President’s Report February 2023

As this is my first President’s Report for 2023, I’d like to begin by wishing all members a Happy New Year. I hope your Christmas and New Year break was a happy and safe one.

Some of the things that I’d like to see the club achieve this year are to attract new members, attract a more diverse range of members and to see greater utilisation of our Moorabbin premises.

We’ve at least started to address the last of those aims with the move back to hybrid monthly meetings for 2023. We figure this is the best way to cater to all members. There are those that were missing the social interaction who are now catered for with the meetings and the WAFFLE. And there are those that, for a variety of reasons, would rather partake in the meetings from home.

It will be a slow process to get people used to attending at Moorabbin again and our Fevruary meeting was reflective of this, with about a dozen members who weren’t involved in the running of the meeting turning up. I’d encourage you to get along for March and stay for the WAFFLE, and catch up with old friends, and maybe even make some new ones.

The first hybrid meeting required a lot of effort to get ready for, and I’d like to thank a lot of people for the roles they played. David Stonier-Gibson and Kirsten Bacon helped to organise aspects of the meeting; Peter Bacon was MC; Rob Brown, Stewart Gruneklee, John Swale and Chris Hayes worked hard to ensure the AV system was ready for the meeting; and on the night Brian Davis, Choy Lai and Phil Lew were a tremendous help.

As I discussed in my report in December 2022, we exhibited at the Monash Maker Faire under the Melbourne Creators Collective brand. From a marketing perspective this has paid some dividends, with new Coder Dojo participants attending in 2023, and new Sunday Session participants as well. We need to do a lot more in 2023 to promote the club and to get new members signing up, and I hope to have more to say on this topic in the coming months.

Enjoy the rest of your February, and you’ll hear from me again in March.