Hello;

This is Malcus Richards, Executive Director of ABEST.

Association of Black Engineers, Scientists and Tech December Meetup, scheduled to occur on December 15,[masked]:00 PM has been cancelled. Please update your plans accordingly.

As you may have noticed recently, several erroneous meeting notifications have gone out via meetup. I want to apologize for that. Due to the fact that we have been in transition, we have not managed the automated alert features of Meetup.com effectively. We are still in the process of this transition but have recently elected a new President.

I'd like to welcome our new Atlanta Chapter President, Ms. Mallory Davenport. You will be hearing more from her in the near future. Mallory brings considerable energy and innovative ideas to the position and has been on the ABEST Board for the past two years. Other Board members are:

David Penton--Program Manager for the Entrepreneurial Community of Practice. David is a returning Board member and owner of Pentronics--a cable and harness manufacturing company.

Stephen Hinton--Program Manager for the Career Development Community of Practice. Stephen is a long time contributor to ABEST Atlanta, and owner of Hinton Human Capital--an executive search firm.

Open Board positions include:

Project Manager--Green Engineering and Sustainability Project

Program Manager-- Wealth Creation Community of Practice

Two Board members at large

Mallory is presently planning a meeting for mid- January 2009 where she plans to fill existing vacancies in the 2009 Board, and to map out the calendar for the rest of 2009. We need your ideas and participation--seriously!
Stay tuned for a meeting invitation via Meetup.com in January 2009. And please don't hesitate to contact Mallory if you think you might have interest in joining the 2009 Board.

[address removed]

And last but not least, please join me in thanking Ms. Rachel Elias for over a year of service and sacrifice for ABEST Atlanta. She effectively rebuilt the chapter and got us moving again. Please click on her profile and send her a message of thanks.
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IMPORTANT--PLEASE TAKE ACTION

I'd like to ask each of you who is serious about involvement with ABEST to join our membership site at http://www.blackbiztech.com .

BlackbizTech.com is our main membership hub, and we are actively migrating our members from several databases and Web sites, over to this one. It will become our main communications center, and you will definitely see a substantial improvement in communications from this site. Our site at http://www.blackbiztech.com has social networking features similar to Meetup.com, except that it allows us a greater degree of control for communcating with our members. The site will also allow you to freely network with other members in a variety of ways.

Please make it a top priority to migrate to this new site. Upload your photo, create a detailed profile, and jump feet-first into the ongoing discussions. This way we can guarantee better communications in 2009.

Best Regards,
Happy Holidays,

Malcus Richards
[address removed]
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