Letter From the President - August Edition

Hey all --

Timing.

What's the most important part of a joke?

I heard that one recently, and it's both a spectacular G-rated joke and as good as any way that I might have otherwise chosen to start this month's check-in.

If I'm being honest, I just got done writing a thing that appears elsewhere in the newsletter, re: AGM & the call for board candidates (drop me a line), so I'm a little tapped for creative inspiration. So maybe what I'll do instead is plagiarize shamelessly. The perfect plan.

I'm looking at a recent report from Sean (MODS' Director of Business & Sport Development) and it strikes me that it's a good example of a random point in time -- during busy season, admittedly -- at which we have a wide variety of different things going on. I've often been asked some version of "what does MODS do all day, anyway?", so -- partly to answer that question and partly as a shout-out to Sean, Corey and the rest of our hard-working staff (which includes some seasonal staff) -- how about I just give you some examples?

In no particular order, some things currently/recently on the go:

• Kicking tires (staff & board) on the idea of having some part-time help in the office throughout the school year -- cost/benefit, etc.
• Audit! Had to include an exclamation mark to make this one seem exciting. At this time of year, our auditor looks through MODS' books to make sure your money is going where our financial statements say it is.
• Manitoba Cup -- planning, permits, pizza (the last one's probably not true; I just wanted a third 'p' word), turns out Pita Pit is a thing though and will also be on site!
• Incentives for new members -- re: Manitoba Cup, launching a promo to encourage newcomers to MODS to give us a try
• Team Manitoba -- our high-performance junior programming is in peak season right now; all teams had a successful weekend in Regina recently
• Meetings with municipal & provincial authorities about their support for organizations that host events -- our staff were there to offer a perspective, as an organization who has hosted national & international events fairly routinely in the past decade
• People (non-MODS members, I assume) like to use the IJL parking lot for things they're not supposed to: for example -- dumping garbage, and pretending it's a drive-in movie theatre, but with none of the movies and all of the in-car hanky panky... we're working on solutions.
• Upcoming beach-Ultimate tourney -- being planned for September; more to come on that, I'm sure
• University Ultimate -- some work happening to support momentum on that front, in partnership with leaders from U of M and U of W
• Super Spike -- happening July 26/27; our staff will be there to support the Ultimate portion of the event
• Sport Manitoba multi-sport camps -- our staff are helping to include Ultimate as part of this series of kids' camps this summer
• Disc Golf uh-oh -- the City of Winnipeg put some lovely new amenities (picnic table, fire pit) right in the middle of a disc-golf fairway at LaBarriere Park; MODS staff are trying to help find a solution that works for all
• Disc Golf good stuff -- exploring some different facilities upgrades at LaBarriere Park, alongside leaders from the disc-golf community