September 2014 President's Message

I am very excited to serve as the President of the Southern California Section this year! We began the year with our Steak Fry which was a fun and well-attended event. The Section also received two awards at the Western District Annual Meeting held jointly with the Midwestern Section in Rapid City, South Dakota. Our Section was awarded the Section Activity Report Award (for a large section 300+ members) as well as the Section with the Largest Total Member Growth Award. Also, our very own Zaki Mustafa was presented with the well-deserved District Individual Achievement Award. Congratulations Zaki, and thank you for all that you do for ITE.

The Southern California Section was well represented at the District Meeting with almost 50 people in attendance. An article by Herman Basmaciyan about the meeting is included in this newsletter. Carlos Ortiz, our Western District President, has provided an article on the ITE International Annual Meeting held in Seattle, Washington.

We have a great board leading us this year with Giancarlo Ganddini as our Vice President, Jay Dinkins as our Secretary, and Dean Lehman as our Treasurer. This is the Section’s first term separating the Secretary and Treasurer roles, and we hope that this will help us serve the Section better. We also have an incredible group of chairs this year and I wanted to make a special effort to introduce them to our members. The next page lists all of our officers and chairs with their contact information and photos. Please get to know them and let them know how they can help better our Section.

We have a couple of new initiatives including a new Professional Activities Chair position aiming to provide our membership with additional services,

technical information, and social activities. We are also updating our www.itesocal.org website to bring you easier access to the Section. We hope to

launch this new and improved site in the next few months. We will minimally update our current website in the meantime. Lastly, our sponsorship packages have been updated as follows:

Newsletter Sponsorship - $300
Lunch Sponsorship - $300 (includes 2 tickets to the meeting, a display table, and a 2-minute announcement at the meeting)
Full Sponsorship (Lunch & Newsletter) - $500

Please contact our new Sponsorship Chair Melissa Countryman (MelissaC@rpv.com) for sponsorship opportunities.

This year is off to a great start. We will do our best to maintain and increase our momentum. Our next meeting will be held on September 17th at the Monterey Hill Restaurant. Please save the date and I hope to see you all there.