It may be the middle of winter but its time you start making your plans for the CFA Summer Meeting 2012 at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City, Michigan. The dates of the event will be July 26-28. 2012. The water should be warm enough to swim in by then and the frost will be off the greens by 10:00 am.

Building on the success of last year’s event will be a challenge but we feel we have the strongest line-up of presentations we have ever assembled for a summer meeting. There will be a variety of presentation formats as well as a broad range of topics. Our goal is to leave you with enough information and potential cost savings to pay for the meeting several times over in your business. We know many of you don’t have the time and money to go on vacations so we have included enough educational materials to make it worth your while as a business venture. There will be time to enjoy the area as well, and you are more than welcome to extend your stay.

Two “Staples” in our program of the past several years will make return appearances. David Whitlock, an Atlanta attorney who has spoken on immigration lay and employees as subcontractors will present on how to legally counter Unionization at this summers conference. David is very knowledgeable and always entertaining. He has a way of connecting with our audiences. Doug Staebler is the other long-time returning presenter. Doug will discuss increasing production through production-based pay rates. Managing production at the job site with hourly employees has always been a challenge. “Piece rate pay” might be a solution for at least a portion your work.

Doug Herbert was just getting started with his plethora of simple, cost-effective marketing ideas when his hour was over. We have asked him back to give us more tips, tricks, and ideas to inexpensively market your businesses.

When you are looking at your weather radar you might have seen some unusual blips. Those blips are OHSA inspectors waiting to descend on your companies to enforce new fall protection regulations which the residential foundation industry has, for the most part, been exempt from. No longer is that the case. Learn with the CFA committee and team have been working on to help you avoid huge fines and comply with the law.

We will expand and better organize the Speed networking portion of the program this year. Networking with peers is still listed as the most valuable membership benefit and this exercise helps you expand your network of peers. We will also employ round table discussions in order for you to talk more privately in smaller groups as you share ideas, thoughts, and even the occasional failure.

A technology panel discussion will bring you up-to-speed on how members are currently using modern technology to improve the efficiency of their businesses. Twitter, Linkedin, Global Positioning, Off the Shelf Scheduling, and pdf Markup software will be some of the innovations discussed. There will also be programs on the new CFA insurance captive and a certification seminar and exam for the Foundation Technician program. As you can see, there will be tremendous value in the educational portion of the program. 

The price of registration had to be increased by $100 this year to meet our minimum food and beverage requires (set 3 years ago) but we have added the Friday night dinner into the cost of registration so you will not have to pay extra for that event. We are looking into an extra cost winery tour/dinner for Thursday night following the reception.

You should make your hotel reservation now. When I performed an on-line check of the hotels website it shows that they are sold out (except for our block) for the nights of our event. You can register for the event as it draws closer. As with the last several years we have drastically reduced the room set aside to avoid attrition costs so rooms may be in short supply as the event draws near. Call the hotel directly at 1-800-968-7352 to make your reservation or register on-line. The code for the event is CFA0710. While we did not set aside any condominium rooms there are 1, 2 and 3 bedroom units available if you plan to bring the family.

Ed Sauter, Executive Director, CFA, esauter@cfawalls.org