Ah, the challenges of blogging during Gala prep week! As you may already know, The Big Day is next Tuesday, June 23 - so it's crunch time at the CityClub office. As busy as we may be, the rules of blogging are clear: if you want to keep your readers, be consistent! No skipping! But clearly, no sacrificing quality for quantity, either.

As the week begins, we're making shopping lists and ordering supplies, building slideshows and printing materials, and listening to inspiration theme songs on repeat. (I can't tell you which songs - they're a surprise!) We're crossing things off our the top of our to-do lists and adding more things on the bottom. In a few days we'll pore over reservation lists and assign seats.

While we're busy doing that, we want you to discuss amongst yourselves! One of our future goals for our new office space is a sort of orientation space - a library, for example, with information about other non-profits in the city, for folks who are new to Seattle and want to get involved in the community. Seattle's annual influx of newcomer residents (31%) is the second highest nationally, making Seattle a "first move" city.

Now, there's a rumor floating around that Seattleites maybe aren't the friendliest city folk out there - when we Tweeted a blog link that was floating around our office - "6 Things You Cannot Say in Seattle", from Crosscut's blog - the response in terms of comments back to us and "retweets" (people copying and pasting our Tweet into their feed) was one of the biggest we've had to a single Tweet. (Crosscut's now posted a follow-up: "6,000 things you can't say in Seattle (or Portland)".)Perhaps it's not just rumor, but surely we can improve? How can we do a better job welcoming and orienting newcomers so they feel connected and involved in our community?