By now, you've no doubt heard about our Chamber's visioning and strategic planning initiative launched last November and now in the final stages of refinement. The working name for the plan is 2020, reflecting both a five-year outlook, as well as suggesting we have the vision required to see all things clearly - both are challenging but this Board lives for challenges!

After surveying our local climate, meeting with the committee leaders and polling our members, we have identified a number of key drivers and established 4 initial strategic focuses. Some will unfold over the next couple of years and some concepts are ready for launch.

1. Connecting Talent - Provide better vehicles for communication between employers and prospective talent
2. Virtual Access - Make Chamber programming more available through video and social channels
3. Work/Life Blend - Introduce new events to leverage the growing number of niches in the organization and develop considerably more opportunities for small group, social, and family interaction
4. Macro to Micro - More of a Spacex-type test launch to help the working group better understand topic potential for small group future discussions

We have established working groups around the above initiatives and are actively seeking talented individuals to participate on the teams. If you are interested to help shape the vision, call the chamber office or corner one of the board members over the next few weeks. All of these efforts are focused on one thing - building more value into the organization for our members. As we all know, great work doesn't happen overnight.   There is much more farming ahead and we will certainly end up planting some new crops that we haven't even considered at this point. In the interim, we will work to refine and publish a more comprehensive overview by the end of April.

Please join us at get moving Middleton on March 5^th to hear a little bit more and to get a small taste of what is to come.