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This evening JCI Leeds members Alex Byers, Peter Barnes, Hazel Kajase and myself (Claire Dempster!) who recently attended JCI UK's Marketing Academy shared with Ryan Webster (Marketing Director), Brandina Kajase (Membership Director) and Michael Best (Membership team) what we learnt with respect to membership engagement with a view to developing further information that chambers throughout the UK could use locally.

Over many cups of tea and the odd chocolate chip cookie we looking at some of the excellent examples of new member packs already being used by local chambers, including JCI Sheffield and JCI Manchester, and the new member welcome letter sent by JCI UK National President, Allison Cowell.

We thought a useful starting point for this project would be to map out the journey that a potential member takes from first hearing about JCI to joining and then becoming a full member. This then helped us to identify when and how we should communicate with our members to help them to get the most out of their membership.

We've all taken away tasks to follow-up on and we look forward to sharing our findings back with JCI UK and other chambers - wouldn't it be great to produce something that all chambers could use, so we can concentrate on getting out there to engage with our members!!

Finally.....JCI is run by its members, for its members so if you're reading this and have any good ideas about how we could engage with our members then get in touch (membership@jcileeds.org.uk) or post a comment below.

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Social directors Louise French and Dan Taylor organised another fabulous 'Bar of the Month' last night in Distrikt bar. Members and a hand full of new faces turned up after a hard day in the office to meet friends and do a bit of informal networking....it had nothing to do with the 2-4-1 cocktails, honest!

It was great to meet first timers from one of our corporate partners KPMG, Morgans City Living, Lucy Walker Recruitment and HSBC - they seemed to really enjoy the event and we hope to see them again soon.

A great night was had by all, including Debbie Tills and Gemma Fletcher, past presidents of JCI Barnsley (and members of JCI UK National Board), who also popped in say hello!

Rumour has it that we'll be bringing back the cocktail making at the next 'Bar of the Month' so watch this space for more information!

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It’s been another busy month for JCI Leeds this month.

So what’s been happening?

First, there was Bar of the Month at BRB. Great turnout with a private room. The cocktails and the pizza were flowing!

Next there was JCI Presenter at The Mint Hotel. For those who do not know, Presenter is a course to help develop your public speaking skills and we had 10 JCI members taking including Sheffield’s Deputy President and a new member of JCI London. A great day was had by all with everyone delivering a great presentation at the end. Thanks again to Emma Eastwood and Adam Woodhall for their excellent training.

We then had our second training event of the year which was Top of The Tree Leadership Training delivered by David Marsh of The Blue Water Partnership. Wrigleys Solicitors very kindly providing the venue for the event. Insightful session which generated a lot of discussion.

I attend Regional Forum in Bradford which is the gathering of the local presidents from Yorkshire to discuss their chambers, events and regional events. A large part of the evening was spent working on JCI Yorkshire’s bid for JCI UK National Convention which will be submitted this weekend. If any JCI Leeds members are interested in being on the committee, please do get in touch.

The JCI UK Marketing Academy is taking place this weekend. Sadly, I could not attend but JCI Leeds are being very well presented by member Hazel Kajese. I will be attending JCI Barnsley President Vicky Savage’s birthday celebrations this evening though.

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