CityClub is hiring for the position of Development and Marketing Manager! In the PDF attached you'll find the job description, as well as how to apply.

Haven't you always dreamed of being a member of Team CityClub? Send in your resume today!

Last Friday, CityClub closed down the office and held a day long board and staff retreat. As a framework for our discussion, we purchased several copies of Jim Collins' Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great.

Jim Collins describes something he calls the Hedgehog Concept. Briefly, Collins describes the concept on his website: "The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising the relentless discipline to say, "No thank you" to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test. When we examined the Hedgehog Concepts of the good-to-great companies, we found they reflected deep understanding of three intersecting circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic engine."

With these three things in mind, the board and staff of CityClub carried forth into discussion about what we want to do in the future, and how it fits with the Hedgehog Concept. As you can see, we broke up the hard thinking with a little fun: wind-up hedgehogs that spin and do backflips! (We were surprised at how difficult it was to obtain toy hedgehogs! Even the worldly toy folk at Archie McPhee had to ask us to repeat ourselves when we asked after something along this line.)

What do you think about the Hedgehog Concept? Can you see it being useful in your own life and work?

This morning, I'm glad CityBlog's archives are still pretty small - I spent the morning introducing tags into our lives. Now, you can sort CityBlog entries by topic (we've caught up with the rest of the blogging world!). Most interested in our Environment&Sustainability programming? Want to read all the blog entries addressing the Community Matters Campaign? Only like posts with pictures? No problem.

Here's a list of what's currently tagged in CityBlog:

• Anniversary Gala   
• Arts&Culture   
• CityBlog Book Club
• Co-presenters
• Community Matters Campaign
• Education
• Environment&Sustainability
• Features
• Health Care
• Housekeeping
• Jefferson Awards
• Law&Politics
• Other Programming
• Photos
• Polls
• Press
• Rapid Response
• Seattle Speaks
• Social Media
• Video
• Volunteers
• Voting
• Youth

This banner is bigger, and it is better! Additionally, it's twice as colorful. Check it out in this CityClub Family Photo! (Taken with a timer set on a camera propped on a chair, just like a real family photo!)

End of year announcement! CityClub's office will be closed for the holidays starting Thursday, December 24. We'll re-open on Monday, January 4 - just in time to turn right around and host Legislative Preview!

Thankfully, our website is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - so you can register for our events at your leisure, at 11 p.m. on New Year's Eve if you want!




P.S. Did you know we lit a holiday tree?

Raise your hand if you're in the office today! The workforce here is small but mighty. Our office will be closed the rest of the week for Thanksgiving (back on Monday, November 30) but before we take off, I wanted to make sure to share a few little nuggets of information:

• Seattle Speaks! The Seattle Channel has launched a great website as follow-up to the Youth Violence program CityClub, Seattle Channel and Town Hall hosted on November 10. The website includes information about the show, a little background on the youth violence issue, poll results (collected both before and during the program), comments sent to Seattle Channel as the program was airing live, and links to learn more and get involved. Click here to check it out!  Also, video is now available online as well! To skip straight to that, click here.

• 2010 Jefferson Awards! It's full steam ahead for CityClub on this front, and we're working hard, alongside new media partner KING 5, to bring it together! Nominations for the 2010 Washington State Jefferson Awards will be opened in January 2010 on KING5’s Evening Magazine, Northwest Cable News, KING5.com and SeattleCityClub.org. Nominations are open to everyone in our state. So take a look around at the inspiring, involved people in your neighborhoods and consider nominating them for the Jefferson Awards. Our community is full of everyday heroes! (Never heard of the awards? Not sure how to nominate? Until we're ready to launch online, you can find information on JeffersonAwards.org.

We're looking forward to finishing off the year at our annual Year in Review program -- but first, we're looking forward to a four day weekend. Everyone have a great holiday!

This morning when staff arrived at the office, we were greeted with a little note:

Although maybe not entirely accurate, it's a victory cry for a huge improvement in our public space: the removal of former dressing rooms (from when our space was a clothing store!):

Click here to see what it used to look like! It can still use some work (the walls look a little bare, don't you think?) but it's much more clean and functional now. It's only a matter of time before we're ready to host 50-person events in there!

A little peek into CityClub history! We found this certificate from 1985 during the recent move. CityClub's place in the community is forever cemented on tile number 8650! Granted, I don't think any of us has ever seen it, and it didn't come with a map marking the location of #8650. But isn't it nice just to know it's there, somewhere, under the bustling feet of thousands of people a day?

Incidentally, one of CityClub's staff members also has a tile with their name on it - and they know where it is and can point it out!

Last week's Open House and Annual Meeting was a pretty giant success, if we do say so ourselves. Chocolate, wine, fancy cheese from Beecher's... how can you go wrong? Oh, and there was the part where our members voted in our new board officers, and Diane gave a State of CityClub Address... but really, pretty much everybody was there for the tour.

Now that our new public space has been officially unveiled, it's time to take you, our blog readers, on a virtual tour! Click on any of the photos to view them larger.

    

Upon first entering our new office in Rainier Square, you'll see our library (at left)! Currently small but mighty, the CityClub library contains books authored by speakers we've had in the past, books recommended by the likes of Patty Stonesifer, and various materials and reports from other organizations in Seattle. One of our goals for the library is to expand that last category: build our collection of annual reports and other materials from other organizations, so that we could provide something of a "crash course" in Seattle civic life to newcomers who might wish to know! (And, of course, to natives who just need a bit more info.)

We also envision public computers in this space (top center) - for encouraging civic engagement online, for CityClub members and volunteers in the neighborhood who need to write a quick email, etc.

Finally, this public space has room for 50 chairs, and will provide us a venue for smaller events. It's hard to say which part of the public space is the most exciting, but imagine, if you will: something's happened, breaking news, but there's lots of conflicting information and it's hard to make a decision. With this space at our fingertips, CityClub can potentially host a Rapid Response panel in a matter of days - we've elimated the challenge of renting a space last minute. We "sold" these chairs at our Open House and Annual Meeting: donations of $50 are being commemorated by a plaque on a chair. Many have plaques in their name; others chose to name plaques after their children, parents, etc. (See below.)

 

If you've ever moved before (and I'm sure you have), you know exactly what happens - you discover just how much you've managed to accrue in the years you've been staying in one place. Hopefully, though, some of those things are awesome surprises. For us, many of those awesome surprises were photos. We could fill blog after blog after blog of old headshots and Polaroids.

It seems appropriate to be finding these old pieces of our history, especially at this particular time, when we are making so many huge steps forward. Tonight is our Members and Guests Only Open House and Annual Meeting, and it's the first official time we're inviting folks into our new, under construction space. To mark the occasion I thought we'd share a few snapshots from CityClub's past: CityClue.

According to CityClub's oral history/lore, CityClue was a giant city-wide scavenger hunt. Teams partnered with taxis and raced across the city, competing for some pretty fabulous prizes. Our last CityClue was in 1999. The photos don't have dates, but we suspect these are pictures of the happy winners.

Although looking at old CityClub photos can sometimes be like opening an old family album and laughing (goodnaturedly, of course!) at the clothes your aunts and uncles were wearing in the 70s, we promise we will never deliberately post embarrassing photos of people we know. So, if you see yourself and wish you hadn't, let us know.

As for tonight's huge step forward - i.e. the Open House - we'll be doing a bit of tweeting from the event, so stop by our Twitter feed around 6 p.m. to read, if nothing else, our review of the sweets from Chocolopolis!