 how are we doing I can hardly complain when I hear people talking when this starts it's a communication seminar right I gotta admit I'm not feeling great this morning so bear with me bourbon street offers a lot of fun things to do and to get the full New Orleans experience sometimes you come back and you make a mistake in my case the Mississippi River is a wonderful wonderful body of water but it turns out no matter how thirsty you are stay away from the water it's really it's not good for your health leaves you kind of feeling poorly the next day to just to start off with I love seeing a crowdful of people because it means that probably communications is meaning more and more to you it's mean more in terms of how it helps you meet your mission before we get too far along I did want to recognize and I'll do it again towards the end but I want to recognize my team members who are up here if you could give them a round of applause they they don't know what to do with that they're used to being behind the camera but they're very very good people who are doing very good things and anything that I talk about that's an accomplishment that we've made or anything that we're doing to support you really comes down to those folks doing the work just to start off with I want to go with something we all know you can't really see that quote at all can you I'll read the quote the release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking Albert Einstein said that so we entered the atomic age what you might not realize is that we've also entered the information age here recently I don't know exactly when you could say that it happened but it's obviously it's changing everything when my father was born in 1950 they didn't have a television set in the house now now it's pretty widespread that we have televisions right but I mean if you think about the evolution of communications and how quickly it's changed it's really mind-blowing right now there are a hundred and eighteen point four million televisions for three hundred and twenty three point seven million Americans half of those televisions now aren't just regular broadcast televisions but they have video on demand and when you look at that that's pretty amazing but another important thing to point out is that television watching traditional broadcast television watching has peaked and begun to fall in 2010 among all age groups it reached it reached the watermark until that point for every year since 1948 television watching and having televisions had grown here's a quote from Mark Twain that doesn't quite pop off the screen it's not the size of the dog in the fight it's the size of the fight in the dog right so not television watching is actually something that's that's almost coming out of vogue it's almost in time the way we watch television or the way we look at television in the traditional sense is actually going to go away it's getting harder to sell large televisions right now screen time is increasingly dedicated to smartphones and as Americans right now we spend about ten hours on screens every day ten hours on screens every day and if you're on your screen right now I'm not offended because you got to fill that whole ten hours at some point it's really if you look at how the telephone and how the smartphones change your life it's changed nearly every aspect of your life and I'm not saying this you know just to throw out some weird stats it's because we who want to serve people who want to serve veterans have to look at how our culture is changing and how communications is changing the way we interact with one another and with businesses and how it affects our daily lives because it affects our veterans daily lives right so for us to understand how we can better serve veterans we have to we have to understand technology and it's not just changing lives it's changing the world and it's changing every aspect of how we interact communications right now is a vehicle for revolutions there are social networking based revolutions that have happened in the last few years the Arab Spring probably wouldn't have been possible without social networking there also a vehicle for their major factor in determining election outcomes the president I know no one else gets it but the president tweets me on my phone pretty regularly so I get to see what's going on with him but think about how much that's changed the other day we were in the airport and when the the band came out on on transsexuals in the military the president sent out tweet and it said after so after speaking with my generals I've made a major decision something along those lines and then it was dot dot dot I thought oh my god are we gonna blow up Korea what's gonna happen about 23 minutes later the rest of the tweet came through that it was actually a ban on on transgendered people in the military and I'm not making any comment on politics or anything else I'm just saying that think about how much that's changed foreign leaders are put on watch by Twitter that's happening right now from the like I mentioned the Arab Spring you look at the ice bucket challenge you can see how things are interacting how we interact is changing how we're able to help veterans is going to be impacted by that as well the good news really is that we're halfway there here's a George Patton quote there's only one tactical principle that is not subject to change it is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time doesn't that sound like old blood and guts to you guys as people who served in the military we're inherently good at communications right that's how we end up at formation on time because the platoon sergeant tells you be there 15 minutes early but someone before him had told him 15 minutes early so you get to be there about an hour and a half the time hour and a half before the formation actually begins but it's ingrained in us communications how you reach out to people's ingrained one of the things I always find fascinating that I never found when I got out of the military in the corporate world was how many sailors do we have out here Marines anyone raise your hands others have heard the words aye aye sir right aye aye sir what does that mean it means I understand and will obey so in that quick little response you can tell someone I got it I know what you want and I'm going to do it that that's something that we in the military carry out with us it's not something that you necessarily get into the civilian population but it's an extremely valuable sentiment wars are one in loss and this isn't just now this goes go back to the Civil War go back before that but wars are one in loss based on the speed and accuracy of communications right I mean the Union battles one and lost just based on who got there with the most information was able to react to it quickly enough and if you think about it how much has communications changed the way we experience wars and conduct wars I remember a story about one of the first amphibious landings of the Vietnam War and all these reporters were waiting on shore when the Marines came in and this general looked out the reporters and he said you've ruined my war they knew in advance and were able to report on that but not just that when casualty reports start coming home daily updates and from Vietnam that really changed the public sentiment towards the war right in a way that hadn't happened in Korea or in World War two before that but if you think about now cyberspace is its own battlefield I mean where there are battles being fought right now between the United States and China and Russia that are they're all just being done in the cyber world you can attack people's infrastructure you can do all these things I'm not going to go through any techniques for attacking another country's infrastructure for you today but I do want you to just start thinking about how important this stuff is because ultimately it's going to we're going to need to get on board to keep doing the mission we want and and one of the other things I'd just like to point out whether you had an AFSC in the Air Force an MOS in the Army and Marine Corps a rate in the Navy we all at one point were held accountable for training right we would you don't just go and jump out the aircraft on your first day if you're going to be airborne you got to go through the training you got to get certified you got to stay up to speed when the equipment changes you have to change right this is something that we've all experienced before F4s to F18s we have to stay current that's just very important and when there are new tools available if we're not using them you know we risk really becoming obsolete there's a famous general Mattis quote when someone asked him they said what keeps you up at night and Mattis said nothing I keep other people awake at night and he's got a lot of great quotes but by our nature we're a fighting people right we're fighters we go in and and that's what coming back to DAV means it means staying in the fight and and it still remains that life and death decisions can be made based on our ability to help veterans if you're a chapter service officer you can find a veteran who's at their last rope right they're just they're a statistic waiting to happen and if you're able to get to them communicate to them even just reach out to them and say hey look I'm on this there's a better you know there's some hope coming you can change someone's life when it comes to protecting benefits or extending benefits think how much that improves the quality of someone's life the quote about the the quote from general Mattis though is that we shouldn't go to sleep at night and wonder if we've made a difference that day or wonder if we're doing the right thing we should be doing everything we possibly can to make sure our mission moves forward and and that's kind of the sentiment that I want us to take forward I I want us to know that we're taking the resources we have and I want us to know that we're employing them and making a difference DAV you know is kind of a some people your family members probably more than you think it's maybe a hobby but it's not it's a cause it's being part of something being part of a fight and you're an important role in that fight and here's a quote from oh oh there's general Mattis there he is mad dog give him a hand um here's a quote from general Al Gray who is the commandant on the Marine Corps he he's one of the few commandants who felt so connected to the infantry that he he took his his official portrait in his camis communications without intelligence is noise intelligence without communications is irrelevant think about that your subject matter experts you know service like no one else knows service you know the transportation network like no one else knows the transportation network if you hold on to that and don't share that with others what good are you what good is it to know all these things so you can help a veteran one at a time but if you're able to communicate to a larger group of people it extends the impact it extends what we're able to do for them for DAV to achieve victories for us to achieve victories for veterans whether that's recruiting drivers getting new members on board getting people to job fairs we need to communicate we have to get the word out about these things and you can sit and and you can say well you know i i have these other important jobs and and i don't deny that at all you have plenty of things right sometimes DAV can feel like the grand canyon and you just keep chucking rocks but the work's still going to be there right you're still going to still have a big mission to accomplish what you can feel good about though is that when you start using communications and start effectively working outreach programs you can start using a bulldozer instead of just throwing them by hand everything that you know about DAV needs to be passed along the reason why you're here today isn't just to enjoy the great river water of the mississippi it's really to take information back and make DAV's mission better take it back and and make it work and we need to do that and that's what i hope all of you will do your ambassadors to DAV in this capacity you're probably chapter leaders chapter commanders department leaders department commanders at any level we need to take the information back and share it so i'm going to start getting a little bit more into brass tacks let's talk about the little armory that we put together for all of you it's an armory it's an outreach armory it's available on the members only section of the website and before i really get started i want to talk about who who should be using these resources raise your hand if you're an active member of DAV raise your hand if you've been through the claims process yourself everyone's hands are up right you can put your hands down i'm going to try and to tear a rotator cuff or anything every one of you is is capable and educated to be a spokesperson for DAV you do not need to come to the national organization to say can i talk about DAV can i can i go to the media to talk about DAV if you're a chapter leader you have access to press releases that you can send to the media to take a national issue and make it local the reporters want to cover it they really do want to cover it i see people out here who i've seen on google because we search you know we look up what's going on with DAV out in the field and i've seen you i've seen you in the papers i've seen you when you help veterans get medals i've seen your community papers and everything else you're a spokesperson for DAV that doesn't always have to be the media coming to you because they won't they're not going to come to you necessarily it's you coming to them it's you looking at what's going on in the commander's action network looking on in other areas but let me let me get back to this we have a couple tools up here and the pictures are pretty small but what do we have out there for you we have the PSA toolkit a very new one that just came out last week that all of you should have the volunteer driver recruitment resource we have the veterans pulse survey we have the e newsletter toolkit which also is new in the last quarter or so you have DAV magazine you have DAV.org you have think of that and you have a resource that we create on on speech writing and delivery you have the language guide the brand guide you have a fleet of videos and speeches that are available online and you have the publicity guide you have social networks which are a huge thing and i know james had a bigger crowd probably than i do hey folks by the way if you're standing in the back if you can there's probably some empty seats if you want to move in and and and find one we have instagram youtube and flicker we have we have plenty of resources out there what what i'm not including that's on that i don't have a graphic for but we have the chapter officer guide the benefits protection kit the women veterans resource the long journey home we have the just be kids fundraising drive we have the drive for your community package with ford we have a webmaster webinar we have a ton of webinars actually we have a bunch of information that's available to you that will help you with your mission of running da v these specific resources are more geared outwards they're geared towards promoting da v leveraging opportunities and things like that how many of you saw executive director jezz and oski's report yesterday one of those tools that's coming your way is volunteer for veterans.org what did you guys think of that are you pretty excited about that it's a really cool idea it's like well why didn't we think of that a while ago but that idea is just one of the many ways that we can leverage technology to make a difference one of the tools that i'm really proud of is the psa ambassador resource all how many of you have seen a da v public service announcement out in town out in town out on television they're prolific it's it's about as prolific as it's ever been every year they come to us and or or we have to set up our goals you know our metrics to to see how we're going to do as a department and every year i say i'm not sure that we could top what we did last year because we've never gone this far before uh last year we finished over 74 million dollars and donated value that's more than many many many many many major corporations dedicate to marketing this year through june we have more than 60 million dollars of donated media this is a media that da v you know wrote a check for this is media that's out there because our public service announcement campaign is doing so well um the the trick here is is that if you're able as a da v member as someone who's a stakeholder in your community to go to a television radio station to call a company who has billboards in your area if you're able to do that you're going to significantly increase you can significantly contribute an increase how many psas are getting run in your area why um first off let me tell you right off the bat that every one of your television radio stations has a da v ps a that includes your public access we're very very prolific about getting this content out there that's why we have the value that we have they have it already um and they're probably running it already i mean if if uh my carpal tunnel syndromes any indicator i'm sending out letters and sign in letters these folks all the time thousands and thousands of television stations are running our psas but if you come to them and you say well you know we really appreciate you running our psas because it helps us with our transportation network or it helps me as a chapter service officer or helps our chapter service office outreach because right here in Des Moines we are getting more veterans who came through because you ran a little bit um one of the rules i have though if you want to do this outreach is to be nice veterans sometimes uh take a little bit of a different tact and we go in some place and we say dammit why aren't you running our psas well that that's uh you know that might work in some cases if you're real big and muscular or something like that but uh the chances are that they have our psas and there's a good chance that they've run them already so it's better to say thank you for considering running our psas i just as a community member wanted to come out and thank you don't assume that they don't have or that they haven't run the psas that's a big big deal at the end of the day the success there if you're going to be successful in enhancing this this effort you have to be inspiring them encouraging them and being friendly and you don't want to take up too much their time you want to be thankful and and you want to just make them know that there's a local contact here um if you want to send psas if you want to do this be a ps ambassador the public service uh advertising toolkit is out there um you can find it on the members only section of the website you can download it you can look at it look at it check it out and screen through and you'll get some pretty good instructions on how to do it if you want to take it a step further and you're sure you're going to do this and you're promising crossing your heart and hope to die telling me that you swear to god that if we give you something hard to give to them did it won't end up under the membership applications that expired because they had the old logo in a closet somewhere i am more than willing to give you ps a material so that you can go out there and do the pitching yourself um and we have some forms up here that if you're interested in doing a ps a pitch um we're willing to do that that might be swag too um especially if you're in a bigger market if you want to leave a coffee mug or something i uh don saw is don scios in here well don and i uh don saw us pass national commander and pass department commander i went through new york and we had meetings set up all day with major major news networks and it's it's helpful to have a veteran like don there who knows the area knows the people can explain things about communication or transportation especially that seems to be a little bit of an issue in new york city um but but having don there there were many cases where we were able to stop and get some face time with people who make very big decisions on millions and millions of dollars worth of media that they can donate as part of their public service announcement campaign and it worked out very well but it worked almost just as well when we stopped someplace and we had a meeting set up and the public service manager came back and said look uh you know maybe called down to the gate in some cases and they said look he didn't have time or she didn't have time for the meeting i'm sorry and we said you know what we just please here's a coffee mug please thank them for me please tell them that we appreciate what they did um and and in those cases it worked just as well the other thing that going down to these stations does is it helps you start a relationship with the media the public service announcement person doesn't make editorial decisions necessarily on what runs in the news but building relationships with the media is a big deal how many of you have been on am radio before anyone when i was at when we had the cna um in cold spring nearly half of the folks raised their hand if you if i guarantee if if if all of you who didn't raise your hand went home called up your favorite morning station or better yet even afternoon radio host on on a local am station and said hey look i just want to introduce myself i'm a veteran of this era or i'm a veteran of the army navy whatever and i i just wanted to let you know that if you ever want to talk about veterans issues please give us a call we love your show we love what you're doing and i'm happy to come on and talk you'd be shocked i i think if we turned around and all of you did that next year we'd be sitting here and i'd ask that same question and 99 percent of you would raise your hand and the other one percent just didn't have time to do the interview it's very easy but these relate we're building relationships here we got to keep the relationships going being local helps getting something from national headquarters is nice getting something local is even better here's our current psa campaign i hope it'll play or maybe i am a veteran and my victory was finding the strength to be a champion i am a veteran my victory is having a job i could be proud of america's veterans are on their most important tour the tour of their lives my victory was finishing my education mine is proving a disability is not a limitation at dav we're on a mission to help veterans get the benefits they've earned my victory is having my new battle buddy as veterans face their challenges dav is there to help for victories great and small i'm a veteran and my victory is giving me help i needed to put my life back together dav offers veterans of all generations a lifetime of support i am a veteran my victory is being there for my family when america's veterans win we all win help us support more victories for veterans go to dav.org hey joining us today is jim seriously right over here jim was in that let's give him a round of applause for representing us so well in in addition to doing that jim helps us pitch public service announcements to station managers as well and when jim hands you a psa you're much more likely to to take it and take it to heart than when i do there's going to be a major time square activation where basically during a week long period if you go through time square you're going to be informed about dav through the billboards the big billboards on time square we're working with dawn in the department in new york on that activation but we'll also have new creative coming we're going to update the creative stations came back to us and they asked us they say we want we want newer stuff we love what you're doing right now and we just want more it's a fairly unusual thing for a station to come to you and say we like your creative so much that we want more that's not a that's not something that we've ever experienced before but when they do we say well yeah we'll get you some new creative and and we'll make that happen i've seen prototypes for the new psas i wish i could show them to you we're holding out there's a very good chance that gary sinise is going to be the voice for those next psas and we think that might even help make a bigger difference because he's so recognizable and we also have this year coming a partnership again how many of you are aware or saw us on on who wants to be a millionaire we're doing that again this year the week of veterans day will be victories for veterans week again check it out i think we're going to have one of our own veterans possibly as a candidate there and we're really on track again to stay on the same trajectory that we've enjoyed so far here's another kit just for you who we were talking about developing relationships with the media here's the dav and auxiliary publicity guide this is an oldie but a goodie it's available online it's a bunch of pages it's maybe 15 seminars in one if you look at it it has text in there for public for press releases a lot of great help it goes kind of from basic information on media engagement to in-depth templates that you can use and it has social media graphic or guidelines now which is kind of new this is really a must-have if you're a chapter or department outreach leader how many of you in your chapter or department i'm curious because this helps us make decisions later on how many of you have someone in your chapter or department that is dedicated to outreach okay put your hands down those of you who had your hands on keep them down how many you think that that might be a good idea so this could be a very valuable thing having one person who that's kind of their lead item and and most of the resources that i'm talking about that now fill our armory came from the field so if that's something that you guys want more work on steve wilson this afternoon is going to give a great class on media engagement um steve wilson who is now a doctor steve give him a round of applause for that finish i feel like a dad put my kids through school i'm so proud when they're done um no but the publicity guides are good all around all around thing um if you don't have it it's it's very easy to find just just get it um and get into it and you'll you'll be surprised what's there for those who are called to represent i've already said you know there you go you're all da v spokespeople now congratulations it's like when i became an internet minister um speech writing and delivery is another thing that you can have it your fingertips that will help you kind of when you're called on the spot to do something if you're giving a speech to a big group um come back to us and if you need some help um we maybe even have a speech or are willing to help you produce a speech that would meet your needs and i know this one's been sitting out there for a long time but we really we're really really close to finishing a resource or a template da v presentation on powerpoint and finishing up a video i think we might be doing some shooting here yet for the identity video um but but to give you even more resources so when the rotary calls up and says hey can you come down talk to us um we we can go ahead and do that we had a lot of things come up one of them was the caregivers um effort this this year and that uh it's kind of made it hard for us to concentrate on on everything we'd want to do but we will have another resource coming that you can customize and build up yourself to talk about your local statistics um and we'll get that out to you as soon as we can along with a video that's updated with Gary Sneese's voice that's kind of that overall mission piece that we've been meaning to update for a while um another other resources are available how many of you have ever done a Memorial Day speech Veterans Day speech it happens if you're not um you probably need to raise your profile in other areas um but those speeches we write a new speech for those every year which means we have uh we have a library of speeches that go back for many years so if you don't like the one you saw this year you there's probably some some other ones from past years you can take them you can make them your own you can update them you can change the quotes um and and while i'm talking about those who are called to represent i'm not going to take away my whatever you call that but i would say this if you're going to represent DAV if you want to be out front for DAV you take on a sacred obligation i'm not i'm not saying you shouldn't do it i'm saying you should do it as often as you can but you have a sacred obligation then to represent the organization ethically and accurately that means when you're when political seasons up you're not endorsing candidates wearing your DAV cap as if it's a DAV endorsement you're not trying to tell the public that you know DAV endorses this that means that you're not speaking about issues um that contradict DAV uh resolutions right as long as you stay within those lines and you're representing the intent and the message of DAV go for it if you need some help call us we'll help you go for it um so so that's just enough of that um here's the veterans poll survey that we came out with a few years ago this is a nice thing to have in addition to everything else where how many of you are around people and and you're talking to a politician and they say they give throw a stat at you or they throw something out there and you're like wow that person's really informed on on how veterans think this is something that we did a couple years ago um it's uh it's a very useful thing it has some great stats in it that can help us both in our mission um and in conversations and speeches it can help you start a conversation with the media these are things you can throw out when you're meeting with them um here's a stat that maybe would surprise you maybe not but it's now a confirmed stat and it has a source eight out of ten veterans would serve again is that can't you see that there's a time where you could use a stat like that um 95 percent of veterans who served more than 15 years feel that their service had a positive impact on their lives that's a I think that's kind of an important thing to know um only one third of the veterans we surveyed and this represented all demographics said that their benefits were explained to them when they left the military does that resonate with any of you does that seem like an important thing that you can throw out there a lot of people believe a lot of people really believe this we hear it all the time that when people leave the military they just get their benefits I I pause for laughter there but seriously they the public really thinks sometimes that people leave and they just get their benefits so they might not understand DAV quite as well when they realize that we're out there fighting for those veterans to make sure they do um less than half 44 percent of veterans feel they're getting the benefits they've earned that's a pretty powerful statement on why NSOs are important CSOs DSOs TSOs service officers in general right so the the veterans pulse survey it's easy to find veteranspulse.org go out there google it if you can't remember that just google veterans pulse um DAV veterans pulse and it's going to show up out there here's some basics that have been around for a while and probably um are gonna we'll we'll probably be looking in the next year or so at updating them one is the DAV language guide which kind of helps you with some language guidance you know just how to talk about DAV and the next one is the style book the style book is something it's a link that you could email people when you're doing banners when you're doing uh when you're trying to get your logo on a cap when you're trying to get DAV's logo out there that that style book that's available in the members only section of the magazine is going to give you the rules and regulations to maintain the consistency of DAV's brand I've said this for years um DAV uh it has a mission that changes people's lives truly changes people's lives we should take our branding as seriously the consistency of our branding as seriously as mcdonald's don't you think mcdonald's takes very seriously because they know the impact um on the talking points though and the and the language guide the you're being indoctrinated every time that you listen to a speech read DAV magazine how many of you read DAV magazine back to back that's awesome if if you're reading DAV magazine back to back you can get a pretty darn good idea where DAV stands on issues if there's a connection that you can see in your community between one of those stories with something you can pitch to me like I said you know in a god of divita or whatever that means it doesn't mean in a god of divita my answer none don't tell her I said that um here's here's one that we came out very recently because not because you'd asked for it but just because we saw you were doing it anyway and it worked it was working extremely well in fact we scan we scan the whole internet for for information about DAV we get it all the time one of the things we saw recently was that some hospital service coordinators had made a concerted effort to say holy crud we're run out of drivers this is going to be a big problem we're not going to be able to operate this network or we're going to have to cut down how many veterans we help um if this happens what are we going to do well let's call the media let's call and talk to the media and and and ask them if if they would be willing to help us with this and it works and we're getting articles all the time we're picking up articles all the time about transportation network uh needing drivers transportation network helping people either way whether the story's pitched to help people um make people aware of it or to make people aware of the need for drivers it works it's this isn't like uh those articles where you know you're saying well no one shows up at our bar and lounge operation and we feel like we're becoming increasingly irrelevant this is uh hey we have a great service program we have an opportunity for you to thank veterans for you to recognize veterans um and and it's out there you know the uh the pay it forward campaign did any of you participate in that raise your hand if you did not enough dav people didn't and i'll tell you why part of that is is because it was volunteer an hour of your time to help veterans and for most people in this room the thought of volunteering just an hour of your time is is a laughable kind of thing right i mean an hour is something that you do before you have your first cup of coffee in the morning for a lot of you um but that wasn't that was an incident that was a gateway drug to dav volunteerism really that the the goal of that was to to spread out to get get more people involved because how many of you started with dav saying i think i'm just going to attend a chapter meeting see what that's all about and some of you raised your hand we're elected commander that day weren't you and here you are new orleans um but i mean one point of emphasis is we don't want to go to the to the the media and say we feel terribly sorry for ourselves but if we go to the media and say hey we just got a new van now you've provided them with a newsworthy event there's a press uh there's a template out there that you could just update with your own information you send that out to the media you're telling them here's a newsworthy thing there's a new van coming here that's going to help veterans why don't you cover some good news instead of just murders and drugs all the time we'll say by god i think we should do a little bit more murders and drugs all the time maybe we'll come down and see what these veterans are doing um so that that's something that you can do and we've tried to give you the tools to do it um this didn't come from feedback it came just from us seeing what was working um and if you have any feedback on it please let us know um this isn't going to replace onboarding needs that john um i'm sure had multiple discussions about during his seminar and we're not the voluntary services department um the communications department in a lot of ways is like 3m um we don't we don't make you know we don't make the transportation network work we just try and help it along um so that that's something but but get into this and use it if you're getting a new vehicle use it if you need volunteers use it the more volunteers you bring in the the less you have to worry about that onboarding situation because at least a couple of them are going to be patient enough to make it through not that john's and and us and some levels are going to be aren't going to be fighting about that um i mentioned this before know your organization if you read da v magazine back to back you're in awfully good shape um when you're done with that quick piece of advice if there is uh if there's a barbershop near a base that you know of um where you get your haircut don't feel bad if you accidentally forget and leave your magazine at the lobby we don't mind that at all anything we can do to spread the news is going to help out the da v magazine da v magazine only comes out once every other month so we can't cover things as up as fast as we'd like to we've been pouring in though to new content for our leadership newsletters and the other electronic newsletters that we're doing so there's more and more content out there if you're following us on facebook you're getting daily updates on what's going on how many of you have seen a video here that you didn't see at home there are only two videos that are new that were presented here all the rest that stuff's available on facebook so if you if you want to see the videos they're out there go to our youtube channel whatever here's another one that we did that um that has had a lot of success the da v thankovet um it's a it's an easy way at davthinkovet.org that's all you need to remember round veterans day that campaign will start up again if you want to thank a veteran go do it it's really putting a hook in the water for for opportunities to connect more people to da v's cause um i have a question over here sir if you can yell real loud i'll answer your question why isn't it the question is why isn't why isn't the psa on during the superbowl i i was i was told that um i was told by the network that um that superbowl uh ads are actually very expensive so when you see da v uh when you see a placement of da v we cannot choose when where you see it we get calls that say why is da v's uh radio show on during rush limba i don't like rush limba dot dot dot and i don't care one way or another about rush limba but the answer is because some station was generous generous enough to donate it to us um when barry was talking about working with corporations and doing more and more outreach and engagement with corporations if we're going to see ourselves in a superbowl commercial that's probably our best chance at it but it's just a high it's a i'm not trying to be a smart alec either it's it's a it's a very hard thing to get in on and you'll notice that when you do see a vso or or a military cherry or whatever represent during the superbowl it's usually uh it's usually someone else's foot in the bill for that like jeep or coke or or or someone else or whatever it's going to be but think of that please get into da v think of that dot org think of veteran and it'll make more people want to do it you don't need pictures anymore but it's kind of need if you do but this is a way basically to send an e-card to someone and say thank you for your service thank you for what you're doing um you get like three messages it takes all of five seconds to do um and and then you're actually while you're doing that you share that on your facebook uh or social networks or you even just share the email with your friends and you'd be surprised at what an impact you can make here's another one electronic newsletters toolkit um this resource actually came from the field um a lot more closely than the others because we kept hearing about this chapter in virginia that was just they they were getting 45 50 active members participating in their their chapter which that that happened some places but this is from five to ten people meeting at the chapter to 45 within a course of a few months um it saves money it makes sense for da v to want to do that um so we went out to the field and we said give us your guidance on on what works and they did and we put that together this isn't a finished product i need you guys to go out there and test it and tell us how it's working and give us more feedback on it um one thing i will tell you though is that maintaining our brand consistency is important through this effort um also uh it's very important that you're not fundraising electronically um if you have any questions about that go to the inspector general seminar pass the buck social networking um i'm i missed oh okay nice transition for me and ronald ronald pandas uh jack there's there's a question or i guess i have confusion on when a chapter does social networking or advertising we're hearing that it has to have the blessing of the national office is that or is that not true um well i mean first okay to start off with i don't want you advertising unless you have some nc approved fundraiser or something like that because i'm not advertising i do a little bit of advertising i shouldn't say that the vast majority of what i'm doing up here isn't advertising because i'm not exchanging money for public service announcement placements okay you're not talking about that i'm not talking advertising i'm talking just flat-out communications chapter so-and-so does does has these functions going on okay um and what has so by what means do you want to advertise your function i'm just on facebook twitter you do not need my blessing to say that we have a meeting coming up that we're having uh uh information seminar you know bloop bloop bloop there we go america wins um back to social networking every this and this isn't mark burges i'm it's just lowly dan clare saying this every chapter should have a facebook page every chapter who has a facebook page should have a dav admin a national admin on it and james is james can help you with that um it helps you keep things current that you do dav a disservice when you start a facebook page or you start your own website because you have some good ideas and then all of a sudden um living in the cyberspace atmosphere for the rest of your life is that meetings are on tuesday and it was last updated in 2013 um you're laughing because you've seen it before right you've seen that happen before that's ugly that's bad for business um there's a webmaster excuse me a webmaster class going on out there um so you can update your website and i think over time that that stuff's gonna evolve too a little bit um i don't have any direct information on that at this stage but um keep it up to date um every leader who participates in social networking in this from how many of you are on social networks one way or another so if you're doing that and you consider yourself a leader with integrity who believes in dav and wants to help dav if you see something that resonates with you on dav's facebook page you should be sharing it right thank you um social networks are replacing a lot of the things that that we used to go to social networking is going to be um it's a phone book it's a message service it's customer service a lot of customer service and we're actually working with the service department on something right now that's going to be very exciting regarding people who have questions um about their benefits about claims and things like that um but that's just coming it's it's coming probably as fast along as volunteer for veterans orgs going to be but if you don't uh have a facebook page and you recognize the obligation you love america and your fellow citizens and fellow veterans if you love america and don't have a facebook page you'll reach out to james killen here and he'll help you um so please do it there's other resources um if you google dav resolutions you will be taken to the 2017 legislative program that has all our resolutions just google it you don't have to ask me you don't have to try and find it on the website or anything else just google it um it'll pop right up the more of you do it the more the closer the top it'll be um but that will help you accurately and effectively uh carry dav's message um the dav commander's action network we had some guy call in the other day was crazy mad about us not doing something and we said well are you are you on the commander's action network and he said no and it was like well you didn't even sign up you're not even trying um but the commander's action network how many of you are members of that it works if you're not you probably should be um my my my closing thing before i move on though that i want to say and the reason why i'm harping on all this stuff and not showing more videos and stuff the videos are all out there for you you can go and find them but if we look around and we look at what's going on with the demographics in the veterans world we're looking at a huge shift between now and the next 10 15 years of what our community is going to look like and how people who are in our community are going to want to interact if we want a legacy if what you're doing today you think is important enough that should be going on for future generations we need to train our replacements we need to get dav engaged and involved in what's going on right now if we don't it's it's going to be really tough for us to maintain our footing and be there like dav was there for us so i want you to keep that in mind we are seeing and i'm not doom and gloomin up here because i'm seeing huge huge strides we used to have google alerts steve runs them we used to get five six google alerts about news items that are going on at dav chapters and departments now it's on a daily basis it's 23 24 25 different things that's 25 different events going on that are being publicized for dav on a nearly daily basis you guys are really killing it out there you get it right you get that getting a facebook page or getting a electronic newsletter or or enhancing the way we talk to the media or having psas running in our community you get that that's helping everything else we're doing and that's what it's all about it's not a popularity contest to make dav you know the next thing everyone wants to wear on their t-shirts it's about helping dav meet its strategic goals so i thank you for that and i don't i don't want you to feel at all like i'm doom and gloomin up here i want to share one thing for you too this is the dav communications team forgive me if i've told this joke before but you can tell that these are true communications professionals because many of them have drinks in their hands and you can't tell what they're drinking but this is a great team please give them a round of applause and as we go into questions these are direct dial phone numbers you can take a picture of it if you want to whatever you want to do but there's only there's a few of them but if you call you're gonna if i don't pick up which i usually pick up if i'm there someone else is going to pick up but here's some phone numbers if you need help call us my staff is grinning and they want to help you or they're grinning for some other reason questions um sir right here did did everyone hear that where's the thank you certificate what if i want to thank these people who give us my ear what if i want to recognize a chapter member um i um that's coming or it's already there the dav store is during during where are you during where are we out with that hand it will be in the dav store i know that's created i've seen it come through we're we're going to give you the ability to go online and do your thank you thing and that's a great point that that's a a larger point to be made with all of that is that how many of you have just had to go down and really bust some knuckles at the chapter level or something if you're on the department level i want to just remind you that our most powerful tool in getting people engaged and involved isn't busted knuckles it's saying thank you i'm serious it's a it's a powerful weapon saying thank you to people and showing our appreciation when people support us giving them certificates when you're dealing with golden corral saying thank you those are big things so keep that up got another question right over here oh right there john joe yeah john joe deck chapter seven mobile albama retired coast guard i want to thank you for your blessing and thank you for your your squad there for all the information but but work also can i find uh acronyms you put all these letters up there and can never find what the acronym is they're listening can you can you name uh uh there's a bunch of initials that that run off with well steves is an education degree i know i i hear what you're saying it's funny mary's not here but i'm always uh talk about cracking knuckles i'm always telling her people don't always understand acronyms usually when we say dav and it's to an outside audience we say dav parentheses disabled american veterans dav can stands for commanders action network but if i just say dav can it tells you go to davcan.org and you can go there and sign up we don't have like a big league acronym thing but we try and stay away from them even when it comes to we think sometimes okay so you're a chapter service officer and this is a national service officer and this is a department service officer who's going to help me with my claim the answer is a service officer right so you're seeing even language shifts in our in the magazine where even if we're speaking to a totally outside audience we don't always even say service officer we say uh veterans benefits advocate we're trying to speak to people on their level and and help them understand more ma'am yes becky smith uh clerksville tennessee commander chapter 45 i understand why we want to have the certificates like maybe through the dav store but how about if we just put it online to where we all can print it off at home and have it at hand instead of having to buy it through the dav store to thank people where's doreen um i'm happy to do that happy to do that the one difference the one one thing i just make you aware of is that when you order outside or you're doing the logo outside if you need help with that doreen's numbers up here um vendors are horrible at getting our colors right they suck at getting our colors right if you deal though with doreen who deals with vendors all the time or the purchasing department or someone like that i'm not asking for your money or to be a go between or anything like that but we can help you get the colors right if you pull down a file and print it we hope to god you get the colors as close as you can but we i think we can do that no problem and we'll send out a memo or something when we do that most of you will yeah sure can you can you you can um one difference is that there is a little you can do that you can take dav's logo download it from the members only section of the website you'll even find your chapter logo there you can put on a certificate write what you want um and put it down there um the only thing i'd say is the certificates that we give you and and that you can't do on your own don't use dav font so there's a little bit of a brand disconnect i think ours look a little bit better most of the time but do what you want thank those people sir uh yeah i'm lee shepherd from chapter 23 in orange county california i'm a member of your chapter yes well our senior vice commander his first name is john he operates cad cam machinery and he's been making these badges that with a magnetic name tag and he also uh he operates a business but on the side if you pay for the materials in the plastic he also does uh like the little statues and plaques that are plexiglass and he uh engraves the words and commemorated to in both for both active duty and uh for for businesses that do large donations for our chapter um if you would like to get a hold of chapter 23 in orange county the senior vice commander here's the junior vice commander at my side she might have some business cards and instead of just a piece of paper to hang on a wall these also like a you know it's a plaque like a little trophy kind of a thing and i'm sure he if you're just willing to support him well he owes you a beer for the plug at least yeah yeah so there are other certificates and stuff available at da v store too thank you if you want thank you yep hey dan hey rich uh tall for chapter 16 florida and you keep referring to the poop i see you keep doing that up there right i was going for you have to understand what the pope was really saying when he does that he's saying all you tall dagos and short dagos get off the grass my answer none i didn't say that i don't endorse it does anyone have any irish jokes for me too but i've got one last thing again uh what we're going to be trying at our uh chapter you know those little stickers those little stickers that you see for trip advisors for what stickers for what trip advisors do you see on windows of stores and restaurants trip advisors see get those and just have your chapter and da v in a year they supported you and put those on restaurants at the front door so they see that that restaurant supports a da v uh you know we've looked at that we do have plaques and stuff that you can give them to and and really i mean when it comes to recognizing people like that i mean i'm i'm generally all for it it can get a little it can get a little hinky when you know when business relationships get involved but i'm for it if it's going to help them let's do it but if that's kind of a procurement and a fundraising kind of question does anyone else have any questions yes under jones chapter 55 uh covers in georgia i don't really have a question i just want to make a appreciation yesterday with james he took me down to his office and we set up a facebook page for chapter 55 took him about five minutes and uh it's up and running it's wonderful and uh i had set up a group page which is not right i needed a facebook page right so james is going to help you get on track without facebook stuff the other thing james can do is when there's big important national content that's coming out he can update it for you which makes you know even if you're not quite at the wheel it shows that you know the the information is getting out there in your community it's a great thing i really believe everyone should have a facebook page that doesn't mean you have to but you should have one um if you love america and if you don't get out i'm just kidding just kidding any other questions up past outstanding disabled veteran of the year bobby body has a question now assistant national service officer bobby body give another hand uh i'm just curious if if there is a uh if we wanted to help pitch our ps a for at a specific um let's just say ncg cinemas back in lansing michigan um but it costs a little bit of money if we decide to pay out of our own pocket do we have to get permission from the dav in order to do that or can we just go ahead and do that you don't have to um you don't have to get our permission to donate money so that someone's gonna run our psas but god i hope you don't do that i i'd rather people not pay out of our pocket for to do stuff like i mean i guess you don't need my permission but um what what i would suggest is that if you talk to us we'll give you the tools to pitch the psas um and i mean it kind of helps if you're on the ps a i think that they'd listen a little bit more bobby is on the ps a so um i'd rather you not spend your money doing that i i'd rather chapter is not spend their money unless you know it's part of an improved fundraiser there's a big thing you'd be surprised what people are willing to donate if you ask if you've ever gone to walmart to ask for some hotdog buns for a cookout or something like that you'd be pretty surprised right so start with the uh with the supposition that what the hell were a charity maybe you could donate something to us um and if they're dirtbags and they don't want to do that you know just make them feel as guilty as you can get a good price break or make your leg fall off good move i'm sorry i'm sorry i lost my leg loving america anything else any other questions we got one more oh that's great yeah like like i said she so she has a public access show when you start asking questions you're surprised what's available out there for you for little or no cost but for your time which is very valuable too um but joe par sedich um from montana does a radio show himself he's got veterans content on there all the time he runs da v psas there's a lot of people who are doing blogs um i mean the way media is changing there's a lot more opportunities too for us to do different things but if you want to do that stuff and you want da v involved and you have questions or whatever you can do this who wants to see one of the videos that that we weren't able to share that i thought was kind of exciting now this when i was talking about tv's um and i was saying that tv's getting swallowed by the phone kind of thing this video was shot um on an iphone so let's take a look this is my new home my first home in my entire life and i thank the da v for how is it to be homeless it's devastating it sucks life out of a man right out of your spirit so you manage to get a little energy to get out but when you get pulled right back again and that goes on for years and years and years in my case 48 years sleeping in pickup trucks and cars this car here was probably the first car i owned in uh have to be 35 40 years that's the truth was i put some wood in here these seats were up i have boards that i now use for shelving and i put three of them together in here and made a built this bed and uh it was good to get it out of storage and i could watch my tv at night this room is my hangout room except for the music studio i'm building in there but i'm an artist so i couldn't wait to get my stuff out of storage my stuff isn't storage for over a year and a half and it broke my heart that it was there because i had i had these things that i've earned in life this is all i this is about joseph my degrees my certificates they have my artwork ladies and gentlemen we're listening all of this is is comes from the va and the dav helping me accomplish this i would not have any of this if it weren't for these fine people helping me that was actually that was actually supposed to run during gerry augusties we have so many videos right now that they're hard to keep track of it where we ran the pearl harbour store yesterday which was my mistake but um one of the things you saw in there was a certificate so that's something we touched on before but this video content all the stuff's out there for you to use um you just got to use it and if you can't find it you got to ask somebody okay so thank you all we have some uh we have some things up here if you want to sign up to be a psa ambassador on some formal level um you can do that staple your business card to a sheet and and we'll try and get back with you as soon as we can