In our last newsletter, I signed off by asking you to set a goal to increase your involvement with our Chapter through volunteering. 
This time I want to share how being a volunteer can serve you.

As marketers, we have a big bag of skills. Your day-to-day role may only require you to use or really hone a few of them. Bring those other skills to bear by serving on a committee. This opportunity lets you flex those muscles so they can grow stronger, on your terms.

Want to learn a new skill? You can do that too! All roles are supported by a Committee Director, their predecessor, and other volunteers who are also looking to learn and grow like you. With this team collaboration you can try new things, champion single events or ongoing programs, or even take on a leadership role.

Volunteering also allows you to practice advocating for yourself professionally: you make your own calls on when you’re ready for a promotion, so don’t be afraid to elevate your commitment by taking on a leadership role.

JANUARY TECH TUESDAY: JOIST AI FOR AEC MARKETERS

Thank you Joey Sminchak (Associate, Communications Manager, Horner & Shifrin) for sharing some of the major functions and benefits of Joist AI, a platform built for and by the AEC industry to supercharge the development of marketing collateral, proposals, and more! Joey showed us how his firm is leveraging their own backlog of content with Joist’s powerful engine to conduct thorough RFP analyses, evaluate win strategies, draft front-to-back proposal responses with thoughtful oversight, empower technical staff to more confidently engage in content development, and bring more power back to marketers to help deliver the latest and greatest with less searching and much less time!

CONNECT, MEET, FOLLOW-UP: THE CRITICAL STEPS IN THE CLIENT ACQUISITION PROCESS

Last year William Long, PE, LEED AP, FSMPS (Principal, WRL Consultants) taught us how to TREAT ourselves, using account-based strategies to help our firms focus BD efforts on the right clients. In this session Bill shared his proven strategies for effectively meeting, connecting, and following up with those clients to strengthen relationships. How do you get and make the most of in-person meetings? After that dialogue, how do you continue the conversation, all while maintaining credibility, trust, and demonstrating value? There are answers to these perennial puzzlers! Thank you for breaking them down, Bill, and for showing us how to maximize the effectiveness of future touchpoints with confidence and integrity. 

FEBRUARY TECH TUESDAY: ADOBE INDESIGN SHARE FOR REVIEW

Thanks to InDesign superstar Lana Wheeler (Marketing Specialist, Stantec) for her hat-trick Tech Tuesday presentation to us on a relatively new but irrefutably awesome InDesign feature, Share for Review. Like commenting, tagging, and addressing track changes in Word, this collaboration tool allows marketers to share drafts, implement edits, and communicate changes to technical partners through web link drafts, all while staying in InDesign ourselves. Studies are showing (and the Lana has spoken!) that this function can speed up design reviews tremendously and increase the accuracy and accessibility of edits for pursuit teams across the board!

PROPOSAL WRITING: MASTERING THE ART OF TRAINING YOUR TECHNICAL STAFF

To ‘yes , and…’ Stephen King, “to write is human, to edit is divine” and to guide and motivate AEC technical professionals to do both better is cause for sainthood! In this session Wendy Simmons (Founding Principal, Middle of Six) gave us practical tips to help our tech teams gain more confidence in their writing and storytelling to produce stronger, clearer, more compelling proposal content. Together, we explored strategies to help our technical staff break their writer’s block, craft content that selection committees actually want to read, and deliver quality materials to us on deadline—all critical elements to winning work well!

MARCH TECH TUESDAY: AIRTABLE

“Like Excel, but smarter! Looks like a spreadsheet; works like a database!” Toni Anderson’s (Business Development Coordinator, ECS) reviews are in and Airtable is her pick to help organize data and streamline task management. Thanks to Toni for showing us the expansive free version of this new-to-many cloud platform that can mimic many functions of a CRM for task tracking and updates, status reporting, and archiving, with highly automatable and customizable features for internal/external communications and data sourcing and management.

PRUDENT POSITIONING: SHIFTING FROM REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE

A collaboration between SMPS Philadelphia and AIA Philadelphia, this all-star design panel featured Christopher Kircher, AIA and Kelsey Hoffman (Metcalfe Architecture & Design), Marilia Rodrigues, AIA and Huwayda Fakhry (KieranTimberlake), and Nicole Dress, AIA, LEED AP, WELL AP (Converse Winkler Architecture). Moderated by Barbara Jane Jasionek, CPSM (DIGroupArchitecture), the conversation explored how marketing and technical professionals can work together to proactively shape pursuit strategies and elevate firm visibility, far ahead of the ticking clock when RFPs goes live. Panelists shared how they are aligning internal teams to strengthen market presence and support firm growth FTW (for the win)!

New Members

Justin Cantz

Nyasha Felder

Melissa Howells

Amanda Giamalis

Josef Kaplan

Anniversaries

January

February

March

Judith Bernicker, 41
Rebecca Custer, CPSM, 11
Danielle Donnelly, 10
Vincent Farese, PE, LEED AP, 24
Jake Fried, 4
Marlea Harris, 2
Richard Horstmann, 18
Amanda Irwin, 6
Jaime Kacperowski, CPSM, 4
Rachel Kenshalo, CPSM, 8

Kelly Kraemer, 2
Kimberly Latona, CPSM, 6
Jessica Matase Slattery, 13
Rebecca Moyer, CPSM, 12
Afton Pascal, CPSM, 14
Daphne Perry, 18
Jeffrey Pintof, 2
Christina Tedeschi, CPSM, 4
Natalie Troxell, 2
Francesca Wallace, PCM, 1

Brian Abbate, 2
Noreen Bertinelli, 2
Corey Bright, 2
Denis Brennan, 5
Richard Carbone, 22
Mary Ely, 2
Alexandra Fritz, 10

Jonathan Goldberg, 14
Nicole Healy, CPSM, 10
Froilan Miranda, 1
Allison Mohr, 2
Kathrine Nash, 1
Catherine Palumbo, 12
Ashley Price, 2
Leslie Turchetti, 11
Kelsey Whalen, 6
Jaimie Wright, 8

Dana Buttorff, 16
Ellen Davis, 11
Eileen Della Volle, 25
Joseph Donahue, 20
Christine Larsen-Romberg, 8
Grace Sanford, 6
Emi Stretton, 1
Ry Taylor, 20
Dorothy Verdon, CPSM, 40