The last week of March also draws close the first quarter of 2015 and it was an extremely busy week for me as a local president. I can honestly say, they are not all like this!

It started Sunday in Lincoln, I was already in Lincolnshire after visiting my parents and decided on the way home we would stop in Lincoln to support our fellow JCI Barnsley members Debbie and Joe Worthington in the Lincoln 10k. This is part of their Worthington 500k challenge for the MS Trust. Well done Debbie and Joe, it was very tiring cheering you on! Mileage 81

Monday evening I drove from work in Doncaster to Bradford for the first Regional event of the year, the Big Supper. For some reason I always get lost in Bradford but I managed to arrive at the Midland hotel in time for the ‘supper' part of the evening. I was joined by fellow Barnsley members, Debbie, Ian and Jo. The event kicked off with a speaker on Employee Engagement, asking the question- what are employee's actually engaged to? The second part of the evening, was some Extempore training by Emma Eastwood. Extempore is off the cuff speaking. Now this is the kind of public speaking I fear the most, for some reason my brain doesn't function in these situations. In Emma's training we were given an object to talk about then we were encouraged to keep a story going. This was great fun, even when I was referred to the Green witch from the Wizard of Oz! I'm glad I took part and it definitely helped with off the cuff speaking. This training will be repeated here in Barnsley next month on the 12th May for us. Mileage 85

On Tuesday evening it was going to Barnsley straight from work to represent JCI Barnsley in the Wosskow and Brown quiz. We love a quiz in Barnsley and made sure we had the oracle Stephen Bailey there in our team, but during the evening it was apparent that a new oracle was emerging. The quiz was great fun, and had a round for nearly all of us- Cartoon charactors for Oliver, General Knowledge for Stephen, TV, Music Lyrics and Films for Anna. Kathryn and I were there for networking purposes! I am pleased to announce that we won the quiz! Thank you Wosskow and Brown for an entertaining evening. Mileage 26.5

Wednesday evening was the ‘business' evening where I attended the Regional Forum in Sheffield alongside my deputy president Jo Mackfall. These forums are used for president's in Yorkshire to share successes and issues with each other and our Regional Group Chairperson, this year Charlie Pearson. It's great being in Yorkshire to share your experiences with people that are going through the same thing. We will be hosting two regional events this year, the Wharfdale Quiz on 30th June and the Public Speaking Competition in September. Mileage 45

Thursday evening was our Shine event. Every last Thursday of the month we put on a training session at the Holiday Inn in Dodworth. For March were we were joined by Gary Sharpe and Pamela Hopkinson who told us some helpful hints and tips on Linkedin and Twitter. Gary informed us that LinkedIn is not a form of social media and more of a professional network to make connections. Pamela told us to interact with each on Twitter, use hashtags/ mentions and a tweet has a life span of about 18 minutes . Thank you to both Gary and Pamela for taking time to present to us. Mileage 41

 
So as you can see I did a total of 278.5 miles in 5 days. Yes I was tired, but it was worth it. This best thing about being a local president is when take time to sit back, look at what your chamber has achieved in a week and .....