December 9, 2011

Fellow Society Members:

As your new President I want you to know what your Board has in mind for the coming year.

Membership Survey: You will shortly receive a brief Survey Monkey poll asking you to give the Board a reality check on what you are looking for at TMS. Attendance at our dinners has been drifting downward, so we want to assess whether the format or content should be changed. We see many of you at event after event; others have become names from the past. So we want to know what we can do to attract more interest and participation – and just generally to be responsive to your interests (that’s mediator talk).

Website: In case you havPen’t checked recently, TMS’s website was much upgraded during Patricia Prince’s term. You can now use the site to view all scheduled TMS events, make reservations, pay with PayPal, view upcoming mediation-related events, and read links to articles suggested by members. The Board has decided to add to the website a monthly Mediator’s Corner that will feature one of our members with a photo and a short written piece. We intend to start by featuring some of our 22 new members who have joined TMS in the last two years, and then move on to feature other interested members. We hope this will help to assimilate new members into our group, and provide an ongoing forum for ideas.

Society Sessions: Unlike dinners and roundtables which often feature outside speakers, these luncheon sessions are intended to provide informal forums for us to talk among ourselves about what we do as mediators. We will be increasing the frequency of the Sessions to hold them on a monthly basis. For your convenience, and to respond to increased demand for programs in the East Bay, we will alternate venues primarily between Oakland and San Francisco, with a few events on the Peninsula and in Marin.

Breakfast Roundtables: The Roundtable Committee has locked in presenters for most of the year. These take place at 8:00 am at Golden Gate Law School, last one hour, and offer presenters who lead discussions of a variety of mediation-related practices. I find them a perfect vehicle to expand my thinking.

Dinners: We schedule four dinners a year at restaurants or private clubs in San Francisco. To ramp up attendance we intend to spend a bit of money (see below) on travel expenses so that we can attract more high-profile speakers from outside the Bay Area, and also to subsidize the dinner cost to keep the price below $70. We want our dinners to feature the best and the brightest minds, and most lively speakers, in the mediation world. Thanks to Daniel Bowling and Elaine Leitner, we have a terrific list of potential future speakers. We appreciate that committing to a dinner with a 6:00 start time may require not mediating that day, but by posting the schedule on the website well in advance we give you plenty of time to plan. The next dinner on January 11 at the City Club will feature Randy Kiser, a lively and challenging speaker, talking about his newest research into the quality of decision-making at mediations in litigated cases. We hope to see you there!

Since we now offer you events at breakfast, lunch and dinner, we need only to dream up something for brunch and afternoon tea.

Education Program: As you know, for several years we have presented to the Bar annual mediation-related educational programs, most recently last Spring. They are a lot of work to pull together; obtaining attendance has become a challenge. So, given the other goals we have for this year the Board has decided to offer our next Education Program in 2013.

TMS Finances: TMS operates on a budget of about $26,000 a year. We ended our fiscal year (Oct. 2010-Sept. 2011) with a surplus of just under $2,000. We have budgeted for a $1,000 shortfall in 2011-2012. The largest expenditures are to pay our excellent part-time administrator, Maurine Killough, and to subsidize dinner costs. We have about $30,000 in the bank. In short we’re in good shape and can afford to spend a bit on speakers.

Membership Renewal: We encourage you to renew your membership TODAY. You can do so with a few clicks on the TMS website. Where else does $125 buy you free entrance to 10-12 educational events, access to classy dinners with fine speakers, publicity on a website, and the enrichment of your brain and psyche that comes from associating with mediators?

Thank you for all you do as TMS members and mediators. I believe that we do make the world a better place.--Martin Quinn