September 17, 2014
From the President:

Last night the flow of the meeting was good. We had a new attendee from Architectural Stair, Railing and Fence. We missed a few attendees due to the conflict of many Back to School nights. However, everyone was pleased with the nice blended culture of attendees.

I opened the meeting by thanking our sponsor NyloBoard, as well as our last meeting sponsor FastenMaster. I reminded everyone that it is our responsibility to support the products that sponsor our meetings and during every meeting I will be holding all builders accountable to report their usage of the prior sponsored product and to remind them of the different programs offered by those sponsors to make sure they are also utilizing those tools in their businesses. By a show of hands I did ask how many builders used FastenMaster since the last meeting. The response was positive with many hands up when I posed the question. I also asked how many builders are working with FastenMaster to take advantage of their Pro Spotlight program and a few raised their hands also. That was pleasing to both me, as well as the prior sponsor. I again reiterated the fact that we need to support them for supporting us. All were in agreement.

We had a discussion about the Spotlight article that was posted on our NADRA NJ Facebook page and we were determining if it was a good valuable tool for us to work with. It remained unresolved as Robert from My Deck was the first Facebook spotlight member and he was unable to attend the
meeting so it was challenging to come up with a resolve until we know the results. This was basically tabled until our next meeting.

We had a nice and informative presentation from Dave Stewart, representing NyloBoard. He discussed some of the features and benefits of the product and then turned it over to Scott a Marine Builder. He shared with us some details of a big dock project in PA and how he really endorses the usage of the product. Several questions came up from the audience and everyone was satisfied with the information provided.

Following Nylo Products presentation, I again thanked them for their sponsorship and had Rich Largman our featured speaker do a presentation on Working in the Biz vs. On the Biz. My goal all along has been to create value that relates to all channels. Rich did a wonderful presentation that drove home several key points for any segment of the market.

After Rich did his presentation we had a few items to follow up on. We discussed a potential charity event like a dunk tank at a fair and we all agreed that sounded fun. It would give us some good exposure as well. We all need to keep an eye out for any fairs we can partner with in 2015. Judy also gave us a quick update on NJ Deck Awards. We were all in favor of trying the Bridgewater Manor this year. Our plan is to have the awards on Feb. 5th in 2015. We then engaged in our deck for hope project in Monroe NJ. We all agreed that Pete Miller had suggested a great name for the program. Several members were not in favor of using treated lumber which is already on site and felt we need to reach out to manufacturers for support.

All builders agreed the best time for us to do this build will be after the Deck Expo in early November. Our plan was to follow up with the project coordinator and see what we can find out about using other materials. We were all in favor of helping with labor but needed to table the discussion on potential materials being used.

I explained that I tried to get some new attendees by reaching out to a good number of building inspectors to encourage their attendance. Unfortunately we did not have any attend. Tina and Gary, our fun/location committee did an excellent job by coming in with some great data about
some potential fun events we can look at. I appreciate that Tina also took the time to make a survey and then collected them to see what the consensus of the group is for a future fun event. Lastly, Judy updated everyone about the DeckExpo and the awards and reminded everyone of
the cut-off date.

Overall, I think we are making excellent progress as a Chapter, I feel we are doing well at moving forward and I am pleased to see our committees coming in with good information.

Lainie Sleppin
NADRA NJ President