Book review: The Club Woman's Handybook of Programs and Club Management

The Club Woman's Handybook of Programs and Club Management by Kate Louise Roberts is an broad compendium of useful information, but not exactly as the title suggests.

The Handybook was written in 1914 as a guide for women who wanted to create and manage local women's clubs. These clubs seemed to be very salon-like in how they operated, and the programs they offered. The book itself gives little practical how-to advice on how to run a club,  rather it's more a suggestion book and glossary of terms. The books is roughly divvied up into two parts, programs and parliamentary procedure. The programming portion throws out ideas for the club to discuss. These topics range from domestic affairs to history to current affairs to feminism.  The goal of the club was to elevate women's awareness. If the programming section is any indication, they were positively ambitious. I speculate an ulterior motive for the clubs and the book were created to prepare women for the suffrage movements that had been gaining traction at the time.

In our more modern times, and in the context of the IPC, the Handybook has become another kind of resource. While most of the club information the book is dated or very basic, the programs portion of the book gives you loads of  ideas for salons, and points to even different types of IPCs that you can choose to develop. The subject matter is still relevant in many instances, although I will give a word of warning that it tens to touch lightly on certain now controversial topics like eugenics. Otherwise, the Club Woman's Handybook is a worthy resource for IPC managers.

Setting up the programming for your IPC

Once you have your IPC up and running with a handful of events planned and completed, you’ll want to put more meaning or organization behind what the IPC is offering its members. If you’re wanting to be creative, coming up with the club’s event offerings is one of the most creative opportunities you can enjoy. This is also an opportunity to steer the IPC in a meaningful direction. As with any club activity or action, creating the club’s programming should be performed by the club’s steering committee. If the club is large enough to support it, a separate Activity or Programs committee could also be created to handle creating and managing club programming.

If you’re the only one creating the programming, you’ll need to have a calendar on hand. At this point I’ll tell you not to over-commit yourself. If you don’t have assistance, you need to figure out how much you can do and still have a quality product. If you want to expand your offerings, you’ll need to ask for help. As a note, never ‘volun-tell’ people what to do. This is a sure way of turning off your members, and killing your credibility. Instead, tell people about what you’d like to plan and talk it up. Always be open to feedback. Also, empathize that they have a stake in this and you’d like their ideas. With any luck, you may find your IPC’s future steering committee!

Your programming should fit in with your club’s strategy (refer to the “Creating a strategy for your IPC’ post). The events need to be designed to accomplish the club’s overall strategic goals. Creative use of events can be designed to help with this. Also, realize that some events we’ve covered so far in this blog may not be appropriate for your IPC. While a supper club would be great for social or professional IPCs, it’s probably not appropriate for a hobby or certain accountability IPCs. If you’re at a loss, casual meets are always good starting events. Even then, you’ll need to begin formulating events that propel your IPC in the desired direction.

As an example, let’s say you’ve just formed the Midtown Coders Bloc IPC. Your club’s strategy is to network local professional programmers, and to keep folks up-to-date with trends in the industry. You can establish a monthly casual meet to allow your members to just mingle and talk, and speaks to your networking strategy. Also, a member knows someone that is a jobs recruiter, and they’re willing to give a bi-monthly talk about local programming opportunities in exchange for a chance to meet and speak with IPC members. Another member loves hands-on programming, and is more than willing to host a quarterly discussion (we’ll talk about this add-on later) on certain programming topics. Both the recruiter and programming lover speak to the trends portion of your IPC strategy. This serves as your basic IPC programming. From there, the sky is the limit, if you have enough energy and volunteers to go around.

Book Review: Saturday Salon: Bringing Conversation and Community Back Into Our Lives

If you want a comprehensive how-to on conducting a Salon, Saturday Salon is a great resource. Although written in 2010, it's still fresh for the most pat, and conveys everything you need to know about starting up a Salon. The author, Valerie Davisson, draws from her own experiences to give you everything you need to know about planning and executing a top-notch Salon experience. She also includes a chapter about pot-luck recipes, and a list of topics or as she labels the chapter, "The Topic Well" if you need further guidance on hosting your Salon. Saturday Salon's subject matter is well rounded and the book is an easy read.

Within the framework of an IPC, the information in this book is mostly relevant with some minor tweaking. Ms. Davisson seems to define her Salons as very informal affairs, almost with an air of a coffeehouse conversation group. Even so, Saturday Salon is an indispensable reference for planning your next Salon.

More resources:
You can find Saturday Salon: Bringing Conversation and Community Back Into Our Lives on Amazon.
Valerie Davisson also has a website, The Saturday Salon.

Our first Salon

My wife was the one that suggested us beginning our social endeavors with a Salon. Like most people, I didn’t have the slightest idea what a salon was except for the obvious thought that comes to mind. Yep, you got it. A hair salon. Once she explained it to me, I had a “oh!” moment. After a little digging, I got a better idea about the concept, and was a go for the social. We brainstormed a few ideas and approached to our salons, and we settled on an approach that suited our tastes and vision. The post is how we conceived the salon, how we set it up, and how we followed through with execution. It was hard work, but our first attempt at a social was a resounding success. This first try also gave us a baseline where we could improve on the following socials to improve our product, and get more out of the experience.

Concept

The concept that we decided to go with closely approached a cocktail party, but still had the basics of a salon. The concept revolved around a 'topic' or a focus for the night. Our thought was to start the first salons with a tangible item that would serve as the topic for each salon. We came up with something unusual and underrated at the same time, meads. If you're not familiar with meads, sometimes called 'honeywine,' this beverage is made from fermented wine rather than the grape, like more common wines. We narrowed the focus even more, and only featured those meads produced in our home state, North Carolina. We had a great time going out to the meaderies and collecting the meads and some knowledge of the topic, as well as doing some tastings.

We have a friends group that includes many mead aficionados, many of whom were great candidates for our initial IPC membership. We set the number of invitees between 8-12 folks (all well over 21). We also decided to mail out invitations to add a little more cachet to our first go at a social.

Setup

The setup was to feature six selections of North Carolina sourced mead for the topic. These ranged from a regular mead for a baseline taste, to flavored meads. We even had a mead that had what I would say had a savory taste. The outings to the meaderies also included researching mead and food combinations. Cheeses and meats seemed to the prevalent food companions to mead, so we had a good selection on hand, as well as some fruits such as grapes, apples and pears. To top it off, the table had a nice complementary floral arrangement.

Since this was a tasting, we had other foods that would help clean the palate, as well as plenty of water. As a note, if you do a tasting, always provide a dump bucket just in case a taste isn't up to someone's liking. Keep in mind this type of salon is to experience the topic and then discuss it. Tastes not to someone's liking are fair game for discussion, and the ability not go any further is sometimes a relief. As an ending for the tasting, we offered was coffee from Hawai'i and Earl Grey tea.

We also requested that everyone wear cocktail dress, but we didn't require it. We wanted to experiment with clothing and atmosphere. To be honest, we were also curious to see how people interpreted the request.

Execution

We had folks come in at 6:30pm (18:30); early enough to get settled. We were careful to make sure everyone was introduced. Some folks knew each other, others did not. Our first task was to get the small talk going a quickly as possible as a warm up. This also gave everyone time to arrive before the salon started. We settled everyone in our living room from the very beginning so everyone present could talk and get to know each other. When everyone who RSVPed was present, then we officially introduced the salon by reading a couple of poems that were related to mead. We were on the fence about the reading, but the poetry seems to get things moving, and it added an elegant touch.

Afterwards, we had folks move to the dining room, and starting the tasting and discussions. We went through the various meads, and then allowed folks to sample at will. The discussion was fairly focused on the topic, but soon branched off. We didn't try to moderate discussion, but let it take an organic path.

At the end of the night, we asked everyone to fill out cards and list the topics they wanted to see in the future. Most were variants on the tasting theme, but some creative souls wanted to do a salon related to fashion, and another related to music.

Wrap-Up
At the end of the night, we felt successful. The food was mostly consumed, as was the mead. People left the house with an air of excitement, and that's what we were looking for as a result of the salon. Our follow-up included tabulating the results of the topic lists, and asking the participants about future salons. Our goal is to have different folks hosting their topics.

We've also looked hard at improvements, but for the most part, these involve changes to arrangement and a rogue light fixture. More salons will provide us with more information on handling discussions and the salon as a whole.

Salon Variant: the literary reading

Earlier, I discussed adding a Salon to your IPC as a type of social event. The type of Salon I described has a topic to focus the conversation for the social. As I was poking around the internet, I happened on an article in Flavorwire about Salons entitled "Visit Some of History’s Most Famous Literary Salons." A couple of the featured salons were literary readings. This would still work in a modern sense. The topic would be replaced by the reading for the event. I imagine poems would be well suited to this, as well as short stories. The sky is the limit, and something unique worth trying.

I'm putting this on my to-dos list for my club in 2018.

More resources for literary salons:
The Guardian, "Louis de Bernières and other British writers revive the literary salon"
Bust Magazine, "Host A Modern-Day Literary Salon"
The New York Times, "An Attempted Comeback for the Literary Salon"

Adding a Salon to your IPC

© Can Stock Photo / DGLimages

A salon? Well, maybe not a hair salon, but something immensely more interesting. The salon we’re talking about is defined in Wikipedia as “a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.”. (refer to Wikipedia for Salon (gathering)).  This type of event is well suited to an IPC, and requires some set up to carry off successfully. 

In IPC parlance, a salon can be a cocktail party with focused conversation, or just a focused conversation.  Salons are best suited to the social, professional and field -type IPCs (Refer to blog entry here), but not so much to a hobby type IPC. You can also choose to host a salon that is closer to the historical salon, but be warned that will take more time and diligence on your part to set-up and execute.

If you choose to host a salon, it should have a topic for the evening. You should have a main space for the topic conversation, and a host who can talk in depth about the topic. In my experience, it’s best to allow conversation to flow from there to other subjects, if appropriate to the evening’s overall topic. If conversation lags or wanders off course, then the host can interject with the evening’s topic and restart the conversation. The aim of the salon is to educate and refine the participant’s knowledge of the featured topic.

Add a little pizazz to your IPC with a salon!

Articles about Salons:

Edge, "Salon Culture: Network of Ideas" 

Benet Davetian, "The History and Meaning of Salons" 

Four Seasons Magazine, "Trending Now: Modern Salons from London to Dubai"  

Elephant Journal, "How to Host a 21st Century Salon" 

7X7, "Salon Gatherings Make a Comeback"

GOOD, "Talk of the Town: How to Host a Successful Salon"