Libertarian State Leadership Alliance

From My Friend Jim Duensing - LP State Chair Nevada

BTW - The LSLA is very much worth your time to attend - Plan ahead and be there - I will be!

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2008 LSLA in VEGAS baby VEGAS!

A great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit. Yep, I'm talking about Las Vegas. Home of the 2008 LSLA conference. Negotiations with Sunset Station are almost final. Here is what I can guarantee at this early date:

1) The convention will be at Sunset Station (which is actually in Henderson near the airport).
2) Over Presidents' Day Weekend 2008 (Feb 16-18)
3) The largest LSLA conference in LP history.
4) The most information in LSLA history. It will be physically impossible to see it all.

I view the LSLA or Leadership Conference as a gathering of party organizers and candidates all attempting to improve in their respective roles, to train replacement leaders, to build camaraderie amongst ourselves, to trade successful ideas, and for fun.

It is an event that every State Chair, every member of every Executive Committee and every county officer should go to. This is the event where we are free to discuss practical effective techniques and strategies to grow our respective parts of our entire organization.

At the 2008 conference, there will be four separate 8 hour tracks of information for everyone to learn. Presently, the four tracks of instruction are classified as

1. Candidate Training - including everything from dress, body language, the green zone, tone of voice, lessons for radio and television, debate techniques and the most effective method of expressing the Libertarian message ever devised. (I fear I may not be complementing this track
adequately.)

2. Treasurer / Secretary - this track will include information on how to keep acct. books, how to take quality minutes, how to file with the FEC, Roberts Rules for Conventioneers and other as of yet undetermined subjects.

3. Outreach / Fundraising - this track may include all of the following and more: creating a monthly pledge program, ballot base, legislative directors, how to write a fundraising letter, marketing / branding, organizing new affiliates / energizing longtime Libertarians into organizers and candidates, etc.

4. Institutional - this track is designed to discuss what Stephen Covey would call quadrant II activities - things that are important but not urgent. These consist of the most important problems and greatest opportunity that any organization or individual faces. Tentatively, this track will include presentations / discussions on an affiliate agreement, the work of the platform committee and bylaws committee prior to the May 08 convention, maximizing our use of the national database, etc.

These are obviously not set in stone. Once the details with the hotel are finalized, I'll be able to devote more time to planning these tracks in more detail. Also, if any of y'all have any good ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Also, because I want every county officer in every state to attend this meeting, the LSLA will be offering group discounts on tickets. More details on that will be available as soon as the ink is dry on the catering contract.

I believe our record attendance is around 100. I want to double that. 200 people is only 4 per state. My state brought 5 from NV to Orlando and 4 to Phoenix, so I know it is possible. And, we're a small state. We only have 5 electoral votes. 200 should be easy.

Imagine if we brought 200 Libertarians to a meeting designed to improve their ability to communicate our message and expand our party right before an election where the popularity rates of the other two parties is around 30% each. That spells progress period.

We can do it if each of you begin selling this meeting to all of your members. Push it to your general membership. When they get to Las Vegas and meet all the people working for our party, you'll not only have a new energetic activist, you'll have one who is well trained and who can train others.

This may seem like a gargantuan Leadership Conference, compared with prior years, but I think it is just a continuation of the direction we have been heading. In a few more years, I do not believe we'll be able to get by with only four tracks of information. And, the level of training of our organizers and candidates will require increasingly more nuanced and advanced training sessions. The classes outlined above are mostly what I would consider a 101 level political course. Before long we'll need 400 level classes.

The point of this email is to let everyone know the date of the event and to get all of you to begin selling this event to all of your members. By the way, to figure out what number of people you'll need from your state to get us to 200, take 40% your electoral college vote. This will give you a rough estimate. For my part, I know I'll bring more than two people. That should lessen the load on some of you and entice the rest of you to outnumber NV. I'm trying to outnumber CA, and from talking to the new state chair, Kevin Takanega, that may be difficult. However, I know I can beat CO. You want to go double or nothing on our other bet Travis? This time I get the odds - not because it's fair, but because you got 'em last time. By then Super Tuesday will be over and I can collect both bets in one weekend.

Thanks for suffering through another characteristically long email from me. I'll see everyone in Vegas in 08.

Jim Duensing
Chair NVLP