Ladies and Gentleman:

I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful fall we are having here in Memphis. The trees are beginning to turn and I must say that this is my personal favorite time of year!

We have an exciting November 2006 meeting planned at the beautiful University Club, Thursday, November 16 beginning at 5:30 p.m. Our annual auction will be held in November this year in order to give you plenty of opportunity to shop early for all the people on your Christmas list – and don’t forget yourself. Jane Liddell and her team have been working feverishly to bring an array of items for your shopping pleasure. Christy Berryman has a wonderful dinner planned and speaker, Shelly Baur, who will speak on Integrity Based Communication. We look forward to a great evening for all.

We also will have some business to discuss and I would like to give you the opportunity to think about some of these questions so that we might have a short open discussion of ideas that we, as a chapter, may have to send on to Corporate. This is a real opportunity to be heard. These questions relate to the Strategic Planning process that Corporate has initiated.

Some of the questions that will be discussed are as follows:

• What do we want to preserve?
• What do we want to achieve?
• What do we want to avoid?
• What do we want to eliminate?

We will take approximately 10-15 minutes to discuss these and other topics and, if needed, time will be set aside to continue this discussion at the December meeting. One of our LCAM speakers said, “the easiest thing to do is nothing.” So we all have a choice. We can involve ourselves in this effort and be better for it, or do nothing and miss the opportunity to participate in the process. The outcome of the process will be strategic initiatives to guide our organization in the next two to three years. Be a part of our future by participating in this process because “EWI matters to us all.”

I look forward to seeing each of you at the November meeting.