Tuesday, Tuesday

I'm back from FMEA, where the weather was warm and sales were brisk. I probably spent about 30 minutes total outside, but they were very pleasant minutes! It was great to meet a lot of members at the conference and get a chance to talk to them about the upcoming World's Largest Concert, our plans for the overhauled MENC Web site, what's happening at the MENC National Conference in April, and the many new books MENC has recently published and that are coming up.

Coming back yesterday was a little intimidating due to the looming e-mail build up, deadlines, and meetings. But it was a productive day. I have two volunteers helping me this week with Music In Our Schools Month kit preparation. There was an interesting staff meeting about what ideas we had for making our time at the Milwaukee conference really count for our members, and another about writing assignments for new Web content plan (coming in April). Today, there is a meeting about membership promotions; there is the weekly Web meeting of course; and now, I also have a weekly production meeting -- that's our graphic designers and production assistant meeting with me to go over the project list, prioritize, and assign. So it's basically the Web meeting ... without the Web projects or the Web guys.

I was just catching up on my fellow bloggers' recent posts and I see that Harley the Tri-M Dog is getting more and more important around here. Apparently now he is hanging out on conference calls with MENC leadership and rock stars! I feel I must finally disclose that Harley has a rival ... Coda, the MusicFriends Bear.

Adorable as Harley is, he was outsold at the FMEA resource shop by Coda 4-2!! I was relieved, because I don't really like seeing my yellow friend sitting there in a sealed plastic bag.

Coda doesn't actually do as much as Harley, but he's very cute. He likes to hang out with the Web guys. Here he is helping Web assistant DP with ... something. (I probably need to find something more productive for him to do.)

If you'd like your own Coda, or your own Harley for that matter, or your very own MusicFriends t-shirt! ... you can order them from MENC!

Onward -- EWL