What an amazing weekend we had in Leeds at the JCI UK National Convention last weekend!

We began with our friends over in JCI Portsmouth arriving in Southampton in the chartered minibus and collecting us on a cold Friday morning. The road trip began! A few hours later (and plenty of bags of chocolate devoured) we arrived at Oulton Hall in Leeds, the setting for the National Convention. It's all about celebrating the UK's achievements whilst participating in some great training, key note speakers, public speaking competitions &, of course, social evenings.

We didn't have to wait long for the key note speakers as Andy George (CEO at Asda) began proceedings - a great insight into one of the UK's biggest supermarkets.

Afterwards, I ducked in to watch the Public Speaking competition, which was a first time for me. A great standard this year and I wasn't envious of the judges at all to find a winner. In the evening I hosted the Extempore competition. Being last year's winner, it's tradition that the current champion presents the following year...and as usual in an 'off the cuff' spontaneous public speaking competition...we had many laughs and a few shocks!

A huge thank you to all of the JCI Leeds team and National Board who organised the event.  They truly deserve the congratulations. I personally had an amazing weekend and also marked the last National Council for me as local President of JCI Southampton.

We move onto the part of the weekend I was excited/nervous about the most...the awards evening. With JCI Southampton achieving massive success in Belfast the previous year, we had worked extremely hard to continue with that success. Well, we had another fantastic awards haul & I am immensely proud that we were recognised for our programmes & achievements by JCI UK. 

JCI Southampton won SIX awards on the night...more than any other chamber in the UK...for the second year running! What was even more impressive was that the awards we triumphed in were in different categories to those won last year...demonstrating the chamber's strength and innovation.

So what did we win?

Most Outstanding President - Michael Steel

Most Outstanding New Member - James Lambert

Most Outstanding Local Growth & Developing Programme - The Membership Benefit Card

Most Outstanding Inter-Organisation Collaboration Project - Monopoly Event with JCI Cambridge

Best Long-Term Community Development Programme - The Costa Coffee Academy 

Best Debating Team - Michael Steel with Patrick McCrae & Ricky Kothari

Huge congratulations to the team & to all our active members - these awards are down to all of your hard work in 2013.

This year was themed 'Renaissance' with the re-branding of the chamber implemented and completed. The chamber has now expanded out into new communities, new partner organisations and has more student members than ever before. Next year's challenge will be to keep the momentum going and expand on the path set. Our challenge in 2014? To be come the biggest chamber in the UK. 

As always, as a voluntary organisation we need you to help us!  If you are interested in getting involved, sharing your ideas, or just attending some events please contact myself, Ryan Slaughter (my successor as President next year) or a member of the 2014 Council team.