Y'All Conference 2009

Louis Bayes

1/18/2009

Y'All Conference 2009 took place in Charleston/Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and was a huge success. – Y’All Conference 2009 took place from January 16-18, 2009, where 80 members from 12 districts attended and most of them drove in to the Holiday Inn at Patriot’s Point without much trouble. The theme for the convention was “Feel the Beat”.

The Opening Session began at 8:00PM EST and involved ten rock groups where we created CD covers for each group. The session ended at 10:00PM, where board and card games took place for two hours, before people split up to go to a hot tub a few miles away, continued the party in other rooms, or went out for food.

Saturday kicked off with a good ol’ southern breakfast, before the Battle of the Bands began its first session. It involved groups to participate in various icebreakers, which involved singing a line from a song involving a given word, charading a title of a song through a group and get the lead to guess the title of the song.

The session ended at noon, where people had five hours of free time. There was an option to participate in a service project to aid the Boys and Girls Club of Mount Pleasant in various tasks around their facility, which many had attended. Books needed to be sorted according to difficulty level, the crafts room needed to be rearranged, the kitchen needed cleaning, the play area required remodelling, the yard needed to be cleaned up, and the computers reconfigured onto a network. By 3PM, we had completed most of the tasks, and people split up to explore the Charleston area. My group went to see the Fort Sumter Barrier where we took a walk down and through the market area through the rich, historic roads.

We went back for dinner at the hotel and dressed up as rockstars for the second half of the Battle of the Bands. We continued the second half of the charades, lyric writing involving each group writing two lines blindly on a piece of paper and having a group read it aloud, and identifying songs before other groups. We then learned a dance, before the dance and games kicked off and ended at midnight. Once again, people split up to a variety of parties.

Sunday, we had another southern breakfast, before the Grammy’s ceremony, where everyone received an award. Once it was over, everyone said their goodbyes and took a few pictures. I got a ride from the Capital District CKI and a Carolinas member. We stopped to drop off Tanya at the train station, where she wanted to change her train time, then her train, then her method to get home. After an hour and a half there, and with an understanding ticket operator who added to the humour, Tanya decided to hitch a ride with a few CKI’ers back home.

Overall, the Y’All Conference was a great experience to enhance the ties that members have to fellowship through the realm of Circle K International, while uniting under the banner of service.