November starts the busiest time of the year for all of us. The week of I-Day will be quite the week as we elect our next President. Additionally, I will visit companies across Iowa the day before I-Day to congratulate the new designees on November 9th.
Veterans Day and Thanksgiving also make this month special. Thank you to our Veterans who have served and sacrificed for our freedom. Did you know that in 2019 this tradition of honoring our Veterans will be 100 years old?
We will continue our celebration for new designees at the I-Day conferment, on November 10, 2016 at Prairie Meadows starting at 8:00 AM. We still have space available for our meeting so sign up soon. Our topic will be Personal Lines and why it is important to you, the industry and what the future holds. We will also present the Burkhalter Award and the Circle of Excellence Award at this event.
Our last meeting this year will be at the Wakonda Club and Alison Cate from EMC Insurance will be speaking on Generations in the Workplace. Join us for an afternoon meeting December 15, 2016 at 3:00 P.M. We will also be collecting donations of food or money for DMARC Food Pantry as a Good Works project.
We are pleased to announce that our organization will be donating to UnityPoint Health/Blank Children’s Hospital in support of the Fire Safety House over the next 5 years. This donation will support replacing the existing fire safety house that we previously helped fund.
As I learned in the past month, big data is everywhere. During our October meeting, Michael Chen, from Pinnacle Actuarial Services, told us that big data has been around since the 1990s when retailers began gathering information about what people purchased and used the information to place items for sale near the location of what people purchased.
Last month I participated in the Good Works project installing smoke detectors. We learned that the Des Moines Fire Department uses big data to determine the number of fires in a given area and the reason for these fires- no smoke detectors. We canvased a large part of Des Moines asking homeowners if we could look at their smoke detectors and install new smoke detectors if needed.
Smoke detectors need to be replaced every 10 years and now you can purchase 10 year lithium batteries so you never have to re-place them. You just have to replace the entire unit at the end of its 10 year lifespan!
