(EDITOR'S NOTE: Throughout the year, various OSHBA meetings have provided important information for our membership. In a look back, and to the future, we share news vital to you.)
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OSHBA has seen a 4 percent increase in membership, growing to almost 2,400. The association also won the NAHB retention award, a first for the association in recent history, at least under Means' leadership.
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The OSHBA Associates Council golf tourney netted $3,400, with 80 players in the spotlight. Thank you builders for making up one-third of the play action. The dollars traditionally have gone to vo-tech scholarships.
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Mark your calendars for Jan. 10, when the OSHBA hosts the annual installation banquet, this year at the beautiful Mayo Hotel in Tulsa (link) when Phil Rhees will be installed as president.
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It's never too early to mark your calendars for the IBS-style state home builders' trade show/summit, Aug. 26-27, at the Cox Convention Center. This year brought in the most builders ever - 400 - and next year, the association is opening up the event to more vendors, planning for 80-100 booths and as many as 600 people.The board drew on the Texas experience with their Sunbelt Builders Association Show. "The vendors like to support an event where the majority of the attendees are the owners," Executive Vice President Mike Means said, "The people who come are business owners. It's not like having a 2,000-person convention and three-quarters of them are not decision makers. The vendors say that is the ONE thing they like is that everybody there are potential buyers for their company." The board wanted past supporters of the summit to know, they will be "first at the trough" in sponsorships.
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As a result of last year's membership survey, the individual association representatives attended membership training. We encouraged incoming council chairs and presidents to attend.
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Several sessions of membership training for individual associations were held in the fall. Some of the ideas include giving the evening of the Oklahoma Building Summit's two-day event over to the Associates Council to create a new networking opportunity. Another idea was a possible event at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas to invite attendees to come and network.
Video membership campaign
Jeff Click, immediate past president, took the reins to develop a video-driven message of value of OSHBA membership.From the membership survey last year, he said, 4,000 members were unaware the value that was available to them. OSHBA contracted a storyteller to transmit the culture of our association, capture their attention long enough to tell a story with a more in-depth video. We thank HUB International for sponsoring the video production.In reviewing November website stats, turns out the three top blog posts for page views across November were all videos, topped by the "Networking is a Great Value" membership video.
