Diamond in the Basalt

After our last meeting on August 11th, the Shrinking Violets met again on October 24th to review existing projects and brainstorm around our ability to take on new ones. Having a planning party every other month seems to be working out well so far. Mariah has been initiating these meetings to date (thanks Dawn for hosting and for the cider and cookies!) but anyone who is interested in taking on this logistical responsibility is encouraged to volunteer.

Ongoing groups and events review: Book group is logistically solid, but attendance has dimmed down a bit in recent months. Hilary will work with Crystal to pull out a book group email list from the master list to encourage more involvement. Each meeting will now also have a discussion facilitator to keep the dialogue lively, Jane volunteered to be the first one. Let the book group coordinators know if you’d like to volunteer (contact info in other book group posts). Ladies Who Lunch has gotten to a point of stability where Mariah didn’t have to do much promo to get a good turnout. Dawn will be the new Ladies Who Lunch Coordinator. Hooray!!! Wine and Music nights are going steady, and the Writing Group will now be lead by Hannah Dutt Elder.

Communications and logistics: Some of the weaknesses in our contact list are being address by new Violet Gaia Borgias Brown.  This will help to prevent over-reliance on Facebook for promoting events. Mariah is documenting all the resources available and some of the process for putting on a Shrinking Violets event in an effort to cut down on the time it takes to conduct one-on-one event training and integration. This will be made available electronically to everyone. Crystal, Taylor and Gaia are working on a members survey to help gauge interest in various activities so people know who to approach when they want to work with people on something. All members are encouraged to organize events that would be of benefit to SVS, and co-hosting/promoting is an easy way to make things happen.

The group decided to create a planning meeting in mid-November to do a retreat in December where we hash out our mission statement for finalization by the larger membership at an annual gathering in January. We’re getting pretty sophisticated in our old age, aren’t we? If you’d like to be involved in this string of development efforts, please let us know by sending a message to shrinkingvioletsociety@gmail.com. It will be rewarding and we are a great group to work with!

We covered a lot of ground in this meeting without a formal agenda and we ended exactly on time. Please fell free to share your feedback in the comments below. We would just like to reiterate that membership is always open and new members are encouraged to join. Right now, “membership” just means that you are on the mailing list. To get on the mailing list, just send your name, phone, address and neighborhood (plus a personal introduction if you’re feeling ambitious) to the group email address.

We love meeting new people and making new friends!