In This Issue

• Harmony College West - July 18-20
• Chorus Director Development Opportunities
• Youth Harmony Camp - Sept 26-28
• Fall District Convention - Oct 9-12
• COTS - Chapter Officer Training Seminars
• Announcing the ebiz Cookbook, seeking recipe requests
• Attention Chapter Secretaries
• Calendar and Links

Harmony College West - July 18-20

Harmony College West at the University of Redlands is just three weeks away.

If you can arrive before 3pm on that Friday, we have early bird classes that you won't want to miss. Our special guest quartets this year are the 2005 Gold Medallist quartet Realtime and the 2007 College Silver Medallist quartet The Crush. You already know how terrific these quartets are.

Go to Harmony College West 2008 for the latest details. All participants will receive an email about a week before the event with all the details, driving instructions, how to find the registration area, schedule and so on.

Quartets: We strongly suggest that you bring a video camera and tripod with 8 hours of recording capacity, or bring an audio recorder otherwise. You will be getting eight hours of intense instruction and a video will be the most effective way to review your coaching sessions.

Chorus Director Development Opportunities

Hello Far Western District,

I am Dave Tautkus and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and what I envision for my term as Committee Chairman for Chorus Director Development.

I have been a barbershopper for 23 years. I have been a chorus singer, quartet singer, section leader, assistant director and front-line director in this district for my entire Barbershop career. I currently direct the San Fernando Valley Chapter in the SoCal West Division. I have directed 4 different chapters, all of which have been fortunate enough to qualify for the district contest. I attended Director's College as a scholarship recipient in 2006 where I had the opportunity to further hone my directing skills. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education from USC, and a Master's degree and PhD. in Education Administration from Columbia State University. I am a public school music teacher and the lead teacher for the new Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, CA (if any of you have contacts or are contacts in the industry, email me.)

I view my position with the CDD committee as a multi-facetted service oriented position, but would also like to enlist help (and train a future successor)—possibly 2 men in different responsibility areas of each FWD division.

If you are a chapter in need of a director, let's work together and see if we can find you a director (I know of a need in Prescott, AZ).

If you are a director that is interested in helping a chapter in need, we need your help.

If you are personally interested in learning to become a director, we have a program for you.

If you are a director interested in completing your certification process, or becoming a Master Director, or having a CDWI or a "Next Level" evaluation, contact me.

There are some possibilities as soon as the International Convention in Nashville this week.

Let's keep growing individually and collectively.

Dave Tautkus
davetautkus@aol.com

Youth Harmony Camp - Sept 26-28

It is time to start planning what your chapter will do this year to support Youth Harmony Camp.

In case you are not fully aware, Youth Harmony Camp is a music camp for teen boys, held in the mountains East of Sacramento late every September. The term "hot dipped in barbershop" really fits what happens at camp. These youth are so excited about barbershop by the end of camp that you wonder if their feet stretch all the way to the ground.

You and your chapter can support the camp in several ways:

1. Share the camp information with your local music educators. The training these young men receive prepares them to be the strong singers in their school choirs.
2. Talk to all the teens you know and get them interested in camp
3. Ask your chapter to sponsor some teens
4. Ask your chapter to make a donation to support the camp
5. Volunteer to work at the camp

The camp website is ready, just click on Youth Harmony Camp where you will find all the information.

For additional information, contact Camp Director Richard Lund at rlund@innercite.com

Fall District Convention - Oct 9-12

The Fall District Convention will be held in Bakersfield this year. The forms for convention registration and hotel reservation are on the FWD website at Conventions.

COTS - Chapter Officer Training Seminars

The COTS dates are set for this year. The classes have been expanded to include Membership and Marketing/PR this time. Now is the time for your chapter to determine the nominees for next year so that voting can be completed before the Fall District convention. This allows your new officers to participate in the House of Delegates meeting at the convention. This year there will be a number of items for your delegate to vote on. This timing also allows your men to properly schedule their classes at COTS.

There will be three COTS events this year:

NorCal	November 15
Arizona	November 15
SoCal	November 22

How about putting these dates on your calendar right now?

Announcing the ebiz Cookbook, seeking recipe requests

Many of you have struggled trying to use the new ebiz website for the Barbershop Harmony Society. The site is evolving with problems being fixed and new features being added.

To help you be successful at using the new site I have started what I call the "ebiz Cookbook" that will hold many step-by-step "recipes" to assist you in using the site.

What I need from you are the tasks that you want to accomplish on ebiz. I suggest that you start your questions with "How do I" and then complete the question with the task to be done. Send your question list to Keith Eckhardt, Far Western District Webmaster at webmaster@spebsqsafwd.org.

The initial tasks that will be documented are:

• How do I log into the BHS ebiz website?
• How do I find my ebiz password?
• How do I add a chapter officer or other chapter leader?
• How do I delete a chapter officer or other chapter leader?

Send me your requests and I'll add them to the cookbook. Watch for it soon on the FWD Website.

Keith Eckhardt
FWD Webmaster
webmaster@spebsqsafwd.org

Attention Chapter Secretaries

Members of your chapter without E-mail will not receive this information and we ask you to print this and share it with them.