Here's another suggestion which seems to be doing us, and our fellow societies a LOT of good.
Here in Louisiana we have a relatively large number of Orchid Societies. Each Society itself isn't all that big, but a relatively large number of societies, nonetheless.
In the past, if a speaker came, he/she would come for our society alone, or, he'd have to pack up all his materials and plants to travel to another society in his "circuit". One of the largest determinants of which particular cities were on that circuit would be which city would be having the next meeting, i.e., the next day, or couple of days. Usually that didn't happen to work out to happen to be another local society, but a society many states away.
In our experience, one of the most often cited reasons for joining and attending local orchid society meeting is the availability of good speakers. Well, one way to ensure that that happens, is for the local socities to "synchronize", i.e., co-ordinate monthly meeeting schedules. If a speaker comes to our society, but has to wait for 2 weeks to speak to the next local society, "it ain't gonna happen". Now that the "local" societies have co-ordinated their monthly meeting schedules--i.e., Francisco Miranda speaks to us, the New Orleans Orchid Society on Tuesday night, and then goes up to Baton Rouge for their meeting onWednesday night-- a lot of hassle and expense is avoided on many fronts. Plus, sometimes, if speaker and house-host are willing, the speaker will often not even have to repack his own personal suitcase if all are agreeable to the speaker coming back to the same accomodations each night--all the speaker has to do is pack and unpack his plants for each meeting in each city.
In many ways, it's more like a "crusie" for the speaker, in that his "hotel" doesn't have to change every night.
So, the speaker is happy, the societies that get better speakers are happy since they can share expenses, and it seems to be a win/win situation all around! When all the societies had monthly meetings weeks away from eachother, this win/win situation wasn't an option.
Hope this helps someone's society get better speakers!
Dan S.
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