Every year KOTESOL hosts what is called a 'Leadership Retreat' (LR). This is a weekend where KOTESOL leaders and other interested parties can get together and discuss the year ahead. During the weekend there are informational sessions, informal get togethers and a formal Council meeting.

This year the LR was held at the Solbridge Business School in Daejeon on the first weekend of the year. Our Chapter was well represented with your President (Tim Dalby), Vice-President (Shawn DeLong), Treasurer (Chullsung Juhng), Membership Coordinator (Joel MacDougald) and Immediate Past President (Henri Johnson) in attendance.

Click here to see the program for the weekend.

After the opening address, the first session was all about Robert's Rules of Order (RRO), which are the rules by which KOTESOL is governed. Aaron Dougan (Daejeon Chapter President) made it sound simple and gave us a useful guide on how to make meetings more effective. For more about RRO, Click here.

For the second session of the day, we divided ourselves between 'Treasurer's training' and 'What you can get from KOTESOL and how to develop future leaders'. In the former session, we were given some trial accounting software that Chapters will need to use in future for their budgets. In the latter, members brainstormed ideas about what KOTESOL is to them.

After a wonderful lunch, we again divided. In one session we viewed the draft Elections Policy. The 2009 National KOTESOL elections raised many issues about how our elections are run and a comprehensive policy is very much needed. Thanks to the work of the Elections and Nominations Committee, we should have a solid policy in place for the next Presidential elections in 2011. For a look at the DRAFT policy, click here. In the other session, members shared ideas on how to make membership of KOTESOL more rewarding.

Between 3 and 6pm, KOTESOL held its first National Council Meeting. Anyone is invited to attend, but only Council members can vote. The minutes of the meeting are not available right now, but will be posted when available. Our Chapter will host a Council meeting on May 30th in Jeonju and all members are welcome to attend. Our Immediate Past President was appointed as the Long Term Planning Committee Chair - A National Council position.

At the end of the day, we had a formal dinner and then many attendees headed out to sample the delights of Daejeon.

Tim at the Brickhouse

We were all back at the hotel by midnight and nobody overdid it.

The second day got off to a slower start as the National 1st Vice-President was unavailable. While the sessions were being rearranged, your representatives secured some time with the new National Treasurer to sort out funding for last year's Drama Festival. We were also able to discuss funds that will be available for this year's Regional Conference (May 29th), and our Drama Festival in November. 

Once things got underway again, we divided ourselves between 'Chapter Governance' and 'PAC 2010'. Our Chapter is in need of some written and accessible policies and procedures, so the governance session gave us some ideas of how to proceed. PAC 2010 is the 'Pan-Asian Conference of 2010 and is our International Conference in October (16-17th). The session was all about how to make our conferences better for attendees.

• January 16th - Jeonju - Exec Meeting (all welcome) 
• March 20th - Jeonju - Swapshop
• April 10th - Iksan - Outreach (Could be swapped for Sept. 18th event)
• April ?th - Gunsan - Outreach (Could be swapped for Sept. 18th event)
• May 29th - Jeonju/Gunsan - Conference
• June 19th - Social - Jeonju
• Sept. 18th - Jeonju - Workshop/Presentation
• Nov. 13th - Jeonju - National Drama Festival
• Dec. 18th - Jeonju - KTT Workshop/Presentation & Christmas Social

As you can see, we will be meeting to finalise this plan (and other things) on January 16th at 10.00am in the Jeonju University English Cafe. If you would like to be involved in the future of your Chapter, please come along. Click here for directions.