Give Camp Thank You

Well we had our lessons learned meeting last night (March 30, 2010), with the volunteers invited, nothing personal NPO’s, I was trying to make sure the the volunteers could speak technical. I am going to transcribe the lessons learned and post it into a wiki on our website, hopefully by the end of the week. Now that this portion is complete I feel I need to acknowledge a few people that made this event successful. So in no particular order here we go.
First I need to thank my family for being so understanding about me wanting to do this. I love you more then you’ll ever know. 
I would like to thank Dr. Dave Kung of the St. Mary’s College. Dr. Kung (Dave if you meet face-to-face) took my “cold call”, he listened to my idea and thought that it was important enough to approach his supervisions. Dr. Kung was instrumental in getting us the facility and worked with me setting up all the rooms so the volunteers could work comfortable.
Next thank you goes out to Ariel W., this young lady took time away from her family and came back to the college early so that we could have our event. Ariel spent almost all day sitting in the common area, trying really hard to get homework done, but then someone would ask her to do something, she would stop what she was doing and accommodate their needs. I really don’t believe we could have done this weekend without her.
Ms. Lacey M. not only was our official photographer she was a huge part of our setup. She help with the registration and even helped with the shopping and picking up the food.
Now for Ms. Dorothy B., this lady took time away from her family and spend the whole weekend with us, she took her personal vehicle to get every meal that we ate. She woke up early Saturday and Sunday to make sure that she was at Sypro Bagels at 6:45, when they opened, to make sure we had our food bright and early.
Our non-technical volunteers are next. These individuals went around to the classrooms, cleaning up the table, emptied the trash cans, they would bring drinks and snack to where our teams were working. They would also make sure that the coffee was always fresh and fruit available, some of the volunteers ate “healthy”.
Lastly, I want to thank the technical volunteers. This may sound a little cliché, but we truly could not have done any of this without you doing the work that you do so well. You took on a project that would take most people months to complete and did it in less then 48 hours. Your professionalism and work ethics is second to none. From the bottom of foot to the top of my “bald” head I thank you over and over again.
I’ll be working on posting these lessons learned and I look forward to working with all you next year, this was truly the most rewarding professional experience of my life. It’s been said that when you meet and interact with other people, you put your personal imprint on that person, during this weekend we each placed our imprint not only on each other but 18 organizations that, I believe, will be grateful for many moons.
I am going to post my thank you to the companies next