Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

It is hard to believe that we are 8-months into the year, we've held many activities and more are to come.

One of my goals as Activities Coordinator, has been to pickup and advance the great progress and standards my predecessors had achieved and handed off to me. I think we have had some good accomplishments and have made good progress. And, there is much opportunity to be leveraged now and in the future.

Now that I have my bearings with regard to our existing and new activities, I feel confident that the opportunity is at hand for us to make significant improvements in the quality and frequency of our activities by expanding the direct involvement of more of our members.

What I am proposing is the formulation of an adhoc Activities Committee, in reality I would like for it to be the Activities Team with one or more members participating in one or more of the following categories.

Competitions
Held Quarterly
Requires organizing a location to judge, recruitment of judges and stewarts, arranging for sampling glasses, score sheets
Require collection and storing (most times in a fridge) of the entries, until the judging can occur
Tallying the scores
Maintaining a tally of the score totals
Reporting the Winner at the end of the year
Would like to see this position coordinate submittals to other competitions (i.e. State Fair, Linn County Fair, Thirsty's Annual Judging Event, MUGS is doing one too)
Annual Recipe for Disaster
BUNGED

CR Beer Nuts Happy Hour
Held on the last Sunday of each month
Requires recruitment of participants to bring beer and to pour
Requires coordination with Lion Bridge with regard to setup and avoiding important LB dates

Coordinating Club Participation in Beer Festivals
Rivers Edge Beer FestivAle
Manchester Bacon and Hops
Independence Brew BQ
Other? We could think about getting an invite to one of the Winter Festivals (Iowa City or Dubuque)

Road Trip
Annual Trip to Madison (or maybe Milwaukee)
Would like to plan a Fall trip to Central Iowa - tour breweries from Ames Area - Ankeny - to Des Moines...and El Bait Shop and the Royal Mile

Tech Meetings
Held Quarterly
Need to recruit presenters
Need to encourage presentations on relevant subject matter
Much could be done here

So, I would appreciate your thoughts.

I have enjoyed doing these activities, but I think with more people participating, we will implement more new ideas faster and improve the quality of our programming. None of these are difficult and all of them are enjoyable in their own way.

Also, I think getting involved with any of these activities will give you an opportunity to see how these activities work and learn more about the club. If you think you would like to work as a Cabinet Officer but are not sure the effort it takes or you are new and would like to get to know more people- working in anyone of these areas will get you access to our members and the Cabinet - because our Activities are what makes our club special.

If I can get one person to work one of these areas with me, I think we will do some amazing things for our members.

Post your thoughts...post or PM me if you would like to volunteer, or visit more about what the Activities Committee could do.

Daryl has taken on a lot this year and could use more hands for events. It would help to continue to make this club strong and you usually have a lot of fun too.

I'd be interested in helping out.

Bumping this post with some additional information as things have progressed on this topic...

As most of you know, Travis Kasper agreed to take on the duties of running the Happy Hour well over a year ago, and has done a great job in that position.

Most recently, Joel Null has agreed to take on the management of judging the entries for the Club Competitions (4 beer and 1 mead competition, and BUNGED). He has begun to assume those responsibilities by organizing the judging of the BUNGED and the October Club Competition entries.

This will and has freed much of my time to devote to organizing the Lion Bridge/CRBS Wort Rally and Pro-AM Qualifier; which has been registered with AHA. Sometime after the first of the year, I will be holding separate meetings, specifically for planning and executing the details of the Wort Rally, which may start as early as January 2019.

So I believe it is worthy to note and report to you that the CRBS Activities Committee is born!

Additionally, in another positive move, Travis has expressed the desire to serve on the Cabinet...at first as VP; but given the vision and goals he has for his participation, I suggested that it would be best for him to pursue that work as the Activities Director - a move that I completely endorse. If elected, Travis will bring new energy and fresh ideas to what is already a very capable and active Cabinet; and as part of the Activities Committee, Joel and I will coordinate our efforts with Travis.

Cheers!

Cool. Nice work dudes.