Maryland Chapter (or Mid-Atlantic Chapter) Interest?

bableck

Active member
Is anyone else interested in either helping with the formation and/or participation in a Maryland SAPFM chapter?  Or, would you be interested in a broader Mid-Atlantic chapter that could also pick up parts of Southern Pennsylvania, Delaware, DC and/or Northern Virginia? 

If you are interested, please contact me directly at [email protected] and I will start developing a roster of interested parties for further communication and exploration during the coming weeks. Also, let me know how you might be willing to help with the effort.

My intent is to fill the geographical gap between the Virginia and Delaware Valley regional chapters.

To explore possible meeting locations, I've attached a map of recent 2011 CWF/FWW Symposium attendees in Maryland (about 25) as an initial perspective on location concentrations.  Based on this, my initial thoughts would be to attempt to explore meeting and rotating through 2-4 different meeting locations in Maryland such as: Montgomery County, Annapolis, Baltimore, or Frederick.  If this evolves into a mid-atlantic chapter, we will need to explore additional geographic meeting options as well based on the geographical spread of interested participants.

If I'm successful in identifying additional SAPFM member interest and a willingness to collaborate with me to help shoulder the effort, I hope to reach out to a much broader candidate participant list using a variety of possible distribution lists and communications.  I've had some initial discussions with Bob Mustain (president) and Dave Conley at the recent SAPFM annual meeting and am encouraged by the offer of support from the SAPFM leadership.

In the meantime, if you have an interest and contact me, I suggest you also review the "Manual for Starting a New Chapter" posted elsewhere under this section as I will be using it as my initial guidance in the formation of a new regional chapter.

 

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Would their be of interest to form a Potomac or Chesapeake chapter with Virginia and all the mid Atlantic states? I am sure my labels would have raised some eyebrows in earlier days. I think we could be a great combined force.
 
I'll keep a "Potomac" or combined/larger regional chapter in mind as an option and put it forth when I do an official email solicitation and see what respondents preferences are.

While I know that some SAPFM members travel significant distances to attend some of the regional meetings, I think there is a demand for a regional chapter that is more geographically accessible.  I've been having conversations with some of my local AAW chapter woodturning members as well as staff at the local Woodworkers Club (Woodcraft store in Rockville, MD) that are also interested in woodworking about a more local woodworkers guild as well and there seems to be a definite demand for it  Many of the Maryland woodworkers have difficulty in attending the Washington Woodworkers Guild that is Virginia-centric given the geography and traffic challenges of their Virginia meeting location so most of us in Maryland end up just not participating.

Perhaps a hybrid option might be periodic joint "Potomac" or Mid-Atlantic" sessions once a year or every other year combining multiple regional chapters could be an alternative.  Their is value in joining forces to provide more robust session offerings, but just not sure what the optimum solution is at this point  and level of SAPFM organizational maturity for Maryland-based SAPFM members.  Based on my experiences over the last four years in creating and growing a new local AAW woodturning chapter, there definitely is value in geographical access while having a national organizaton/events as well.  Several local AAW chapters join forces to offer annual regional events as well... thus a three-tiered offering structure has evolved for AAW and its set of local chapters.

Let's see what the Maryland-based SAPFM and adjacent members that respond have to say as a starter and we'll keep all options open. 
 
Just an update to let everyone know that I have sent an invitation to join to all Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware members and I'm currently building a membership roster.  

Several email addresses have bounced back and some members do not have an email address listed.... SO, if you did not receive an email from me on February 5th and are interested in joining a Maryland and surrounding area regional SAPFM chapter, drop me an email at [email protected].
 
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