What a great organization. Like other past President Elects, I've been busy with the Conference Committee and Member Services in putting the finishing touches on the conference. Leading up to this was the task of arranging speakers, moderators and room monitors for all the sessions. This meant a flood of calls and emails to members asking for their help to make our conference a success.

What amazes me about this is that not one person said "no". Not one! The answer was generally along the lines of, "Of course, I'd be happy to help in any way possible." Putting together our annual conference is a significant piece of work. Can you imagine how much more difficult it would be without the fantastic support provided by you, our members? I hope everyone who attended thoroughly enjoyed themselves and was able to take practical and useful tips back to the office.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in to make the conference a success and specifically to the Conference Committee comprised of Zorida Ali, Alan Ash, Umesh Dalal, Lisa Dennis, Liz Moore and Al Scaperotto. I'd also like to thank the Member Services staff: Donna Maloy, for making all the arrangements with the hotel and the National Constitution Center; Glenda Johnson, for the creativity that made our brochures and displays look great; Fay Kurkjy, for the great job on communicating with the members; and Kim O'Ryan for tracking all the money.

My second major task as President Elect was to chair the Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee's job is to seek out and recommend potential candidates for positions on the Board. This was another difficult task because we were in the enviable position of having many great nominees for the few positions available.

I'm only sorry that we couldn't appoint everyone who was nominated. My thanks go to the Nominating Committee members Sherry Idle, Kymber Waltmunson, Les Tanaka, and Allen Vann.

That summarizes the major work that's been my responsibility over the past year but what will be happening in the year to come? My first priority will be to advance the implementation of the strategic plan. If you attended the 20th Conference in Philadelphia you received a copy of the strategic plan. If not, you can now access it on our website. I can tell you that a significant amount of work went into building that plan and your Board received input from a broad cross section of our members. The plan will serve this and future Boards well in directing their efforts and the resources of this organization. Each strategic plan initiative has been assigned to a Committee. Our job now is to ensure all Committee work plans tie into the strategic plan and that the relevant Committees are making progress in accomplishing the initiatives assigned to them.

Now that I've mentioned several of our Committees I just wanted to get a plug in for the rest of them.  Most familiar to the majority of you will be the work done by the Peer Review Committee and the Education Committee.  However, there are several other Committees that do a lot of work that will be less obvious.  These are Advocacy, Awards, Benchmarking, Bylaws, Communications, Long-Term Conference Planning, Membership and, Professional Issues.  At the Board's fall meeting, the Chair of each Committee will be joining us to present their accomplishments and goals and also to describe the steps they are taking to help achieve the initiatives outlined in the strategic plan.  In order to keep you informed, I will summarize the highlights of those reports in the December quarterly.

As you can see, there are quite a few Committees providing support and input to your Board.  The members serving on each committee are listed on our web site.  If you happen to go and look at the composition of our Committees you'll see the broad representation from across the continent that makes ALGA such a practical and relevant organization.  It was this feature of ALGA that prompted me, and several other Canadians to start attending the annual conference and eventually want to get more involved and contribute to the good thing that you've got going.  To all of you I say keep up the good work and if you feel you'd also like to make the organization even better, I can certainly recommend that you contact a Committee Chair or Board member to express your interest.  We'll find some way to get you involved.

Thank you for everything you do and I'm looking forward to an exciting year in my role as President of this outstanding organization.

Jerry D. Shaubel
2008-09 President
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