An Incredible Year In and Year Out for CHART

It seems like mere moments ago that Calvin Banks departed the stage at the end of the awards banquet at CHART’s 88th Hospitality Training Conference in Atlanta last July, ending his term as President of the organization and handing the reins over to me. But it’s been almost a year since that event took place, and what a year it’s been!  Since that time we have launched a popular new educational webinar series, created a new CHART position to oversee the trainer competency program and our educational platform, developed new vision and mission statements to better reflect the evolution of CHART’s position in the hospitality industry, and grew our ranks to just under 500 members (and we’re still hoping to hit that total by the end of the month). Other highlights included CHART representatives contributing to 10 different educational sessions at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago this past May, which was up significantly from the previous few years, and conducting our third annual Hospitality Training Trends survey with TDn2K to benchmark training and development practices in our industry.

CHART also broke some records during our 2014-2015 year, especially when it came to member engagement and involvement. During the past twelve months:

• We had an astounding number of Regional Training Forums (25 this past year) and over 450 RTF attendees.
• On the CHART website, we saw the greatest level of participation we’ve ever had for the Ask My Peers function and for member-generated blog posts.
• Our T3 event in Napa not only had the highest number of registered attendees for one of our winter conferences, but also provided the opportunity for a record-high 87 trainers to earn certificates for completing one of our competency tracks.
• We have a more highly-engaged social media network than ever this year, with a LinkedIn Group that has grown to more to 3000 members, a Facebook page with more than 900 Likes, and a Twitter feed with more than 1150 followers.

Finally, behind the scenes in the last few months, the CHART Board has been working on the upcoming conference agenda and format in New Orleans, adding some new elements to improve the attendee experience, and investing a lot of time and effort in a complete re-design of the CHART website that will make its big debut this fall. We’ve also spent time recently freshening up our marketing materials and logo, updating our board member roles and responsibilities, and signing up two brand new Silver Sponsors, People Forward and World Manager.

All of these accomplishments were not easy to achieve, of course, but came about because of the hard work of a multitude of people: CHART members, volunteers, mentors, conference team directors, RTF directors, past presidents, lifetime members, sponsors, our Association Management and Marketing teams, and the five extraordinary individuals elected to the CHART Executive Board last year: Jason Lyon, Michele Lange, Chip Romp, Donna Herbel, and Gabe Hosler. To all of these folks, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you have contributed to our training community. It’s been your incredible “I can do that” spirit and energy that has kept CHART strong, and will continue to keep CHART strong, year in and year out.

It has been a true honor to serve as your President, and it will definitely be a year that I will treasure as a true highlight of my career in hospitality. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to serve in this capacity.

Patrick A. Yearout

This article originally appeared in the July 2015 issue of FlipCHART.