July 5, 2011 – Atlanta, GA | Thanks to everyone that attended the Atlanta NADRA Chapter meeting in June. The turnout was great with close to 50 in attendance including several visitors. I hope that each of you enjoyed yourself and that the guest will consider joining our association and becoming active members.

A special thanks to June’s sponsor, Guardian Building Products www.guardianbp.com and their team which included David Elenbaum (seen below) and Trey Cawthon. David gave an informative presentation regarding Guardian products. Guardian has some great looking products available with numerous decking options. The highlight for me personally was Guardians willingness to introduce a “Labor Warranty” for their decking products. This is a huge deal in my eyes and Guardian along with only a couple of other manufactures appears to be offering this at this point. Guardians program sounds strong and would provide protective insurance for our consumers and our reputations as contractors. The benefits of this program are obvious and it’s my hope that others will follow Guardian and others who are making these programs available.

Special thanks go to Lindsay Ranly and Stefanie Kane from Timbertech who gave a great presentation on “Social Media”. They shared a lot of good information regarding the social media trends and benefits. Like most successful marketing campaigns it involves a multi speared effort. Social Media is an important and inexpensive element that we all need to utilize to provide company exposure, name brand recognition, and LEADS.
Huck DeVenzio of Arch Chemicals announced that they are accepting entries for those of us that use Womanized lumber for a drawing that will result in a FREE NADRA Membership along and a paid trip to Chicago to attend the Deck Expo.

Keith Compton spoke and has asked that announce wanting to be involved with our Deck for a Soldier® program contact him so that we can begin to plan this out. Last year was great and we had more offers than we could accept. This year there is an opportunity for others to do more of the heavy lifting so we need both vendors and builders to step forward to donate services. This years project will not be as large as last years and will involve more of a mid size effort. Please contact Keith and copy me in on your emails. We’ll be working with Operation Home-front again this year. Quite a bit of planning and coordination is required here so the sooner we can nail this down the better. It would be great to have all commitments finalized by the end of July. Keith can be reached at: kcompton@comptonsales.com.

Bobby Smith shared information from his meeting with local inspectors that occurred a few weeks ago and voiced optimism that we have gained their attention and have taken a great first step in which we can build on. This was a good move for us and thanks to Bobby for taking the time to attend the inspectors meeting.

Ginny Tibbetts introduced Atlanta NADRA Chapters stickers that can be adhered onto our permit boxes to let inspectors know our affiliation and to continue the effort of creating an awareness of who we are. This is a great idea and hats off to Ginny for not only thinking of it but having the first run printed.

Frank Pologrutto took a moment to present gifts to a couple fellow members who have sent him leads that resulted in jobs. Frank pointed out the positive benefits of being a chapter member and how working together as we do leads to good things. In this case……projects on the job board.

We had more volunteers Tuesday night for the Deck safety committee and I have sent everyone involved in an email so that they can communicate and agree on how to proceed.
I will be sending an email out to the Recruitment Committee as well. It would be great to see strong activity and results with each committee and there’s no doubt we have the people involved here to make progress. Gaining local membership and developing methods to be successful obtaining new members has to be a priority.

In regards to committee chairpersons: As far as I’m concerned it’s for you as volunteers as a group to decide unless it’s already established. Outside the DFS program which Keith Compton heads up, I’m not sure the others have been decided. If there’s a required official procedure that I’m overlooking, we’ll cover that at the next meeting, but please discuss this soon. Everyone’s time and efforts are appreciated by NADRA, the chapter, and me personally. All involved have great ability and it will come down to who really can commit the necessary time to keep the momentum moving forward. All I ask is to work together in the spirit this was intended and make progress.

Ginny, James, and I meet once for lunch between our scheduled chapter meetings to plan each session. I will be sending out invitations to each committee member asking you to join us if possible. I’d like to plan this for Tuesday July 19th which is 4 weeks before our August 16th meeting. I’d like to look at this as a “Cabinet” approach with the hope that if we’re meeting and we’re all committed and discussing these subjects, we’ll be able to stay focused and put forth an effort with results. We’ll take a few minutes and cover each committee’s ideas and progress and plan for a quick update at the chapter meeting.

I am excited and pleased with our progress and attendance as a chapter. Our meetings have gotten to be something I look forward to each time we gather. It’s an opportunity to see and enjoy time with friends. If I have an issue with anything it’s ya’ll are keeping me out too late…lol.

Our progression as a chapter has been pretty steady and it seemed obvious to me that we’re out growing our meeting location at the Taco Mac. We will be looking for a new location for our August 16th meeting which Trex will be sponsoring. That will be posted later along with the “Evite” from Ginny.

Again, I sincerely thank everyone for their attendance and their efforts for the chapter.

Respectfully,

Bobby Parks
Atlanta NADRA Chapter President