We shall celebrate excellence
If you have attended the Chamber’s Annual Awards and Installation Banquet, you will understand how special an event it is. From the moment you walk in the door, you are glad you came. The cocktail hour mingling sets the tone for an evening of dining, roasting, and showering of accolades upon deserving colleagues. Inspire Excellence décor and ambiance lighting lifts your spirits as you make your way to your table, flip through the program, pour a cold beverage, and find a friendly face in the crowd to connect with. The event brings the chamber community together in one shared experience and common purpose: to reinforce our commitment to do right by each other, and our community.
As we turned to planning and preparation for the 71st annual event, my gut wrenched tighter as hopes for a return to an in-person celebration faded. We contemplated postponing indefinitely until we could come together again. But that too didn’t feel quite right. I and board leaders simply knew, with or without a gathering, if ever there were a time deserving of celebration, 2020 was that year. For despite the pains, there were gains. Despite the tears, there were smiles. Despite the failures, there were wins. There is not a person or a business or a sector of our community where sheer determination and grit did not stand strong enough to inspire one other to find hope and courage.
So while we may not fully replicate the energy felt by coming together, we can hit the mark in celebrating big and celebrating uniquely together even while apart, and that is exactly what we intend to do. Here’s how we’re adding value.
The event will be streamed live from our pop-up broadcast studio. You’ll be able to tune in from wherever you are, with whomever you like. Pop open your favorite bottle of wine and watch it from your office with your colleagues, from home with the family, or from a cabin on the beach.
Cocktail hour will begin at 5:00pm with a virtual concert, brought to us by our friends at the Shedd Institute. Turn the volume up and enjoy the musical performance while you settle in with a drink. Around 5:15pm, Chamber Board Chair Charlie Kimball and myself, your emcees for the evening, will kick it off. Fair warning, the unscripted plans will be to keep it light and fun. Fortunately, much of the important announcements have been well planned and completed ahead of time.
With the help of our video production team at Turell Group, we’ll be spotlighting our award winners in some pretty awesome videos telling their story of excellence. We have also secured some after-event promotional spots with our media partners to give proper hat tips in the weeks ahead. Look for those in Eugene Magazine, The Chronicle, various radio stations and more.
What would a Springfield Chamber annual award event be without a surprise, you ask? We don’t know because there always are a few, and we guarantee one or two again this year.
Lastly, and most importantly, the annual event is a time and place to send an extra dose of appreciation to our members and reveal our vision for the coming year. Your needs inform our priorities and your confidence and support determine our ability to respond effectively, regardless of what came or what is to come. For many, certainly for those in the Chamber community, the experience of the past year has reinforced the value we place on our local businesses, our educators, our government agencies, our non-profits, and our healthcare community.
The pandemic, wildfires, and social unrest of 2020 brought heightened awareness of community vulnerabilities, and also our strengths. We have experienced an accelerated pace of change as a community and as an organization. The forces in play are often beyond our control and almost always demand our ability to adapt, innovate, and collaborate in new and creative ways.
Following the annual event, we will release our two-year strategic plan. It is a well-informed plan centered on economic resiliency and opportunity that will guide our business, economic, and community priorities. It identifies areas we seek to improve upon and how we intend to influence positive outcomes. It lays forth markers and milestones for our leaders, members, and staff to benchmark progress.
Supporting entrepreneurial endeavors, a healthy business climate, equality of opportunity, and quality of place value demand we remain open to opportunities and challenges as they evolve or are revealed. We will stay the course, while in pursuit of pragmatic solutions along the way, and with the best interest of our members and community in mind.
I invite you to celebrate excellence and those who inspire us at the 71st Annual Awards and Installation Virtual Event on February 25th, from 5:00-6:30pm.
