First chamber meeting

I’ve been a member of the local chamber of commerce for a couple of years now, but beyond advertising in the local business directory have had no involvement. The directory has sent business my way, and now that I’m better motivated I figured it would be a good idea to get more involved, do some networking, and maybe give back to the local community.

So I went along to tonight’s meeting. There was only a small gathering, but they were all very friendly and welcoming. I’d barely sat down before the chamber secretary was tabling discussion about setting up a web site and the other members were asking me about what was involved. The upshot of this is I’ve been invited to make a presentation at the next meeting about the best way to move forward with a web site. I am quite blown away!

The rest of the meeting was kind of interesting. I’m not quite sure what drives the group – there seemed to be a lot of talk about Free Trees and Easter egg giveaways. And there seem to be some butting of heads with other groups holding local fundraising events. A lot of discussion about an annual festival held by the local Uniting Church; apparently it has been a bit of a failure in the past. The chamber donated $1,000 to the church committee towards market research, to be shared with the chamber, of which nothing has eventuated!

The chamber runs the weekly markets in the main street of town, and the fellow who looks after it was interesting. He runs a local nursery and apparently sells his stock at various markets around SE Qld. He had some good ideas about the trends in street markets, and why some markets are declining. Cost of fuel mainly! He reckons (and it sounds pretty reasonable) that people need another reason to get in the car and head out to the markets – such as situating the markets near a shopping centre, or running some sort of attraction (his suggestion was to invite members of the Ulysses MC out on their bikes to do whatever it is they do!)

After the meeting closed I chatted to a couple of the members. One of the guys must be a bit of a local history buff, he was telling me about the old Lutheran pastor for whom our street was named. Then I was talking to a lady in the local towing business, she was shoving business cards into my hands and hinting that she might want to talk to me about her own web site!