in the past 6 weeks to renew their membership.  We realize that communication to lapsed members hasn’t been the best recently so we want to kick start 2014 by reaching out to our IABC friends who may simply need a reminder to rejoin.

Communication Certification Program Update

As promised, we are providing this update to leaders before it goes out to all members. The following update on certification from IABC Chair Robin McCasland will go out to all members early next week.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to update you on our progress toward launching a global certification program. This is another of the ongoing messages we’ll be sending to you over the coming months to keep you informed. 

IABC’s annual Leadership Institute (LI) will take place in New Orleans from 6 to 8 February. We are taking advantage of that gathering to carry out several important processes that will move the new certification program forward.

First, the Nominating Committee appointed to review and recommend individuals to sit on the Global Communication Certification Council will bring their recommendations to the International Executive Board (IEB) at LI.  We expect to announce the members of the new Council shortly after our meeting. 

A small team of communication professionals will participate in a job task analysis (JTA), paving the way for development of a blueprint and exam for our first certification program. This first certification program will be targeted to communication professionals at the Generalist/Specialist level of their communication careers.  The designation for people who attain this certification will be CCP, which stands for Certified Communication Professional.

The JTA is based on the six Global Principles℠ that were determined by IABC’s Career Road Map Committee. The committee members developed these principles based on their in-depth analysis of a wealth of research on our profession. The JTA defines job roles and competencies that will be required to earn the CCP designation.

Once we have a draft blueprint, we will validate it by conducting a survey among communication professionals currently working at that job level, including IABC members and the broader communication industry worldwide. After survey results are analyzed and the final blueprint is complete, we will be ready to draft exams.

We will also launch the new IABC Academy at LI. The Academy will be the umbrella for all of IABC’s professional development activities going forward. Research on career development needs for our profession was reviewed by the Career Roadmap Committee to determine initial Academy program offerings. Those potential programs are now being reviewed and focused to address a broad range of needs by our members and other communication professionals.

There are preliminary plans as well to work more closely with IABC chapters and regions to deliver face-to-face training, as well as expand online options and partnerships.  I’ll provide more details about those plans as they are further developed.

As mentioned previously, some IABC volunteers have been developing concepts for engaging our Accredited Business Communicators (ABCs) long-term. We have a wealth of senior-level knowledge and expertise in our large community of ABCs around the world. Our ABCs have bonded through shared experiences of working toward and achieving accreditation, and serving in various leadership roles within IABC over time. We intend to nurture that special community and build on it for our ABCs, and also tap into their shared experiences to benefit newer members coming into the association now and into the future.

We had planned originally to host a webcast this month to share some of the concepts and seek feedback from our ABCs. We have revised our plans and will now share first with LI attendees the comprehensive concepts for a special “ABC Plus” program. Some of the proposed concepts include unique, senior-level professional programming and events that would be available only to ABCs.

Feedback from leaders attending LI will help us refine concepts and then determine how we can implement the activities and more fully engage our ABC community. If you are attending LI, please be part of the conversation, share your feedback and any additional ideas to help make this potential new program a great success.

I look forward to sharing more information with you soon after LI has concluded.  As always, thank you for your interest and support as we build these very exciting programs for IABC.

Thank you,
Robin
IABC Chair