Greetings from Vancouver and Happy Chinese New Year (Gong Hay Fat Choy or Gong Xi Fa Cai).

I wanted to update you on our successful Board meeting and Strategic Planning weekend that we held in North Vancouver in early January. As usual we had our January Board Camp, but this time combined regular board business with a Strategic Planning session.

All members of the executive and all Zone Chairs were in attendance the weekend of Jan 11th.

We hired Yael Blum to facilitate the strategic planning www.intwoit.com and she did a great job over Friday evening and all day Saturday. She kept us focused and on track for the sessions.

I think that everyone present was energized by the weekend and we have lots to do over the coming months to put in motion what was discussed during the planning session.

While there were many take aways, some of the highlights include getting youth more involved, enhanced educational activities, more two way communication from/to the TBC office, and ways to sustain our programs into the future (not Back to the Future which is being turned into a West End musical in 2015).

January also saw TBC Executive member Peter Wienold launch a new podcast site called In The Theatre www.inthetheatre.info. We recently had a roundtable discussion with Peter, Allison Haley – CIZ Chair and Wes Eccleston – VP, that you may enjoy listening to. And there is a two part interview with Vance Schneider. Thanks to Peter for doing this. And if you want to know what Peter sounds like using his well honed radio voice, give it a listen.

With Spring coming, festival season is almost upon us. Good luck everyone with planning for the festivals. Members of the Executive will be fanning out across the province to attend when we can.

Glen