Tales from MGCA...

We hope everyone had a great time in St. Louis for the Mid-American Greek Council Association Conference on February 11-14.  Approximately 2,000 Greek leaders attended the conference, which took place at the Renaissance Grand Hotel.   Tim Roth, Garrett Bredenkamp, Josh Terhune, Carrie Seymour, Sarah Kim and Chris Bacon had the opportunity to attend the event.

As an industry leader in Greek websites, it was a pleasure to meet so many of our clients that came and visited with us at our booth.  It always helps to put a face with a name!  It was also a great chance for us to introduce ourselves to other Greek leaders that have not used us before. We had the opportunity to talk with many of them one-on-one, and offer demos as to what we could do for their council or chapter. 

We broke out the Nintendo Wii at our booth, which obviously attracted a lot of attention (sorry to any of you that were whacked in the head from the controller while walking by...it was a little intense sometimes).  Participants had to bowl a strike in three frames to get their name entered in a drawing for a free Web site.    Brian Chwalisz from Kappa Sigma at the University of North Florida was our winner.  Congrats Brian! 

We will be at the Southeastern Interfraternity Conference (SEIFC) Leadership Retreat this weekend in Atlanta.  Be sure to stop by our booth!

AFA Conference

It sounds like the Association of Fraternity Advisors (AFA) conference in Denver last week was a success! Tim Roth, Jeremy Turner, Josh Terhune, Aaron Walker and Garret Bredenkamp all had the opportunity to meet with a number of Greek national offices, councils and chapters at the event. There was a great deal of interest from people that were interested in our services to help network their organizations.

Not sure who won this tug of war for convention goodies from the picture. It looks like Jeremy (left) and Josh (right) were fighting over a stuffed SPAM character and a Dynamic Recruitment DVD. Not sure who won that battle though...

The crew made it to Denver a day early before the convention to discuss 2009 at Chapter Communications. Next year will be the most exciting year in our company's 4-year history, with an upcoming launch of our Olympian software (more to come on that in the upcoming weeks), expansion of services and hiring of new staff. We are also launching our new Chapter Communications website in January, so be on the lookout for that as well.

Funny story from the convention, make sure you remind our Sales Director Garret Bredenkamp to make sure he still has his MacBook. After buying a new one in Denver...he misplaced it not even an hour later and a few of the guys had to walk from store-to-store to find it. We are happy to say that Garret was reunited with his new MacBook at a Brooks Brothers store.

Economic Struggles, Lay Offs....Not Here!

We've seen it over and over again in the news how people are losing their jobs and companies are tightening up their budgets because of the current economic conditions. Chapter Communications continues to thrive despite the economic downturn, and still continues to grow. The company has recently hired two new employees and announced an expansion into Canada.

Sarah Kim is our new Client Manager. She will be one of the primary contacts for technical assistance with our websites. Basically, she'll be a client's best friend when they start using their new website. Sarah is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois.

Aaron Walker was recently hired as our VP of Marketing. He'll be leading the charge as we expand our services into Canada. You can view an announcement on Aaron's hiring at http://tinyurl.com/5uup5s

We're not done yet. Chapter Communications is still looking for passionate and hard-working professionals to join our team. For more information on job opportunities, visit http://tinyurl.com/5a2k5h.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Halloween Tales

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! Some of us here at Chapter Communications did in fact dress up for the occasion. Seth Eheart, our Chief Operating Officer, was the flashiest of the group. He dressed up in a giant banana costume. The funny part was...he interviewed a potential employee that day. It's a safe bet that it was the first time that person has ever been interviewed by a banana...

Carrie Seymour, our Client Manager dressed as a cat. Anna Pougas, our Product Manager, donned some purple hair to add some flash to the development office.

I am kicking myself over the fact that we have NO PICTURES from Halloween. It got me to thinking, do any of your clubs or organizations have Halloween pictures that you'd like to share? Any funny Halloween stories? Please share...

Back and Blogging!

Hello all! Just because we haven't posted lately, it doesn't mean we have been asleep at the wheel here at Chapter Communications. We've actually been quite busy.

Recently, I was hired to be the Communications Director. Basically, that means I handle public relations for the company and help with the overall message of who we are, and what we are doing as an organization. One of things I have started to do is get more exposure for our clients that are effectively using the websites we provide for them. So if your chapter is doing something great with your website, let us know!

Behind the scenes here at Chapter Communications, we have been gearing up for a launch of our new web system, which will change the overall look and fuctionality of the websites that we provide. It will be available to all new and exisiting clients. The new version allows each organization’s administrator to make more changes to public and private pages within their websites. One major function allows members to customize their personal pages, which allows them to see various calendars, photo albums, files, etc in the order that they want. As always, Chapter Communications will offer training for each organization’s administrators.

Sigma Kappa sorority at the University of Illinois is testing out our new version. You can get a look at it by visiting http://www.sigmakappaillinois.org/.

We'll be sure to keep you updated on the new version, along with other announcements from Chapter Communications in the near future.

College Fraternity Editors Association, Nashville, TN

This past weekend Jeremy and I traveled to Nashville for the CFEA Convention. It was a great weekend. The accommodations and staff were nothing less than great! Chapter Communications has had the privilege of creating the new CFEA website and has been working closely with its staff to make it nothing be the best! On Thursday night we went to the opening reception at the Chi Psi National Headquarters located near downtown Nashville. The night was full of chatting with new people, having a drink here and there, and congregating in a restroom?! Friday we had a full day of vendor responsibilities. It was great to meet some current clients as well as converse with potential new clients. Friday night was a dinner event at BB Kings, a locally known restaurant/bar in Nashville. This provided everyone with the opportunity to mingle and have a fun relaxed evening. Saturday was a pretty short day that ended with an evening banquet. All in all, I have to say the CFEA convention was a great trip. You can never go wrong when you meet satisfied current clients as well as interested potentials.

Mid-America Greek Council Association/National Black Greek Leadership Conference - Chicago, IL

I spent last weekend attending the MGCA/NBGLC in Chicago with a bunch of our staff members. Chapter Communications has been attending this conference for the past 5 years. It is always a great conference to be apart of. This was a very rewarding conference not only because of the amount of attendees but also because of the feedback we received from current clients. Our booth was located right across from registration which proved to be very helpful. Also, our Wii gaming systems (yes we brought 2) didn't chase people away. We had a contest for the attendees to win a FREE website by bowling a strike in 3 frames. We had people swarming just to play! This only helped our staff to them provide this individuals information about what our system can do for their council and/or chapter. It was a great success!

Even Timothy Roth, our CEO, was joining in on the Wii activities! Jeremy Turner, our National Marketing Director, and Josh Terhune, one of our Regional Marketing Directors, became very competitive and even started challenging the MGCA staff! Don't worry this was all taking place when meetings were in session.

We want to thank all of the fantastic staff of the MGCA and NBGLC as well as all of our current clients who stopped by to introduce themselves. We are also thankful to all of the attendees who came to join in all of the Wii fun and look forward to hearing back from our conference winners!

All in all, this conference was extremely successful and we are looking forward to joining in the fun next year.