Design007 Magazine

Design007-Mar2021

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50 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2021 of lifelong lessons to help guide us. We feel a strong urge to embrace the past while we can. We want to carry those values and experience with us as we move into the future. Dack: Well said, Steph. Gary, do you have any- thing to add to that? Ferrari: Everything he said is 100% correct. e main difference I'm seeing is that the chapters that we had, as Steph mentioned, were sepa- rated. e only time they had an opportunity to share anything was twice a year at the reg- ular meetings and not all the chapters would show up. But now, they are sharing, even with relatively short notice. e movement is just growing astronomically. I'm so proud of the team we have, including you, Kelly. When we started, our group was small. We now have a vastly more diverse and beautiful organization. I have to give kudos to Stephen and the whole team for that. Chavez: Let me just add one more thing. Gary is truly at the essence of really taking it for- ward and making a difference. Let's call it what it is—Gary is our esprit de corps! He refuels us as we look at what he has done and how he continues in the second half of his career. His example gives us that extra bounce in our step moving forward. Dack: Very good, right on. We're going to move forward now. I'd like to open it up to either of you for some visionary comments. It's been just a little over a year since PCEA hit the ground running. Can you review what has been done over the past year and what we're doing now? en, please, tell us where we're going. We need to talk about the future. Ferrari: One of the main items that has taken a tremendous amount of work over the past year is our website. When we started, we had no website either for PCEA or our previous organization. In the '90s, we came out with "Route," a newsletter for communicating with our members. Now, in the PCEA, it feels great to be leveraging the power of the inter- net and social media. We have sponsors and so many ways to reach out that did not exist before. Chavez: Another difference is we now have the ability for internet collaboration. We evolve and our media team adapts on the fly. We have activities which are happening constantly. For example, we had our kickoff meeting—our initial grand opening—last year. at was fol- lowed by several chapter events. We even held an international tri-chapter event. As a result of the shutdowns during the pandemic, we have evolved into this virtual world. Eventu- ally we'll go back to face-to-face meetings, but that doesn't mean we're going to walk away from a virtual format. We'll continue to embrace and do both. It is amazing to see new chapters coming on board or coming to life in areas where we didn't have chapters before. As far as a footprint, we've got the greater Michigan area; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Port- land, Oregon, just to name a few. And we have chapters coming up in Chicago; the Wisconsin area; the New England, New Hampshire and Massachusetts area; Albuquerque, New Mex- ico; and in Texas: Houston, Dallas, and Austin. ose are all in the early stages of their forma- tion, but it's just amazing how it's taken off. It's all happening so fast. And we have those growing pains too. When you think about what we have done—starting a new industry association and successfully getting it off the ground—it's been a challenge, but a worthy one; it's supplying the adrenaline of a start-up experience, so to speak. Dack: What is PCEA looking forward to on the 2021 roadmap? Chavez: Okay, so when we think about PCEA and where we're going, we definitely want to see the continued growth that we have been

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