Hello all - This is your official invitation to join us in organizing and participating in this year's World Tai Chi & Qigong Day celebration. The event will take place Saturday, April 27th beginning at 10:00 AM on the Colchester Town Green in Colchester, CT. MEETING INVITATION: With the previous years' organizing process we have found it helpful to have at a few face to face meetings to work together on the planning of this extraordinary event. To that end, I've coordinated with Jimmy at the Gung Ho restaurant in Colchester to hold our first meeting there. The first meeting will take place Sunday, February 17th at 11:30 AM at the Gung Ho Restaurant in Colchester (directly across from the town green). Our objective will be to review the feedback we received after last year's event, present a number of ideas that have been suggested for improving and fine tuning this year's event and bring all of you up to date on our progress to date (yes, some things are already in progress). I recognize that not everyone will be able to attend these sessions and I'll solicit your input for items that appear on the agenda prior to the meeting. It is helpful, however, to attend at least one of these sessions to catch up with old friends and present your views in person. By mid-next week, I'll send you the agenda for our February 17th meeting. PREPARATON TO DATE Communication: I am in the process of calling all of you just to touch base and get any thoughts or feedback to add to that we collected at the end of last year's event. I hope to have spoken to the majority of you prior to the meeting. Location: As we agreed during our planning last year, we will once again be using the Colchester Town Green for our event. We have the paperwork for the Green rental and town agency approval and hope to submit it along with the insurance verification by mid next week (2/6). Logo Contest: We received 2 entries for this year's logo. Some very nice work has been done here and I appreciate those who were able to contribute to this effort. I'll bring samples to the meeting on the 17th and I'll ask this year's sponsors to vote on which we think might serve us best. Volunteers: A number of last year's volunteers have stepped up again to help us coordinate and manage Site Management, Information Tent coordination, Set Up/Take Down, advertising and other needs. As with all previous years, we'll need a number of volunteers the day of the event to help us with site preparation, event coordination and information distribution. Contacting me (George Hoffman): You can generally get me between classes throughout the week at these numbers: Cell Phone: 860-836-3208; Home Phone: 860-742-5892; eMail: silverbirds@earthlink.net , george@silverbirds.com OR silverdragon@silverbirds.com I look forward to talking with you all over the next week and to working with you again for this year's event. Be well! George Hoffman Silver Dragon Tai Chi & Qi Gong, LLC 60-8336-3208 Cell 860-742-5892 Home silverbirds@earthlink.net silverdragon@earthlink.net