In my twenty plus years of experience in managing homeowner associations, I am frequently told by board members that the most stressful part of serving on the board of directors is the annual meeting. I once attended an annual meeting in which a member was asked if he was willing to serve on the board. He told the assembly yes, but with the condition that he would not attend the annual meeting while on the board. The membership laughed and he responded seriously with, I am not joking. It doesn’t have to be this way. Because so many board members found annual meetings stressful, for years I looked for a book specifically dealing with homeowner association annual meetings. I thought, What a great gift to send to our board member clients! . The books I discovered were geared primarily for legislative bodies and dealt with parliamentary issues that rarely, if ever, arise in a homeowner association annual meeting. Some books were so theoretically driven that they offered no real practical advice. In short, there were no books that could improve the annual meeting experience for board members and the rest of the membership. No book seemed to take into account the raw emotional aspects of many homeowner association meetings and the stress that can result. What I was in search of was a real-world guide for annual meetings. A guide with actionable tactics that could be implemented to immediately have a positive impact on an annual meeting. A positive impact, no matter the number of association members present or the number of contentious issues going on within the homeowner association. There were none that I felt addressed this topic in the way it needed to be addressed. I then decided to write my own book that would be of benefit to my Board member clients. What is in this book is, for lack of a better phrase, the secret sauce of successfully holding a homeowner association annual meeting. I started with the basics for the member new to living within a homeowner association who wished to gain a better understanding of the annual meeting process. I then outlined many practical applications that board members with many years of board service have told me, ‘I wish we had done that in prior meetings!’. Achieving a productive and successful annual meeting is analogous to baking a cake. Fortunately, the annual meeting cake has a manageable number of important ingredients. No matter how dysfunctional a prior annual meeting may have been, this book contains best practices that can have your next annual meeting running smoothly. Smoothly run annual meetings have a positive impact on the entire community. This book is for you: ** If you are a seasoned board member who wants to improve the annual meeting process. ** If you are a board member who knows there must be a better way to conduct an annual meeting. ** If you are a board member who would prefer being mugged than attending another annual meeting. ** If you are someone in the membership and you wish to attend an annual meeting that is orderly and less stressful to attend, you should buy this book for the board. ** If you need to understand the basic mechanics of a homeowner association annual meeting. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, if you serve on a board of directors, your service can be less stressful and more productive. Always expect the best, but be prepared for the worst. This book will prepare you for the best while reducing the risk of the worst. Yours in improving the annual meeting process, Chris D. Gilleland