Page 52 - Lighting Magazine February 2020

night Magic
“We are always on the look-out for more help in the form of Sponsors and Corporate Members.”
LL: the spring 2020 iLLi intensive course is next month (march 26-30) at mercer botanic gardens in humbLe, texas. hoW are Locations seLected?
JS: We are always on the look-out for willing partners with excellent venues that will allow the attendees to learn from exposure to challenging and lovely gardens with architectural features. Our Board of Directors and Task Forces work closely together to identify potential locations, and then we simply approach those places and hope to find some synergy and willingness.
We are very excited to be partnering with the Mercer Botanic Gardens and they, in turn, are excited to host us as we are bringing a new way of seeing landscape lighting to the public. They are hosting a party for the reveal night ceremony on Monday, March 30.
LL: are the intensive courses the onLy educationaL opportunities for members outside of generaL netWorking, or are there other opportunities?
JS: Currently we are offering two ICs per year. In the near future, we hope to change our format a little by offering basic and pre-requisite online courses. Once these are up and running we may be able to reduce the intensive nature of the IC courses and introduce more portable and fre- quent programs.
Our Board of Directors and our various Task Forces keep a regular schedule of online meet- ings. The board meets online weekly and most of the Task Forces meet online bi-weekly. Beyond that, email is widely used to keep in touch with members, IC participants, and sponsors.
LL: What are some of iLLi’s most immediate, as WeLL as Long-term, goaLs? JS: One of our immediate goals is to engage more past IC graduates into the Mentor teams and Task Force committees. We are also going to be launch- ing our individual membership program very soon and will be making a big push to get people signed up and engaged.
We are always on the look-out for more help in the form of Sponsors and Corporate Members and hope that as our membership base and repu- tation grows that more lighting businesses will see the value in becoming involved. Lastly, once we can move some of our programming over to an on- line model, we hope to be able to expand the IC offerings to three courses per year, with one being focused on an international location. 
IC participants utilize an assortment of innovative products from an impressive mix of manufacturers to effectively illuminate a challenging installation.
50 enLIGHTenment Magazine | February 2020
www.enlightenmentmag.com
TOP: GREG MATTHEWS; BOTTOM: GEORGE GRUEL