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Next Meeting Presentation
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008
The MN National Guard: Who We Are and
What We Do
LTC Matthew Snyder
Commander of the 55th Civil Support Team
Presentation Synopsis:
This presentation will provide an overview
of the many roles and responsibilities the
Minnesota National Guard provides to our
State and Nation, and how the Guard fits in
with the "big picture" of the other military
organizations such as the Reserves and the
regular forces. Topics to be covered
include:
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Overview of Minnesota National Guard
mission, to include natural disaster and
homeland security responsibilities
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Overview of Minnesota Guard structure:
Major organizations (Army and Air),
total numbers, some location discussion
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Recent support to GWOT: overseas
deployments
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Minnesota Guard responsibilities
pertaining to upcoming Republican
National Convention
Presenter Bio:
LTC Matthew Snyder is the Commander of the 55th Civil
Support Team (Weapons of Mass Destruction). His
previous experience includes 12 years of active duty as
a combat engineer with the 4th En Bn, 41st En Bn, and
the 9th Training Support Battalion (Engineer). During
this time he served as platoon leader, executive
officer, company commander (twice), battalion operations
officer and other various battalion, brigade, division
and Joint Task Force staff positions. He deployed to
three contingency operations including 7 months in
combat in Somalia. He is a graduate of the
Engineer Office Basic and Advance Courses and the
Command and General Staff College. In his eight plus
years with the Minnesota Army National Guard he has
served on the Minnesota Organizational Readiness
Exercise (M.O.R.E.) Team, as the 682d En Bn Operations
Officer, and as the Contingency Operations Comptroller
and Mobilization Planner. He holds an undergraduate
degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in
Business Administration.
Meeting Location:
Meeting Agenda:
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Luncheon Cost:
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Social time and lunch
(if you so desire) will be from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in the dining
room of the Officers Club.
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The Club’s cafeteria-style lunches are typically $10.00
or less; people who partake in the cafeteria-style lunch
will pay the Officers Club directly. If you come
only for the presentations, there is no charge.
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Post Meeting and Presentation will be from
12:30 PM to about 1:15 PM in the ballroom of the Officers Club.
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Please RSVP by Monday,
April 21st:
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RSVP with your intent to either partake in the cafeteria-style lunch
or to come for the presentation only; this will help the Officers Club staff to
ensure that an adequate amount of food is prepared.
Either leave a voice mail message with Jim Mosner at 651-290-5512,
or click the RSVP button in the left-hand column, or send an email message to
james.b.mosner@usace.army.mil
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Judd Freed, the
Director of Ramsey County’s Emergency
Management. and Homeland Security
Division (l), received the Post's
Speakers Mug from Post President Jim
Mosner for his extremely interesting
presentation titled Emergency
Preparedness 101, and for the bits of
insight that he was able to provide
pertaining to the Republican National
Convention that will be coming to town
in September.
Judd graciously
stepped in at the last second to give
this presentation when his Deputy
Director, Krysta Reuter, who was
scheduled to give this presentation, was
unexpectedly taken ill.
There were several
key points to be taken away from Judd's
presentation. One point is that
we, the public, need to ensure that we
can take care of ourselves and our
families for a period of three days in
the event of a natural or man-made
disaster. If we ensure that we
have appropriate food, water, and
essential provisions available for that
minimal period; the governmental
emergency response mechanisms will be
much more efficient and able to respond
to the emergency as a whole. A
second point is that most
business/commercial enterprises are
either totally or vastly un-prepared to
deal with the consequences of a natural
or man-made disaster. He pointed
out that it is well documented that if
business/commercial enterprise is
impacted for period of seven or more
days after a disaster, it will likely
fail or never fully recover from the
after-effects of the disaster. A
third point that he emphasized is that
all households should have a
weather-band radio, and when the weather
appears threatening it should be turned
on. The few minutes of
advance warning that can be attributable
to this communication device can indeed
be life-saving.
For helpful
information to better prepare yourself,
your family, or your business to deal
with the consequences of a disaster, see
http://www.co.ramsey.mn.us/em/education.htm
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 Finally,
after all these years of planning,
its only a month or so away.
The exhibit booths have all been
sold, we have a tremendous number of
conference sponsors, the hotel rooms
are filling up fast, and the number
of participants registering for the
conference are ahead of last year's
pace. All indications are that
this will be a very successful and
fun-filled conference.
If you haven't done so already,
don't hesitate to go on-line and
register to attend. The
registration site at
www.regonline.com/2008SAMEJETC
will be open for "early
registration" through April 30th;
after that time, the "late
registration" pricing will be in
effect.
To help
accommodate our local (Post)
membership, one-day registration
options and ala-carte event options
are available for those people who
opt to not attend the entire
multi-day conference. Having
this caliber of an event so close at
hand is a rare opportunity, so
please make an attempt to be a part
of it in some way.
Detailed
information about the events,
technical program, and exhibitors
for the conference is at
www.SAME-2008.org.
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Last year the
Post began a quest to have its Young
Members plan and conduct the annual
golf tournament. Our goal is
to have a four person committee run
the event. Ideally the
committee would consist of two
"experienced" people from the prior
year and two "new" people for the
current year.
Young Member Vice
President Ben Tustison, along with
Brent Nelson, will comprise the
"experienced" part of this year's
committee. One of the Post's
newest Young Members, Jane Delorme,
has also volunteered to help as one
of the "new" committee members.
So ... at
this point, we are looking
for one more Young Member to help
with this year's committee (and
hopefully be willing to help with
next year's event as well).
You do not need to be a golfer to
help with this event; just someone
who wants an excuse to get of the
office on a nice July day and spend
it at a golf course. If you
would like to help, contact Ben at
763-205-2651 or
tustison@mbkengineers.com.
Just in case you
are ready to start making your
personal plans for this year's
event, the
Golf Flyer is ready to
download and distribute to your
friends and acquaintances; see
http://www.same-msp.org/PDF/2008_SAME_Golf_Flyer.pdf
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It's that time of year again, when we put
out the call for a few dedicated Post members who would like
to volunteer to help guide and administratively run the
Post. Without the help of the dozen or so people that
help out, mostly behind the scenes, our Post would not be
the high quality Post that it is. Our goal always has
been to bring into the leadership roles a few new people
each year so that we can avoid having too large of a
turnover in any one particular year.
The roles that we
are looking for volunteers are:
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Technical Programs Coordinator.
People who fill this role
usually do so for a period of
one to three years (two years is
the typical tenure).
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Director at Large (two positions
to be filled), a two-year
position. Typically one
Director comes from the
Sustaining Member group of
members and one Director comes
from the Individual or Public
Agency group of members.
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Several Special
Directors for focus-areas as
Young Members Activities,
Fellows-Mentoring Activities,
and NCO Activities.
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Vice President (typically a past
Director), a one-year position
that typically leads to the role
of President.
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A few other Post
roles have incumbents who are
willing to fill them for another
year but would welcome someone
new offering to help or assist
and possibly taking over the
role in the future. These
positions that could use someone
to assist are:
If you are
interested in helping the Post
continue its excellent track record
for providing meaningful activities
and value for its members, we would
be interested in hearing from you.
Please
contact Past Post President Bill
Forsmark at
wforsmark@barr.com
or 952-832-2600
prior to May 16th.
Since a regular Post meeting will not be conducted in May
due to our hosting of the National Conference, the election
and induction of new Post Officers will be at the June
meeting.
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Minneapolis - St. Paul Post of SAME Designing & Building a Better & Stronger Nation
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