By Erin Deinzer
On March 9th, with almost 30 members in attendance, we covered a lot of ground during our “Membership has its privileges” meeting!
The event began with an official “welcome” from Erin Deinzer to our newest members, and a nod to our original and longest-standing members. It then segued into a reminder by outgoing president Judith Horstman on how anyone can run for a board position (and how rewarding it is to serve), as well as the call to please add any current articles to the BATW Facebook page.
Our current president, Matthew Eley, took over the mic to discuss some of the details from the recent BOD retreat (including a lively discussion of the hotly contested use of AI), a bit about the Lee Foster Awards, and the newly created website page listing benefits available to members.
John Williamson stepped in to go over our online directory, and how best to use it to your advantage. That was followed by David Laws discussion of the BATW magazine Stories of Culture, Travel, & the World currently hosted on Medium.com.
Wrapping it all up was Karen Misuraca who drew names for the three winners of the Visit California swag bags: Lisa Alpine, Carole Terwilliger Meyers, and Libor Pospisil—all of whom provided articles on California for the magazine’s special March issue.