FreeThought
FFW Goals for 2010
Hi everyone. In some weird twist of fate, I have become FreeThought Fort Wayne’s second President. I have already been helped by getting Joel as our new VP and Sandy as our new Secretary. I expect they will both fill in admirably for the upcoming year. Our first President, Andy Diekroger has assumed the Treasurer duties. I’m glad to still have him aboard, as I plan to lean on him for advice along with the rest of our officers and members. Remember, your opinions are important and always welcome here.
I was thrilled that many members gave me such positive feedback during and after the meeting. Perhaps it’s just the new year or change of pace, but it feels invigorating to leap into the new year refreshed and looking forward to the new challenges and goals we will be facing during the dawn of a new decade no less! If we keep up the current pace set by our inaugural administration, I see no reason why our group won’t be excitedly looking forward to the roaring twenties after this decade!
But before I get way ahead of myself here, I just want to take a minute to reiterate some of the goals I addressed to the group during our last meeting. Although I certainly don’t see our group as a business, I do see the first five years as integral to building a stable, successful and self-perpetuating organization- much like how it often takes several years before a business is not only profitable, but relatively stable and self-reliant.
Probably first and foremost, we are a social group. Many of us are looking for friendship, an outlet to express ourselves, and a positive environment that feels safe and is fun and exciting to be a part of. We can’t be everything for everybody, but we’ll do what we can with the volunteers and donations we have to be as dynamic and helpful as we can be.
We are continually looking for interesting guest speakers from a variety of backgrounds and occupations. We’ve been averaging three speakers a year even before we adopted a Constitution or officers. I hope to continue that tradition. If you or someone you know is interested in giving our group a talk/lecture/presentation/etc., shoot us an email and we’ll talk. I can be reached @ jakedoelling@freethoughtfortwayne.org. Or simply post a comment and we’ll look into it.
There are only two main goals for our website. The main one is trying to implement Andy Diekroger’s great idea of adding our group’s google calendar into the front page of our site so that everyone can keep up to date with our activities and even add new activities without delay. The second is to resolve our forum issue. It’ll probably be best to have a meeting on this sometime after the February meeting.
That brings me to the next big change. Andy W. will be hosting a meeting on Sunday, January 31st at 6PM for all of us to discuss ratifying our Constitution to reorganize all of our current committees into one overseeing committee invested with the power to make immediate decisions regarding finances, group direction or anything. I believe this will allow us to react to problems and challenges more quickly and efficiently than in the past. It will also allow the group a much bigger impact in making important decisions. As always when talking structure, this meeting promises to be challenging in itself. But it will be well worth the effort. Again, drop me or any other officers a line if you are interested in attending this meeting and need directions.
I won’t go into great depth for brevity here, but I want to restate that I would like us to have two or three meetings outside of the library this year. I want our monthly meetings to be more fun and engaging with less business agenda; hence, the need for a new committee structure that meets independently of our regular meetings. I intend for us to have our June meeting in a park pavilion, possibly even on a Saturday for a picnic and games. Let me know if you have a favorite park or area in Fort Wayne. Our October meeting will be a costume party as close to Halloween as possible. I’m sorry if this precludes some of our more shy members- although even helping to cook a dish or cleanup and whatnot would be much appreciated if dressing up is not your thing. Finally, I would like to end the year with a holiday meal and small awards ceremony for our most helpful and active members. It’s a small way to reward those who go above and beyond helping to make our group the best it can be. It’s also an easy excuse to bring food and toys to be donated to local charities after our meeting.
And real quick, I’d like to mention that I want more affiliation with like-minded groups. We are always looking for groups that we think represent the majority of our members’ concerns and beliefs. Some of my favorites are Indiana Equality, The Reason Project, the ACLU, ffrf and AAI. These are all up for vote and a good first exercise for our new and improved committee here in the near future.
There’s plenty more to talk about, but we’ll leave it at that for now. We’ve got the whole year ahead of us and I look forward to helping make this organization the best it can be along with your help!
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The FFW Goals for 2010 by Jake Doelling, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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YEAH!! Can we have Business cards and Bumper Stickers. And Can we design a Group Symble or have a symble design contest to be made from a shiny Meterial? Or a carbon Fiber one? That would rule yeah!! 
And None of that Trickery where it ends up forming a cross or star of david or anything. Like Da vinci Did to the Church. LOL
I was unable to make the meeting, but here are my views, for whatever they’re worth:
I’d like us to raise our visibility a bit. I get the impression we’ve hurt ourselves with our past tendency to worry too much about being so inoffensive that nobody notices us. After all, the biggest boost we got was when the Journal Gazette published its interview.
I’m unemployed, but that wouldn’t stop me from kicking in some money for a billboard or something along those lines.
Of course some people will denounce us. It seems to me that a little denunciation would be a sign that we’re doing something right.
There is a difference between being assertive and being offensive. We don’t need to insult anyone, but we don’t need to act like we’re ashamed of ourselves.
At this point someone will demand that I give an example of where we’ve acted ashamed of ourselves. I can’t do that, because largely we’ve just been invisible. I think that amounts to the same thing.
Well. That should get some people mad at me. Do your worst.
@littlejohn:
There is also a difference between not acting like jerks and acting like ashamed of yourselves. I think the group has mostly struck a nice balance between being vocal and not being jerks, only occasionally erring to the latter. I’d like to see FFW move toward being a more visible and vocal member of the community too while not compromising its high standards for respectful engagement with the community.
Odly enough, the mear claim that we do not believe tends to insult a great potion of theist since their intire existance is based on that assumption. It’s as if we are calling them (Pick a word that’s a good intellectual insult) and making fun of them. But that’s their mentality. =-) Oh Well! It’s sad that the majority of US have given their side visitation and at times were even on their side but they are totaly against reading and seeing our point. Can’t get one of them to crack open Dawkins or Hitchens etc. But boy do they sure demand we read that Novel book that has more flaws then a kendergarden story. *Cheese* First Page, “On the first day”,, Error There was no day if light was’t created yeat! Hello!! DUR!! Dorky Dur DURRR!! But no wait, the Bible is Literal! It’s truth! Etc,. yeah yeah yeah!!? Oh, and the 7days not including the Dinosaurs… Cough, Sure their an explination for all that geological hisotry. Un huh? gibber gibber,, *Mumbeling*
We could start and go through the intire Bible and explaine why all these things are illogical and imposibilities. E=mc^2 energy laws of physics etc.
Maybe it’s not that a diety doesn’t exist it’s that it doesn’t exist yet in our time line, yeah, yeah, that’s it! *drivvel drivvel.* LOL