End of January. How is it the end of January already?! As President of JCI Portsmouth in 2020, I thought I’d use this blog as a kind of monthly President’s Diary so you can see what I’ve been up to -  the amazing experiences that JCI has given me as a member and local President and updates on what’s been happening in JCI Portsmouth and plans for things to come!       I swear January disappeared in a flash! I negotiated a deal with the Old Customs House in Gunwharf to make our monthly training events more convenient for members to attend and we kicked off with a fantastic goal setting and motivation training session with Simona Hamblett.         As you can see, this was very well received by attendees and it was great to see them sharing the power of JCI Portsmouth on their personal social media channels too! Rather than have a full training schedule planned out for the year, I thought I'd try something slightly different where, as people turn up to training events, we talk about the sorts of things that they would like training on and then I find someone within the JCI network to run that session.     So far this has been working well for us. Sophie, Rhod and Ross decided public speaking was something they wanted to look into so our next training event is on the 10^th of February with The Presentation Doctor aka Gavin Meikle. Gavin was International Vice President of JCI in the early noughties and responsible for supporting the growth and development of JCI in seven African countries including Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia, Kenya, Malawi and Mauritius. I'm so excited to hear his JCI story next week and get some tips and tricks on how to improve my public speaking skills in what promises to be an amazing and interactive session!     We’re deliberately keeping this a small session (12 tickets only) to avoid people feeling overwhelmed and we’re invoking The Chatham House rule. Basically what happens at JCI, stays at JCI. We're in the Buster Crabbe Room at the Old Customs House from 7pm -9pm on 10th February and it’s £5 entry on the door.     We also have our Local and National 2020 Events schedule I’m proud to say JCI Portsmouth is hosting the National “Living and Leading in a Changing World” event in on June 27^th and we’re hoping to host a Summer Cocktail Party the night before at Spinnaker Tower to celebrate JCI Portsmouth’s 65^th birthday! More on that coming soon!  What do you think? From discussions with members and potential new members, it looks like we may be doing something around the theme of “Exploring Space” in March. 2019 was actually the largest year on record for investment in Space companies and we have some incredible start-ups on our doorstep here in Portsmouth... Space is also one of the 5 Megatrends identified in our “Living and Leading in a Changing World” research project so exploring this in more detail sounds really fun! Other things I did in January were...   Delivering a training session on "Building Social Capital" for our sister chamber JCI Southampton. We're seeing unprecedented levels of social change, ambiguity and quite frankly chaos. Understanding how to capitalise on your knowledge and your skills is a way of getting that stability back so I ran a session on what social capital is, why it's important in developing your career and how to start building it using tools like LinkedIn.  Again feedback was that this was a great session (Phew!) and I'm more than happy to put it on again for JCI Portsmouth members and friends if you think it would be useful. Just email me if you're interested and I'll happily find a date to during the next quarter to put that on!      Other training opportunities are available for example I’m personally very proud of JCI’s relationship with the United Nations so I’m also quite keen to run a training session on the UN Sustainability Goals and tips and tricks for how ordinary people can adopt, embrace and apply them in their lives.  I might even bring the boardgame so do email me if you're interested    And finally... I spent a lovely quiet evening with our "Chief Cuddle Officer" Casey, planning and preparing for a fantastic year for JCI Portsmouth and a decade of action! He was very involved in the planning process as you can see... [gallery ids="220,221,222"] The fruit of our labour was this slide deck which I called the --> JCI Portsmouth 2020 Plan of Action <-- Feel free to download it and have a nosy through our 20 objectives for 2020!  I then had feedback (from my dutiful, long-suffering husband) that a few of these objectives needed further explanation so there is now also a video commentary available as well on JCI Portsmouth's Facebook page! Disclaimer, it's half an hour long so grab a cup of tea and a biscuit first! https://www.facebook.com/jci.portsmouth/videos/2572914439699264/http://     Finally one thing I've realised throughout my two years of JCI Portsmouth is that  success is not a solitary activity. JCI Portsmouth can only continue to grow and develop if people share their ideas, their knowledge, experience, comments and connections so as always please drop me a line if there’s something you want to see me look into or if you think you can support the chamber in some way. I’m not an ogre so I won’t eat you if you reach out to say hi, you can always talk to me and I will listen to what you have to say. I'm always looking for ideas for interesting socials, networking and training events!      So that's it from me for Month One! February starts with our National Event called #Kickstart2020 hosted by JCI Manchester so I'm just packing and getting my books ready for the 6-hour train journey! Thanks for reading, Emma-Louise Munro Wilson President, JCI Portsmouth emma.wilson@jciportsmouth.org.uk Emma's LinkedIn JCI Portsmouth Facebook  JCI Portsmouth LinkedIn