November Meeting Cancelled

We have cancelled the Nov meeting due to it falling on Election Day, and the fact the Manatee Ave bridge is closed. The next meeting will be Dec 2 at 6:00pm. We are going to try to do it at the Sandbar, as long as it is not too cold. Alisa will send an email as we get closer.

September Meeting Re-cap

Wow! What a great meeting last night, thank you all! We got a lot accomplished and had a lot of fun, too. Here's a quick overview of what was discussed and who is doing what.

Finding Classmates
Our goal is to be as close to "done" as possible with finding classmates by the end of this year. EVERYONE NEEDS TO HELP WITH THIS! Elsa has taken about 70 names and addresses from Christa to follow up with, Gena is going to look on Facebook and see if she can find additional classmates. We'd like Gary to search MySpace (Gary that's what you get when you don't show up for a meeting!) and Apryl and Alisa will continue to work Classmates.com.

Corresponding with Classmates
I passed around the September newsletter for everyone to review. This will go out monthly at the beginning of the month.

Sponsorships
I passed out color copies of the sponsorship information pages. I will also be sending these to all committee members as a PDF today along with the sponsorship letter that can be personalized from the committee members to potential sponsors. Please help if you can! Also, remember when selling sponsorships to focus on the $$$ we are raising for a scholarship for a worthy 2009 SEHS grad!

Events
We went through the schedule of events for the weekend. Here is the overview of what we're going to do:
Thursday night 6/11 6:30 p.m. Committee "Last Minute Prep Party" at the Bennetts
Friday night 6/12 6:30 p.m. Tropical Welcome Reception at The Sandbar Pavilion
Saturday 6/13 11 a.m. Tour of Southeast High School (Mike setting up)
Saturday 6/13 TBD Golf Tournament
Saturday Night 6/13 7 p.m. Gala Dinner Cocktail Hour/Dinner at 8 p.m. at Polo Grill & Bar
Sunday 6/14 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Farewell Family Beach Party (LOCATION TBD)

Budget
Everyone received a copy of the budget and it was reviewed. It was discussed that sponsorship money raised would help us purchase food & beverages for the family beach party and add to our food & beverages for Friday night as well.

Memory Book
Christa showed everyone Kelli's beautiful design for the cover of the Memory Book. It was decided that the book will have the ads from our sponsors, a listing of classmates and also should have some information about the scholarship recipient, possibly then vs. now pricing, etc.

Also, I mentioned that I've written a web site and has a friend that will put it up for us (she is doing trade-out for that)... I need to get it going though!!!!

We had a lot of excitment and momentum, so let's keep that going!

Next meeting will be Tuesday, October 7th at Mike Mullen's house, 258 Petrel Trail, Bradenton, FL 34212. I will send you all reminders the week before hand! Thanks again and please comment if I forget anything important here!!!!!!

Cost of 10 Year Reunion???

Does anyone remember what the weekend fee was for that one??? We have gotten a little feedback on the price, which we are defending. We know that c/o 88 was $100 pp, and we are having an entirely different even than them, and giving a scholarship.
I seem to remember that it was nearly $100 ten years ago, but I can't recall.
Anyone? Anyone?

Newsletter Sent Friday

I just heard from Apryl that she DID NOT get the newsletter I sent Friday afternoon via Constant Contact. Can each of you please comment here or let me know if you received it? Only 50 of the people I sent it to opened it so I am concerned that Constant Contact is going directly into the spam file for many people. Please let me know and give me any feedback you have about Constant Contact. I am bummed out that so many may not have gotten through. Thanks for your help.

Saturday Night Dessert

BANANA FLAMBE - WOOO-HOOO!

Sponsorship letter

Hi all! Alisa, thank you for the email I should have the sponsorship letter and the sponsorship information proofed by Monday. I am at at seminar until Saturday afternoon. Hope all is well! I received the newsletter and it looks awesome...especially the pic of you and Christa...too funny!

Full Steam Ahead & Request for $$$$

Hi everyone! Yesterday Christa and I met with the Polo Grill catering staff to nail down our Saturday night function... it is going to be a truly remarkable event -- location is beautiful, food is delicious and the company will be great... we we have the final numbers from them in the next couple of days and then we plan to meet with the Sandbar to do the same sort of thing.
A ton of other things are in the works behind the scenes, I've updated our e-newsletter using www.constantcontact.com and will send it out shortly for all of you to see, this allows us to see what % of people on our list opened the newsletter, etc. Also, the web site should be started to be developed by my web guy next week, the sponsorship stuff is just about ready to go out to all of you to help sell sponsorships (Elsa is helping with this, Thanks, Elsa!) and we continue to get new names and contact information for our database almost daily. Oh, and we've gotta do the budget here soon, too.
This leads me to the most important point -- we need your $$$! We have to send our first check to Polo Grill soon and we've only got $250 in our account. We are asking each committee member to "pre-pay" the estimated $125 pp cost for themselves and a guest ($250 total) or whatever you can afford to send now. Some of you have replied and told me when it's coming and I thank you, but I haven't heard from many of you, so here's my humble request again to please send what you can so that we can start getting our deposit monies in. Please send checks made out to Southeast High Class of 1989 to me c/o Bennett Contracting, Attn: Alisa Bennett, 6029 33rd St E, Bradenton, 34203.
Interesting side note, after looking at www.classmates.com and our database we already have 27% of the class on our database and of those people 64 have said that they plan to attend and bring a guest... which makes us a group of approx. 130 ppl... so we stand a good chance to get a really nice turn out with all of this communication and early planning. Let Christa or I know if you have any questions.

Hi Group

I have read the posts and wow! I definately like the ideas of the sponsorships and I specialize in fundraising and marketing!!! If you would like I could help out with that and If you are having a meeting in September I could come to that. It would be great to see all of you! Let me know your thoughts.

Welcome Kelli!

Just wanted to let you all know that Kelli (Brannen) Winot has joined our happy little committee. She is a graphics artist/designer and has graciously accepted the challenge of working on the buttons, alumni book, banners and basically anything we need printed for the reunion! Hooray!! Just what we were looking for! Thank you Kelli!

Locations Booked

We have booked the Sandbar for our cocktail reception and Polo Grill for our dinner. Both venues were very generous in holding the spaces for no deposits while we got our $$ together. I think both locations are going to be beautiful, and give us very different events. Here is a slideshow of the area, you can find the event pavillion, second row from the bottom, second picture from the right. Also you can see the beach at that point and what our views will be. Sandbar We are planning a island themed cocktail party at the sandbar with tiki torches, flower leis, etc. Let me know if anyone has any cool ideas. We will look into a steel drum band as we get closer and get more info on people expected, budget, etc.
The Polo Grill dinner will be buffet most likely, but menu will be decided later. They have a dance floor option, so we will decide if we want to do a DJ or band at a later date as well.
I crashed c/o '88 cocktail party last Friday. They had theirs at the Distillery. It was fun to see some old faces, but it was really loud, and Matt & I did feel that no one really cared about the food, so we will likely focus on drinks and some light appetizers. Someone can always go next door and get a sandwich if they need to.
Chris Mallouix was staying that the Holiday Inn Riverfront and said they were in the middle of a major renovation and it was actually pretty nice. He also mentioned they do a discounted rate, so maybe we can look into that more as we get closer.
I was also able to track down about 6 more people, Omar Green, Shedrick Pollock, Billy Hall, Chad Gustafson, Tamra Raasio, and Andy Gaston through contacts at '88 event and elsewhere. Some of these people may be able to help us even further finding some of our classmates.

Event Fee or Weekend Fee??

Okay, we need some input from the committee on this, but I am not sure that more than 3 of us are actually regularly reading this blog... We are working on budgeting and locations and have found that classes usually have either an event fee, where people pay per event they want to go to, or a weekend fee, which is what we had been highly considering, where you pay a flat rate and get into all functions. This appeals because it is easier for accounting, and also for checking in people at the door. If someone can't make a certain function, it just goes into the pot for the greater good of the weekend. So, let's hear it, what do you all think? And what do you think we should budget for per person. It seems that most reunions are in the range of $75-$100 pp with discounts if paid in advance. Do we all think this is a reasonable and fair charge? Maybe $75 if it is paid by Dec 31, $85 by March 31, and $100 after that? Perhaps this number can be lowered based on sponsorships, or would we prefer the sponshorships cover the extras and allow us to have a super nice event? Let's get some input because until we have a budget, we can't really make any venue decisions. Will post on those in a second.

Sponsorship Outline

Hello, everyone! I gave some thought to our idea for sponsorships... we primarily want to "sell" sponsorships to allow us some $$$ on the front end for deposits for the catered event and other extraneous expenses that are going to come along before we are ready to collect $$$ from our alums. I don't believe that we are going to make a huge amount of money, but I think whatever we get will be helpful. Here are my thoughts... your comments, suggestions are much appreciated.

This is a nice way for business owners to promote their business, but I also thought that families that want to support the event could also provide sponsorships as their family name, i.e. "The Bennett Family."

ORANGE LEVEL SPONSOR $500
- full pg. ad in Commemorative SEHS c/o 89 Memory Booklet
- logo and hyperlink on "home" page and sponsorship page of our website
- inclusion as an Orange Level Sponsor on all printed/e-mail invitations to Reunion
- recognition by emcee as Orange Level Sponsor at Saturday Night Gala Dinner Event
- logo on '1989 Memories PowerPoint photo presentation' to be shown during Friday or Saturday evening event

BLUE LEVEL SPONSORSHIP $300
- 1/2 pg. ad in Commemorative SEHS c/o 89 Memory Booklet
- business/family name (NO logo) and hyperlink on "home" page and sponsorship page of our website
- business/family name (NO logo) on '1989 Memories PowerPoint photo presentation' to be shown during Friday or Saturday evening event

GRAY LEVEL SPONSORSHIP $150
- 1/4 pg. ad in Commemorative SEHS c/o 89 Memory Booklet
- business/family name (NO logo) on sponsorship page of website

WHITE LEVEL SPONSORSHIP $100
- Listing as a White Level Sponsor in Commemorative SEHS c/o 89 Memory Booklet
- Listing as a White Level Sponsor on sponsorship page of website

Gena, what does it take to get a bank account started? That might be our first step soon if we are willing to go with this! Thanks, guys! ASB

Buttons

So, all of you are getting to see just how crazy anal I really am. The good news is I am going on vacation next week and will be offline for about 2 weeks... Anyway, take a look at this site for buttons. I think for the 10 year we just had write on name tags? I can't quite remember now. Anyway, I think these are kind of cool, and not totally cost ineffective. We might not all like our senior photos (Alisa!), but I think that is going to be the easiest way to get it done. Might help us to recall some people when names alone fail us. What do you all think?

Buttons

Polo Grill Ballroom

I ran by the ballroom today while in Lakewood Ranch. I was late for an appointment, and they were just about to start an AFLAC luncheon, so I was trying to be quick and discreet, which resulted in some crappy photos that don't do the place justice.

Let me just say that it was niiice. The Ballroom has it's own entrance, it is done in very good taste. The room was very grand, with beautiful chandeliers, wood paneling, and wood on the ceiling. They can do a dance floor, and there is plenty of parking, and they do have our new revised date available.

I would easily say, hey, let's do it here, it was that nice, but I am going to contact Mattison's tomorrow and inquire about their banquet room upstairs. As Alisa mentioned, perhaps we can negotiate a better deal. From the preliminary quote sent over, we are at $63 pp, however I think that we can adjust some of the food offerings and get that down a little bit so we have more wiggle room with some of the other events. One good thing is that this location would really need no decorations at all. Maybe some small centerpieces for the tables, but that is going to be it.

They require a 20% deposit, which is about $1800 at their current quote, and based on 150ppl. So, we need to sell some serious advertising! Seriously though, this was a spectacular location, and I think that it woudl be a beautiful place. Will let you know what Mattison's says tomorrow.

Re-Cap of Meeting # 1 July 1, 2008

What a blast... I don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time. Just wanted to provide a run down of what was decided at tonight's meeting... amid a lot of looking at pictures and the yearbook.

1. Date change to June 12 - 14, 2009 - Gena pointed out that the weekend of June 19 - 21 next year is Father's Day weekend, so we felt that we should make the change to reduce the possibility of family committments/conflicts. I will e-mail all alums by the end of the week with the date change!

2. We agreed on the following basic event schedule. Of course, details to follow:
Friday Night Welcome Reception (June 12th)
Tour of School (June 13th)
Possible Golf Tournament (June 13th)
Saturday Night Gala Reunion Gathering (June 13th)
Family Beach Party (June 14th)

3. Christa is checking out the Polo Grill in Lakewood Ranch tomorrow to look at their space for the Gala Reunion party on Saturday night. She will snap a few pictures of the space and post them on this blog.

4. Gary is contacting Brenda at SEHS to see if we can get a class list from 1989. Matt is going to look up all teachers/administrators in the Manatee County school district to get e-mail addresses.

5. It was discussed that we want to keep the costs down so that the reunion is affordable to as many alum as possible. It was also pointed out that we need to have some extra $$ figured in for printed materials, buttons, etc.

6. It was decided that we will offer sponsorships (which I will develop in more detail) at the following levels: Orange $500, Blue $300, Gray $150, White $100. Sponsors to receive ad space in book, possibly mentions on web site, etc.

7. Things to be developed: web site, powerpoint slide presentation with photos for Gala party, etc.

8. Gena agreed to work on the budgeting part of the reunion, as long as it fits with her schedule. Alisa and Christa will co-chair the reunion. Apryl is handling a lot of the contacting others on www.classmates.com.

9. We will skip next month's meeting and get back together in September. We will use this blog to make some decisions in the meantime, so please add this to your favorites and check back frequently. Next meeting will be September 2nd at 6 p.m. at Matt's House! Just kidding, Matt! We did find out, by strange coincidence, that Matt lives RIGHT NEXT DOOR to Carol Nicholas. Crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And so it begins...

Tonight we will have the first of many monthly meetings to culminate in a terrific event next summer. I just want to say thank you to all of you for what you have done so far. We've got an interesting job on our hands... to plan a fun, affordable and unique event for a group of extremely diverse people. I am delighted that we have 65 out of 314 alums on our contact list so far -- that doesn't seem like much, but it does represent more than 20% of our class. As a committee member we encourage you to post and comment on this blog. I will do a bullet point summary of each meeting on here to keep everyone on the same page. A special shout out to Apryl for all of her work on classmates.com and to Christa for getting this blog up and running!!!