Happy New Year everyone!!
I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season with your friends and family. We celebrated the festive season at the Roundhouse Centre with our friends at CPRS. It was a really beautiful venue, and the team had a lot of fun – particularly in the photo booth.
Did you have as much fun dressing up and being silly as we did?!
If you were there, or you want to see what you missed, you can check out the photos on our Facebook page here. Please tag yourselves!
2019 career goals
How was 2018 for you? Did you have a fantastic year or a frankly terrible one that you’d rather forget? Thankfully, if it was the latter, a new year brings new opportunities and a chance to reset.
Whether you are setting goals to expand your network, expand your knowledge, get a promotion or land your dream job – we’re here to help you.
Learn and meet new people at our events
Events are the engine of our Chapter. We have a few planned already:
January 31: Webinar: Storytelling in the digital age with Dan Gold
International storyteller (and fellow Brit!) Dan Gold is the Director of Digital Strategy at Martin Charlton Communication and IABC Saskatoon Past President. Dan has worked with global, national and provincial organizations on their traditional and digital strategies. In the first in a series of locally hosted webinars, he will be discussing the importance of traditional storytelling in the digital world.
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February 21: Brad Whitworth, ABC, SCMP, IABC Fellow is coming to town!
Brad has been a communication executive in Silicon Valley for three decades leading marketing and communication teams at some of the world’s leading tech firms. I’m thrilled that he has accepted our invite to come to Vancouver. Keep an eye on our channels for more details of his visit.
March 5: Get Connected
We love our Get Connected events, especially this one where we’ll be doing a fun speed-networking event where you’ll meet the board, ask your burning questions and learn more about our BC Chapter.
Special Interest Groups
Our free Special Interest Group (SIG) program will continue in 2019 starting with a Health SIG on February 5. We will also be experimenting with some ‘pop-up’ SIGS this year. If you are interested in hosting a one-off SIG or you have an idea for a topic, get in touch with our SIGS Director, Lauren.
Become certified or win awards
Professional certification can elevate your career and help you to keep your skills fresh and applicable. It’s a great way to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. We will be hosting exam sittings in Vancouver for both the CMP and SCMP certifications in 2019 (dates TBD).
Looking to earn more points? All of our professional development events under four hours will give you 5 points.
Awards are another great way to showcase your talents or celebrate the successes of others. Our local Wave Awards program will be returning in June. Watch out for the call for nominations in the coming weeks.
Join an award-winning volunteer team
I often hear members say that they’ve been meaning to get involved, or that they’d love to help but do not have the time. Without volunteers we can’t offer programming.The more volunteers we have, the merrier!
Last year, at Leadership Institute in California I joked about how volunteering is just like chocolate.. Why chocolate, you ask? Well, because it comes in so many different varieties…you can have dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or truffles. There’s truly a gem for everyone in these roles.There are lots of different ways that you can get involved from a couple of hours at an event to longer term commitments. Most of the current opportunities are listed here on our website. Don’t see a role that suits your interests or capacity? There may be other opportunities so please get in touch with our Volunteer Director, Olga.
Making international connections
You’d potentially have to be living under a rock to not be aware that we are hosting the World Conference this year because we don’t really shut up about it….yep we are THAT excited! . With the theme Think Forward, around 1,300 communicators from all over the world will be descending on Vancouver to explore new challenges and opportunities facing the communication profession. If that’s not awesome enough, we have journalist Soledad O’Brien as our keynote speaker.
Happily this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we have in store this year. So stay tuned on our social channels and subscribe to our Connect newsletter to catch the latest news this year!
