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What's New in May 2001 |
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CCSG 2001 Annual General Meeting (AGM) The 2001 AGM is to be held on Sunday, June 17th at AstraZeneca House, Epsom. The AGM will start at 2:15pm, please be there by 2:00pm to ensure proceedings can start on time. This is a significant AGM for the CCSG. Both our secretary and president will be standing down and replacements are needed (see below for details of the vacant positions). Please consider taking an active role in the organisation to help out. I ask you to contemplate what the CCSG will be like without a secretary or president. What services can be delivered without these positions filled? If the CCSG is to continue in its present form we need people to come forward. Following the AGM, Mr Mischell Neill will speak on XXX. Mr Neill is one of only a few specialist colorectal surgeons in Auckland. He has performed numerous 'pouch' operations in addition to the more common bowel resections and ostomy surgeries which are the stock-and-trade of the colorectal surgeon. Mr Neill's talk will be followed by afternoon tea and refreshments. We hope to see you there. Committee Vacancies: 2001-2002 President This is a leadership position in the CCSG which involves liaising with CCSG sponsors, our patron and members of the Medical Advisory Panel, and act a spokesperson for the CCSG as required. In addition, the president liaises with the other CCSGs around NZ to coordinate national activities. To date the president has also chaired committee meetings but this need not be the case if the committee decides otherwise. Current president Stuart Ryan will remain on the committee for another 12 months to assist and advise the new president. Secretary Another important role in the CCSG it involves answering enquiries and dealing with members requests for information and services. The ability to delegate tasks will allow this role to be easily managed. In addition, the secretary's duties involve taking minutes at committee meetings and distributing the agenda prior to meetings, maintaining the CCSG files and running the CCSG library (which is fully computerised). General Committee (x2) Two positions will be open at the 2001 AGM. Tasks commonly undertaken by committee members include: securing speakers for public meetings, arranging logistics of running meetings, providing telephone support to people who contact the CCSG, creating or sourcing articles for the CCSG News, writing book reviews, acting as CCSG Contact Service volunteers, and other small tasks. An exciting part of being on the CCSG committee is the opportunity to initiate your own projects. If you feel strongly that a particular activity or service is needed and would benefit members then there is the opportunity to carry out such a project and run it from start to finish. Please consider whether you can contribute to the CCSG by filling one of these roles. We need people to make the organisation successful. What was to be the inaugural CCSG Symposium was cancelled 16 days prior to the event taking place. To the great disappointment of the organising committee, the number of registrations received by April 10th fell well below the minimum needed to make it financially and logistically worthwhile to run the event. The CCSG Symposium was intended to allow members to access a wide range of information all on one day. Many members have said to us that they do not attend public meetings because the topic is not relevant to them or not of interest. The Symposium was to overcome these objections and we estimated that at least 60 members (twice our average turnout to a public meeting) would be attracted by the prospect of 9 speakers all on one day. We also hoped to attract about 40 non-members to attend through our advertising of the event in local newspapers, the Healthwise magazine, radio, and our Web site. By April 12th we had received less than 40 registrations. This also indicated to us that the number of non-members attending would be less than we anticipated. A decision had to be made. With 9 speakers (all very busy people) committing time to attend and some sessions running concurrently there was the prospect of only a very small number of people attending some sessions. Furthermore, we had asked some 15 other organisations to attend to give those attending even more information. The final decision came down to 4 main points: Organising such a large event was simply not worth the effort for such a small number of people. Costs involved would barely be met by the money received. There would be considerable embarrassment to the CCSG from arranging the symposium and ending up with so little support from our own membership. We have spent a lot of time convincing doctors that the CCSG is a professional, well run organisation that they can feel confident referring their patients to and this image would be seriously damaged by such a low attendance at the symposium. It would not be worth the time of the speakers to speak to such a small number of people. Finally, many thanks to those who did register and we are very sorry that we have let you down. Of course, we have no way of anticipating how many people would have turned up on the day. Unfortunately, we will never know. Perhaps the lesson to be taken from this experience is that we need your expressed support if we are to consider attempting such an event again. If the Symposium was not the type of event you want us to arrange, please tell us want is. Stuart Ryan Announcement of Cancellation April, 2001 THE CCSG SYMPOSIUM 2001 HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO A POOR RESPONSE TO REQUESTS FOR PRE-REGISTRATION. PEOPLE WHO HAVE PAID REGISTRATION FEES ALREADY WILL HAVE THEIR MONEY FULLY REFUNDED MORE DETAILS OF THE CANCELLATION AND INFORMATION ABOUT FUTURE PUBLIC MEETINGS WILL BE INCLUDED WITH THE NEXT ISSUE OF CCSG NEWS. OUR APOLOGIES TO ALL THOSE WHO SUPPORTED THIS INITIATIVE. A MODIFIED VERSION OF THE SYMPOSIUM IS BEING CONTEMPLATED FOR LATER IN 2001. FOR MORE INFORMATION EMAIL: CCSG@CLEAR.NET.NZ NOTE: From now on only the five newest articles will be listed on the Newsletter page. Older articles are now stored in archive pages. |
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Email: ccsg@clear.net.nz |
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