Dana Rizzo: Blog Post #2

The association meeting/ event that I went to was the Polo Club Association’s “Meet and Greet”. This event took place on a Thursday evening at the gated community’s clubhouse. The small gathering included drinks and small passing bites to eat. This event gave the opportunity for other members who live in the community to meet one another. The director of the Property Owner’s Association (POA) greeted all the guests upon arrival. Nametags were given to attendees at the check in process; nametags also included the specific Home Owner’s Association names (HOA). The Polo Club is made up of twenty-five different HOAs. In addition to a meet and greet, part of the meeting was a formal presentation by the POA director. This presentation informed HOA members of the proposed POA rule changes that were under consideration as well as planned property improvements. There was no formal voting at this type of meeting but it was more of an open discussion and suggestion format. Overall the meeting was very well attended and had an upbeat tone. Many times a meeting like this can turn into a complaint forum but that was not that case. The director of the meeting kept things on track and did not let the meeting decompose into a negative situation. This gave me the opportunity to observe and interact in a meeting setting. I also was able to observe how the crowd flow was controlled. Having a meeting with over 600 attendees can be stressful but the director handled it very well. He made a large effort to meet everyone he could in the amount of time he had. When talking to other attendees all of them mentioned how nice it was to put a face to a name. All of them have had heard so much about the director but did not actually know who he was. This event gave people a sense of relief because they knew that their voices were being heard and their opinions were taken into consideration.