[Oabs] I'm back!

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi, all,

After 13 hours of travel I landed safely in Cincinnati last night.
I've taken today to recoop and didn't do much aside from tutor my
braille student this afternoon, but I'm getting pumped for the
upcoming 75th convention starting tomorrow!  Here are a few notes as
we go forward in the less than 2 weeks time we have till we take
Orlando!

1.  First, thanks to everyone for their work so far on our fundraiser.
I still have to catch up on the minutes from our most recent meeting,
but I hope that was discussed a bit.  In any case, now is the time to
braille any tickets you still have to do (I'll post those assignments
in another number of this list), look through your agendas which can
be found online, and generally get set to sell and have a good time at
convention.  We've put in good work thus far and I hope we will
continue to do so-no, I know we will continue to do so over the next
several weeks while we wrap up this project.
2.  Assignments for brailling tickets are as follows:  Jordy Stringer
has volunteered to braille tickets 1-100.  Aleeha has tickets 101-200
already brailled courtesy of the Baltimore chapter.  I have tickets
201-300 Brailled.  Emily is brailling tickets 301-400.  Aleeha is
brailling Tickets 401-500.  If I mixed that up between assignments for
Aleeha and Emily somehow, I do appologize.  Either or both of you can
feel free to make that correction but I know we've talked about it
before.  I am still fighting off jet lag a bit.  To my knowledge no
one else has a brailler.  If we can braille in this pattern for the
next sets of 500 up to 1500 that would be great.  I am willing to
cover 501-600 and 1001-1100 for Jordy's set since he only volunteered
for 100.  I have also told Aleeha I would braille the tickets assigned
to electronic purchases up until the time I left for convention so
that she would only need to fill in the gaps on those.  If we could
fill in tickets 601-700 and 1101-1200 where no one has claimed
brailling responsibilities we can reach 1500 tickets and be very
prepared for sales easily.  Also, if anyone has a brailler they can
bring to convention please do get in touch with me about that.  We can
use slates if we need to in a pinch, but they won't be as uniform.
This is why I think it's important to be so prepared with tickets to
avoid the need to braille more, but you never know how popular we may
be.
3.  I will write an announcement to be read at convention, but I've
recently learned that just because an announcement is written and
submitted it might not be read.  Also we are not allowed to conduct
sales durring general sessions.  National divisions are allowed to do
so, but as we are state only we do not fall into that category. Still,
there will be plenty of networking opportunities.  I know Norma
Crosby, one of the scholarship mentors I have from Texas, has invited
me to come to the Texas caucus and has said I could sell there.
Networking will be key, as it should be at the convention anyway.
4.  Speaking of caucuses, please do plan on attending our state caucus
on Tuesday Jul 7th at 7:45 AM.  The meeting will go till 8:45 and will
cover important information we will need to know for the rest of
convention.  It's early, but I went to the caucus in 2013 and liked
it.  The caucus is also where you will have your final chance to turn
in banquet tickets to sit at the Ohio tables on Friday night.  Suzan
Day will be collecting those this year, so if for some reason you
cannot attend the caucus but still want to sit with the affiliate at
banquet please make arrangements with her to turn in your tickets
ahead of time.
5.  We have a fundraising meeting coming up this week and this
committee made good progress last month.  Please support our financial
efforts by attending, as I hope happened for membership this month on
the 10th.
    6.  Update on the gift cards: All 8 are in my posession now and I
will update the spreadsheet shortly.  My mom has also pledged to pick
up a gift card in support of our goal.  If you are going to get in on
the July scripp order please finish setting up your accounts and make
your purchases with Presto Pay soon.  I would imagine the deadline for
purchase orders will be before convention starts so it will be more
important than usual to get orders in on time according to when Shelbi
sets the deadline.  I'll forward her message about that scrip deadline
from Ohio talk to this list so everyone is sure to see it.  Also bear
in mind that if we get 5 people to use scrip and Presto Pay we can
have convention registration waved for this year's convention, plus
bragging rights.  Think of the money you busy students, strapped for
cash, will save... and the bragging rights.  Did I mention the
bragging rights at being the first group in the affiliate to rise to
the occasion?

Let's go build the Federation, one committee meeting, one Presto Pay
purchase, and one project at a time!  A shout out to Aleeha and the
BELL team as they started working with the kiddos in Columbus earlier
today, too!

Thanks,

-- 
Kaiti Shelton
University of Dayton 2016.
Music Therapy, Psychology, Philosophy
President, Ohio Association of Blind Students
Sigma Alpha Iota-Delta Sigma