My yearly membership to the St. Louis Woodworker’s Guild is $25. For that small investment, I receive a fruitful and amazing return by way of contacts, mentors, resources, lectures, lessons, assistance, knowledge, opportunities and instruction.
Contacts: I now have a friend just 15 minutes away who owns his own sawmill and kiln. He sells wood for a fraction of the cost of one of those big box stores and sometimes offers woods for sale that I’d never find in a lumber store, like the board of quilted box elder I’ve squirreled away in the back of my shop. He also happens to be a full-time cabinet- and furniture-maker, so I have an excellent resource for information, as well. (Incidentally, his favorite technique for aging cherry is through the use of lye.)
Mentors: An even shorter distance away from me is another member of the guild who has taken me under his woodworking wing. I have access to most of his tools (which is nice when it comes to things like the wide-belt sander and the lathe, two things I have neither the money nor the room for in my small shop), but more importantly, I have access to his years of knowledge and experience. I learn new tips and techniques every time I’m in his shop. Together, we are exploring new areas of woodworking in which neither of us has any experience, such as veneering!
Resources: With my membership, I get full access to our guild’s extensive library. I can check out any number of books or magazines for a month at a time. We have several hundred from which to choose and a few new books get added every month.
Lectures: Our 11 monthly meetings (every month but December) always include a lecture or demonstration by a professional woodworker or guild member. While they might not always involve something I will ever actually do (like how to build a boat), I can often find several pieces of useful information to take away with me.
Lessons: Although I hate to see my fellow woodworker get injured, I try to put their pain to good use by learning from their mistakes, rather than making them myself. Two lessons that stand out are when I learned how not to cut an opening into a zero-clearance insert and an improper use of a tapering jig.
Assistance and Knowledge: I now have a whole pool of professional and hobbyist woodworkers available to me at least once a month to ask for advice or assistance on a woodworking problem or dilemma I might have.
Opportunities: I recently took over the position of editor for the guild’s newsletter. This gives me the opportunity to combine two passions of mine – woodworking and writing. All that’s missing from the formula for a perfect job is a salary!
Instruction: My membership allows me opportunities for advanced learning, such as we had several years ago when Mark Adams hosted a three-day workshop for guild members. I was really excited to learn through such instruction I might not normally get to experience because of financial limitations. The following March, we had Frank Klausz come in for a two-day seminar. Again, I had the opportunity to learn from one of the great living woodworkers of our time. Coming up this next March is a seminar on finishes hosted by Jeff Jewitt – the learning never stops!
My $25 does not buy me a tool or product to drastically simplify my woodworking. But with a little extra effort on my part, I can make that yearly fee affect so many people, including myself, that I will gladly and willingly pay for the privilege to be a part of such a community for as long as I live in St. Louis. If you are not yet a member of a woodworking guild, I highly recommend tracking one down in your area and checking them out.
Showing posts with label newsletter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newsletter. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Changing Of The Guard...
Yesterday evening I attended the monthly planning meeting for the Saint Louis Woodworking Guild. It was a momentous occasion, to say the least! The gentleman who has written our newsletter for the past 17 years has decided to hang up his pen, so to speak. He's tired of writing newsletters; he wants to spend more time in the shop and less time in front of the computer. Incidentally, this coincides with our website administrator's desire to hand off the website maintenance to someone else!
Of course, this didn't all just come up that evening. It is something I've known about for a few months now. It is something our new guild president (a friend of mine, Scott), the new guild secretary (a friend of the president, Matt), another guild member who does website design (Michael), and I have been waiting for.
Not to take anything away from the hard work these two gentlemen have done over the years, but both the newsletter and the website are a bit stale at the moment. The newsletter is written in the format of:
- Brief introduction of what is going on at the next meeting
- Long, detailed (almost verbatim) description of the main presentation at the previous meeting
- A letter from the President
- Very wordy "Library" section on one or two books (just short of being a book itself, honestly)
- Brief overview of miscellaneous things that happened after or before the last presentation (show-and-tell, announcements, items for sale or wanted to buy)
The website was designed years ago with some off-the-shelf web development software that isn't very user-friendly and is a bit behind the times. It's difficult to navigate and it looks, well, "old". It has had a lot of Band-aids applied to it, and they're starting to peel off.
The meeting took place in the back room of a restaurant/bar. I was just a few minutes late, so most everyone else was seated when I arrived. Upon entering the room, I looked at Scott and Michael and Matt and smiled. I could smell it in the air; the time was ripe for change!
The first 20 minutes of the meeting were spent skirting the main topics, but soon we were discussing newsletter and website ideas in fury and earnest.
We talked about things like:
- reducing our mailing costs by sending a link to a .pdf via e-mail
- reformatting the newsletter to increase readability, add relevant material, and cut verbose sections down to a manageable size
- reformatting the website for easier navigation
- add individual member sections where they can update profiles and contact info, pay for their membership fees, and add project images
- how to deal with delinquent members and membership expiration
I was surprised by several things; one is that so many of the board members were excited about the changes and ideas we brought up, but another is how opposed to change one or two of the board members were. One even said we could create the newsletter in .pdf, but he still wanted it mailed to everyone and he wanted it to look exactly like the old newsletters.
Wow - that's progressive.
(I was glad to see everyone else quickly shoot down that idea.)
In the end, it was a really good meeting. The worst part about it was the terrible service from our waiter. He was more intent on taking his smoke breaks than doing things like bringing us our drinks or the bill.
I've started brainstorming for newsletter ideas, from new sections I think might be fun or informative to ways we can keep the content exciting and new. Some of them are existing sections I think we can keep, but most of them are new. Here they are:
- Featured Member
- Letter from the Editor
- Letter from the President
- Events Calendar
- Next Month's Topic
- One or Two Articles that Compliment Next Month's Topic
- Classifieds Section
- Library Corner
- Adventures in Woodworking (this is an idea I got from some old issues of FWW - they stopped doing this section at some point in 1985 or so)
- Ask the Woodnut (Michael thought it would be funny to have a Dear Abby section where members could e-mail in questions or if I didn't have any worth answering I could make something up that reads high on the goofy crap-o-meter.)
- Woodcraft Classes (A sponsorship opportunity? This might answer one of the concerns about the rising costs of producing a newsletter. Our meetings take place in the local Woodcraft store, just 10 short minutes from my house I might add, so maybe I could talk to the owner of the store and see about publishing the class list in every issue for a small fee.)
- Other Learning Opportunities (local colleges offering classes, community centers, woodworking schools, weekend seminars, etc.)
If anyone out there is a member of a woodworking guild and you have any ideas to offer me, I'd love to hear from you!
Of course, this didn't all just come up that evening. It is something I've known about for a few months now. It is something our new guild president (a friend of mine, Scott), the new guild secretary (a friend of the president, Matt), another guild member who does website design (Michael), and I have been waiting for.
Not to take anything away from the hard work these two gentlemen have done over the years, but both the newsletter and the website are a bit stale at the moment. The newsletter is written in the format of:
- Brief introduction of what is going on at the next meeting
- Long, detailed (almost verbatim) description of the main presentation at the previous meeting
- A letter from the President
- Very wordy "Library" section on one or two books (just short of being a book itself, honestly)
- Brief overview of miscellaneous things that happened after or before the last presentation (show-and-tell, announcements, items for sale or wanted to buy)
The website was designed years ago with some off-the-shelf web development software that isn't very user-friendly and is a bit behind the times. It's difficult to navigate and it looks, well, "old". It has had a lot of Band-aids applied to it, and they're starting to peel off.
The meeting took place in the back room of a restaurant/bar. I was just a few minutes late, so most everyone else was seated when I arrived. Upon entering the room, I looked at Scott and Michael and Matt and smiled. I could smell it in the air; the time was ripe for change!
The first 20 minutes of the meeting were spent skirting the main topics, but soon we were discussing newsletter and website ideas in fury and earnest.
We talked about things like:
- reducing our mailing costs by sending a link to a .pdf via e-mail
- reformatting the newsletter to increase readability, add relevant material, and cut verbose sections down to a manageable size
- reformatting the website for easier navigation
- add individual member sections where they can update profiles and contact info, pay for their membership fees, and add project images
- how to deal with delinquent members and membership expiration
I was surprised by several things; one is that so many of the board members were excited about the changes and ideas we brought up, but another is how opposed to change one or two of the board members were. One even said we could create the newsletter in .pdf, but he still wanted it mailed to everyone and he wanted it to look exactly like the old newsletters.
Wow - that's progressive.
(I was glad to see everyone else quickly shoot down that idea.)
In the end, it was a really good meeting. The worst part about it was the terrible service from our waiter. He was more intent on taking his smoke breaks than doing things like bringing us our drinks or the bill.
I've started brainstorming for newsletter ideas, from new sections I think might be fun or informative to ways we can keep the content exciting and new. Some of them are existing sections I think we can keep, but most of them are new. Here they are:
- Featured Member
- Letter from the Editor
- Letter from the President
- Events Calendar
- Next Month's Topic
- One or Two Articles that Compliment Next Month's Topic
- Classifieds Section
- Library Corner
- Adventures in Woodworking (this is an idea I got from some old issues of FWW - they stopped doing this section at some point in 1985 or so)
- Ask the Woodnut (Michael thought it would be funny to have a Dear Abby section where members could e-mail in questions or if I didn't have any worth answering I could make something up that reads high on the goofy crap-o-meter.)
- Woodcraft Classes (A sponsorship opportunity? This might answer one of the concerns about the rising costs of producing a newsletter. Our meetings take place in the local Woodcraft store, just 10 short minutes from my house I might add, so maybe I could talk to the owner of the store and see about publishing the class list in every issue for a small fee.)
- Other Learning Opportunities (local colleges offering classes, community centers, woodworking schools, weekend seminars, etc.)
If anyone out there is a member of a woodworking guild and you have any ideas to offer me, I'd love to hear from you!
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