It’s Not Too Late!

It’s not too late to hop on a Southwest flight or to plan your road trip and meet us in Dallas for International Shelby Conference 2009. The InterContinental Hotel still has rooms available at the low conference rate. And we have collected a group of experts to challenge you and bring you the latest on technology, administration, and software. Just to highlight a few speakers– Mike Gold will speak from his experiences as Ministry Direct and Chief Information Officer at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL. His topic is Sociology, Integrity, and Justice. Mark Newton and Ben Jordan from BigBadCollab will lead a session based on their expertise in building an interactive website and creating community online. Nick Nicholaou brings up the topic of CPA audits’ focusing on IT and how to prepare for this process. Anthony Coppedge helps ministries leverage technology and promote community through Twitter, Facebook, and other means of social networking. Anthony speaks at the Opening Session on Wednesday morning and leads two breakout sessions later in the day. Phill Martin, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of NACBA, leads three sessions relating to church administration. Don’t miss our New Product Town Hall meeting with Melissa Downing–gathering your ideas for innovative solutions with infinite possibilities. Our full complement of Shelby Systems personnel will also lead in sessions on v5 software, and other keynote experts will participate in Arena classes as well as in other sessions such as podcasting, cash flow, church tax issues, budgeting, and wireless networks. Add in Zig Ziglar and LaDonna Gatlin, and this is a conference packed with information on every layer of church administration and ministry. Plan on coming and participating with us. Contact the Events Department at 800-654-1605 or isc@shelbyinc.com to discuss your options.

Twitter time!

We have just recently welcomed Anthony Coppedge to join us at ISC this year, and we can’t tell you how excited we are about him coming. You can check out his blog here.

The world is now surrounded with all sorts of social networking outlets, whether it’s facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. It is so easy to see what your friends are doing or inform friends of an event or gathering. Anthony is an enthusiast in this area. He has created a firm that is “dedicated to helping churches think, plan and embrace a holistic media and communications mindset.” He will be kicking off our event on Wednesday morning with this exciting and popular topic. He wrote this EBook about Twitter called “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter,” and we will be giving a copy to every attendee. He is really going to be talking to us broadly about all social networking and how your church needs to get on the bandwagon. He will tell us benefits of how utilizing any of these resources can even help you build a stronger community within your organization.

We are so excited for this opportunity to have Anthony join us in Dallas this year, and we hope that you don’t miss him. If you haven’t already signed up for ISC this year, you won’t want to miss our current promo. Through April 24 at midnight, you can save $70 on your registration fee by entering AP1 in the promotion code. Don’t forget to call us if you have questions 800-654-1605! June is coming so fast and we can’t wait to see all of you there!

-Martha

Green is Good

Over the past few years, many people have made changes to their way of living in an attempt to help keep our beautiful planet clean and healthy for many generations to come. For instance, my house is now full of the spiraled, energy-efficient light bulbs. We have started hanging our clothes out on a line rather than use our clothes dryer. We eat organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible. We take a weekly trip to the recycling center with all of our paper, plastic, and glass. Not only are we making these types of changes at home though, Shelby Systems and International Shelby Conference are joining the Green Initiative.

The Shelby Systems Events staff has already begun making some changes in ISC preparation, and you will see some eco-friendly changes in Dallas this June as well. Our first step towards greenness has been cutting back on the amount of paper we use. As I’m sure many of you have noticed, we are relying on modes of communication that do not require printing or mail delivery. You are using one of those modes by reading this blog. We have also relied more on e-mail correspondence and our website for providing updated information (If you are not receiving our emails, you can log on to the Shelby Systems website and click on ‘My Shelby’ to add your email address). This has allowed us to cut back on the use of paper and the energy needed to deliver a bulk mailing.

We are happy to announce that almost all of the ISC giveaways this year are eco-friendly as well. They are all made from recycled material and are bio-degradable. One of the biggest conference changes will be the elimination of bottled water. Each attendee will receive a reusable water bottle, and there will be water stations set up throughout the conference area. Most of the giveaways will also help you “go green” when you return home as well. Take the water bottle to the office and use it instead of getting bottled water or a Styrofoam cup. Not only will this help save the earth, but it will also help save you money. In addition, the conference bag can be used in place of plastic bags received at grocery and clothing stores. It is lightweight and can be folded to fit into a glove compartment or purse.

We hope that you join us in our commitment to make this planet a cleaner and healthier place. For more information about ways you can “go green,” visit the National Geographic’s Green Guide for Everyday Living at www.thegreenguide.com.

-Suzanne

Top 10!

As we approach yet another deadline, we sit back and realize that time is flying by! The next thing we know, we will all be together in Dallas enjoying our time together. This week I wanted to remind you of the benefits you will receive at ISC ’09. We continue to think of the prep work we still have to do, and we want you to think about the top ten reasons you should NOT miss this event. The premier event of the year. Here we go.

10 – Seeing the overview of Shelby – the big picture with all the products and faces.

9 – Finding the tax guide your finance committee wanted, the network installer you IT department requested, and the group phone messaging system your pastor needed, all in our vendor mall.

8 – Interacting with fellow attendees from far and wide and learning helpful tips from a user who came over a thousand miles away who does the same job as you every day.

7 – Knowing the membership clerk you hired just a few months ago will get just as much out of the conference as your business administrator who has been using Shelby for 10 years.

6 – Meeting Shelby staff face to face and getting one-on-one time with Shelby experts.

5 – Enjoying delicious and unique meals made by a wonderful chef and cooking staff.

4 – Hearing from Shelby about their future plans and hearing from you about your future plans.

3 – Tapping into a great source of inspiration – spiritually and professionally.

2 – Going back to work with new ideas and contagious energy.

1 – Realizing the fantastic things your ministry can do with help from Shelby.

So just remember, after March 31, the price for this event will go up to $729/person. We do not want you to miss out on the current price of $654. We already have our countdown calendar up in our office, do you have yours up yet?

Drum roll please… LaDonna Gatlin!

Since I’m the “new kid on the block,” I have never experienced ISC, so I continue to learn the ins and outs of how the conference works. Every year on banquet night, we have some form of entertainment. This year when I heard it was LaDonna Gatlin, I’ll be honest that I didn’t exactly know who she was (some of you might be thinking the same thing), but I kept hearing that she started off with the Gatlin brothers. I still didn’t know who they were, so I did some research on her to know what to tell people if they asked who she was. I went to her website and found a section that was entitled “testimonials.” What a perfect place to see what she would be like. Reading what people were saying about her was so helpful in finding out what kind of night this would be. Here are a few quotations:

“You brought us exuberant fun, laughter, and love.. the spirit of the season. You are a special lady!”
Crystal Cathedral Women’s Ministry

“Your songs as well as your message gave us the opportunity to smile and listen to the inspiration in your voice as the day’s challenges melted away.”
Westinghouse Savannah River Company

“Your ability to connect with the audience through your experiences and through music made you an instant ‘hit’ with our employees.”
Unity Health Care

“You lightened our hearts, challenged our minds, and sent us off uplifted.”
Executive Women International

“Your homespun stories, charm and talent set the tone for a most enjoyable evening.”
Northwestern Mutual Life

That is just a taste of LaDonna, but click here to read even more about her great life experiences or even see a video! I just know that this will be a great and inspiring evening full of music, laughs, and encouragement to all. You won’t want to miss out on this night of entertainment!

-Martha

March Promo!

Everyone is learning to live in some tough economic times. We hear terms like bailout and stimulus packages from Washington, but if you are like me and are relationship oriented, those terms seem impersonal and far away from my world. I look for occasions to feel connected and enjoy other people with similar goals as mine, which is actually our objective for ISC and a reason for attending that I don’t want you to miss.

A conference objective of ours is to increase the level of synergy with staff members and help you and your team be more creative and to save time and money. Our goal is to send you home from ISC with measurable efficiencies and greater skills so you recoup the expense of the conference. Past attendees have commented that we are successful in this goal which is always nice to hear. We hope you agree.

In an effort to make it easier for you to get your money’s worth, we are going to ask you for less of it. Shelby Systems has put together a special ISC registration price that is available the first two weeks of March. We have had calls and emails from our loyal customer base regarding budget changes in 2009, and at that point their attendance at ISC 2009 in Dallas was questionable. So we put our heads together and our pencils to the bottom line and came up with a conference registration fee of $599 that we hope will be just the savings you need to register and join us this year.

We hope this special, limited price helps you get the approval you need to join us in Dallas to learn, to worship, and to enjoy one another.

We look forward to seeing you in June and giving you more than what you paid for!

Guest Speaker Zig Ziglar

We are excited to welcome Zig Ziglar to International Shelby Conference 2009. I am sure many of you have heard about him if not seen him yourself. For those of you who are not familiar with Mr. Ziglar or his work, here is a quick bio…

A talented author and speaker, Zig Ziglar has an appeal that transcends barriers of age, culture and occupation. Since 1970, he has traveled over five million miles across the world delivering powerful life improvement messages, cultivating the energy of change.

He has shared the platform with such distinguished Americans as Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Paul Harvey, Dr. Robert Schuller, plus numerous U.S. congressmen and governors. A well-known authority on complete and balanced success, Zig Ziglar has been recognized three times in the Congressional Record of the United States – for his work with youth in the drug war, and for his dedication to America and the free enterprise system.

Zig Ziglar’s corporation is built upon the same philosophy he expounds to his audiences – hard work, common sense, fairness, commitment and integrity. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Ziglar offers public seminars, customized educational programs, workshops and keynote speakers – all focused on personal and professional development. Profoundly affecting the lives of people, Zig Ziglar has a client list that includes thousands of small and mid-sized businesses, Fortune 500 Companies, U.S. Government agencies, churches, schools and non-profit associations.

In addition, Mr. Ziglar has written twenty-seven celebrated books on personal growth, leadership, sales, faith, family and success, including See You at the Top, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World, Top Performance, Courtship After Marriage, Over The Top and Secrets of Closing the Sale. Nine titles have been on the best seller lists; his books and tapes have been translated into over thirty-eight languages and dialects.

In 1998 Success For Dummies and Confessions of a Grieving Christian were released. Not long after that the 25th Anniversary Revised Edition of See You at the Top and Staying Up, Up, Up in a Down, Down World were released. His autobiography, ZIG, was published in July 2002, Conversations With My Dog in 2003, and his NEWEST book, God’s Way is Still the Best Way, has just been released!

Join us in Dallas this June to hear Mr. Ziglar for yourself. He is sure to inspire us all.

Suzanne

Top 5!

This week I wanted to share with everyone the top 5 reasons to attend ISC 2009. It was a little hard for me to start this post, considering I’m a newbie, but let’s just say I am going to put together a collaboration of what I hear is awesome about ISC.

5 – Who doesn’t love to go on a little vacation? During the summer we all like to get away for a little while, why wouldn’t you want to come to Dallas to enjoy the neat city and also get the benefits of learning for work? Dallas has so much to offer such as shopping, food, entertainment, etc. You will not be bored in this city!

4 – If you read our post about the visit we took to the Intercontinental Hotel, then you know that we had some amazing food. I am telling you that this food is something you should be excited about tasting. After meeting the chef personally, I can tell you that this food is prepared with you in mind. Whatever your preference, he wants to make sure you are 100% satisfied.

3 – The very informative classes, and NEW classes this year! We know that this is a great opportunity for you to soak in as much as you can about your job working with Shelby Systems. We have added many new classes this year from several requests, and we are looking forward to sharing all of our knowledge with you.

2 – Our general session speakers (I hear) are always so encouraging and uplifting. This year we are closing with Zig Ziglar and are so excited to hear what he has to share. We know that he will be such encouragement and great fun to listen to on Friday.

1 – Being a part of our Shelby Systems community! We feel that this is the place where you form relationships not only with other users close to you, but also with the trainers and staff at Shelby. I am looking forward to meeting all of you this summer, and I know that everyone else here is looking forward to seeing you again!

I hope my naiveté about ISC is still encouraging and helpful to make the decision to come. We have so many great things planned and cannot wait for everyone to see what we have been working on all year.

-Martha

Addison, TX and The InterContinental Hotel

Christi Baron (Director of Conference Planning) with Karen

Last week the ISC team had a chance to visit the host city for ISC 2009 – Addison, TX which is just outside of Dallas. We stayed two nights at the InterContinental Dallas Hotel which will also be our conference hotel. The guest rooms were beautiful, the hotel staff was great, and the food was delicious. We accomplished quite a bit on our visit including solidifying the menu (which we will talk about in a future blog), planning our breakout rooms, and laying out our exhibitor area. We believe this hotel will lend itself to another great conference.

The guest rooms at the InterContinental Dallas have been recently renovated and it shows. The rooms were large and the beds were comfortable and inviting. The bathrooms were very clean and were stocked with amenities such as a hairdryer, iron, and Molton Brown toiletries such as shampoo, lotion, body wash,etc. These rooms definitely allow you to have a nice, relaxing evening. If you want to get some exercise, there is a workout room on the bottom floor that will keep you moving. Get some cardio on one of their treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, or stair steppers. Or head to the weight room to use their free weights and arm and leg machines. You also have the option of grabbing a partner and heading to one of the two racquetball courts. So whether you choose to relax or get active in the evenings, this hotel has what you need.

The colorful table at our Chef's lunch

One of the most enjoyable things we did while in Addison was eat. We had the opportunity to visit and eat in the chef’s kitchen at the InterContinental. We watched him make our lunch and it was like watching an artist. Everything was cooked and presented perfectly. The InterContinental is unique in that they only use fresh food in their meals. They have an in-house butcher and a local herb garden and produce market from which they purchase all their ingredients. This is evident in the taste and quality of the food they serve. We were able to sample a few things from their menu including soups, steak, fish, cheese, sorbet, and an assortment of pastries and sweets. This meal also gave us a chance to talk with the Director of Food and Beverage at the hotel as well as the chef and sous chefs. They have assured us that all of our attendees will receive the same quality of food that we enjoyed that day. We know you will love it!

In the evenings, we were able to try out the hotel restaurant, Monte Carlo, which serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and wonderful desserts. After dinner, you can move out to the hotel lobby where they have live music most evenings. We also visited a couple of restaurants outside the hotel. We ate at a locally owned fish house, The Fish Market, which I am told had wonderful calamari, Chilean sea bass, seared tuna, and crab cakes. I am a vegetarian and was still able to eat well. I had a salad with an amazing vinaigrette dressing followed by a potato, rice pilaf, and a vegetable medley. After this delicious meal, we moved over to a locally owned steak house, The Chop House. Once again, the food was amazing. The meat eaters enjoyed scallops served on grits and a New York strip steak. Even at a steak house, I still had quite a bit to eat. I had a grilled Portobello mushroom with a pomegranate sauce and pasta tossed with zucchini and asparagus. These are just two of many options of nearby restaurants. The hotel offers a free shuttle within a three mile radius of the hotel, but there are many places to eat and shop within walking distance.

Suzanne Schmidle, Martha Carter, Michelle Burk (Sales Manager), Karen Bishop, Russell McDaniel, Guy Dunnam

We are confident that you are going to love this hotel and the city of Addison. We enjoyed our visit and are looking forward to seeing all of you there in June!

-Suzanne

Texas here we come!

This week Karen, Suzanne and I are headed to Dallas! We will be finalizing all ISC plans for June, and are so pumped about the visit. The hotel contact has drawn up a nice schedule for us, and we will be enjoying many tasty meals, excellent company, and informative tours.

The Intercontinental Hotel is actually located in Addison, TX, and when we arrive on Tuesday, we will be able to see how easy it will be to get from the airport (DFW) to the hotel. We look forward to stepping foot into the lobby and seeing the grand renovations just recently completed. We will also be spending a few nights at the hotel and are excited about experiencing the fresh new look of the guest rooms. During one of our days in the area, we will be touring the cities of Dallas and Addison. We will be sure to make note of the restaurants, shopping, etc. within walking distance of the hotel and give you this information when we get back. We are hoping to be treated to a nice meal at one of the restaurants in the area!

What I am most looking forward to is planning the menu! I love talking about food, tasting food, picking out what sounds good, and we will actually get to interview the hotel chef. Then he will sit down and help us plan our menu. I personally think that sounds like fun! We will be seeing the welcome reception room, and I hear it is supposed to have an awesome atmosphere that looks to the outside!

What else will we be doing, you might ask? We will be talking with the AV contact and nailing down all computer information for hands-on labs. We will also meet with our customer service rep and hotel registrations rep, and be able to lay out all classes and exhibitor areas.

This week will be so much fun for us because it will be like our own pre-ISC, ISC.  We can’t wait to tell all of you everything about Dallas and the hotel, so check back with us next week for the recap of our trip!

Is there anything you would like for us to find out for you while we are in Dallas? Let us know!

 

-Martha