The new President of the Airdrie Chamber of Commerce is excited about what the board and executive can affect in improving the relevancy the Chamber has and the value that it can offer to its membership. 

The Chamber held its Annual General Meeting this week and Glenn Smaha is taking over the reins, replacing outgoing President Linda Bruce.  Smaha has served four years with the Chamber in the six years he's been in Airdrie as the General Manager of Davis Chevrolet.  Smaha says he sees several areas where the Chamber can add to the services it provides for members.

"We know we have to provide more value in the form of networking, advocacy and the other things that the Chamber can do for them that we maybe haven't done as good a job of in the past as we should have."

The Airdrie Chamber grew by leaps and bounds in the past year, adding 82 new members to bring its total membership to 496.  Smaha says that fast growth can create challenges and bring opportunity.

"It does create challenges in that, with our aspirations to provide better value for our members, we have to look at how we can generate the revenue to hire the additional staff required to provide the services they're going to be demanding from us.  So a growing membership actually solves the problem because through membership we increase our revenue and hopefully can facilitate getting the extra staff to provide the services and value that they need."

Smaha says the businesses he's spoken to in Airdrie are telling him that they want to meet other businesses and are looking for opportunities to do that. 

"Because there is so much new in our city, the top of the list from the membership is networking opportunities.  Our local businesses want to meet other businesses.  They want to be aware of who's operating in the area and what services they provide.  Growing as quickly as we have, providing those networking opportunities will allow us to bring them together, then, in turn, they can meet each other and ideally chamber members will be doing business with other chamber members and utilizing the local businesses that we have."

The Chamber also announced at the AGM that they've assumed leadership for the Airdrie Business Awards that are presented each year during Small Business Week in October.  Smaha says it's just a natural fit.

"We really feel that it should be the Chamber of Commerce that should be taking the lead in the awards so we fought, on behalf of our members, to have, what we see as the premiere, high profile event in our city be a flagship opportunity for the Chamber to show what it's capable of and how involved in the community we are."

Nominations for the awards are now open and will be accepted until July 31st here.  The awards will be presented on Thursday, October 18th at a gala at the Bert Church Theatre.

Smaha calls 2018-2019 a transformational year for the Airdrie Chamber of Commerce.  He says he hopes members will see more value and a higher profile Chamber that has a great deal of relevance when it comes to what's happening in business in Airdrie. 

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