Greetings Colleagues: Three and half days of meetings in Dallas at the 2013 Leadership Summit started with the planning kick-off for the 2014 Vancouver conference, followed by reports on the state of the association and concluded with Division and Chapter Cabinet meetings.
2014 Vancouver Conference Planning
The theme of the Vancouver Conference (June 8-10, 2014) as announced by our first non-North American President, Kate Arnold is Beyond Borders. The Annual Conference Advisory Council is making some changes in the format of the program schedule to allow for more varied time slots 60, 90, 120 minute sessions as well as “Quick Take” 15 minute slots for hot topics. Three themes have been announced for further exploration by all divisions in spotlight sessions, Sunday: Embedded Information Services, Monday: Digital Content and Big Data, Tuesday: Leadership in the Human Age.
Nevenka Zdravkovska, as Chair-elect, is the lead for conference programming for our division and your ideas and suggestions for topics are welcome. In addition, if you work in the Vancouver area, your local expertise is valuable to us. The Sci-Tech division holds our Newcomers Lunch off-site and we would also like to host a tour on Wednesday, the last day of the conference. As in the past we are partnering with the Engineering Division, and the other “science divisions” on joint programs and the All Sciences Poster Session and Reception. Contact Nevenka (nevenka at umd dot edu) if you would like to help with planning programs, have an idea for a program or can help with local arrangements.
State of the Association
The sessions on Thursday and Friday morning were a series of report outs to the division and chapter leadership on the state of the association. We heard financial reports, PR reports, membership reports and conference planning reports. Headquarter staff reported on improvements to the website and Information Outlook. The new website will go live in March and has several features that will make it easier for members to connect with each other and to find out information about the association. In particular, an association-wide calendar of events that all divisions and chapters can use to post events is a welcome improvement. This calendar will allow all of us to find out about programming offered by other divisions and chapters so that we can take advantage of webinars, develop programming ideas and partner on presentations. The new formation for Information Outlook was also highlighted. Starting with the first issue in 2013, Information Outlook is now produced in digital format. Take a look at the inaugural issue and all of the options available to you. SLA members will receive an e-mail notification when a new issue is published. Links to each issue will be included in the notification and on SLA’s Website.
John Digilio the SLA Treasurer assured us in his report that the association will break–even in 2012 and that revenues and expenditures in 2013 are projected to also be in balance in 2013. He reminded us that we are one association and that the fiscal accountability of each division and chapter is critical to our financial health. The Annual Conference provides 63% of the overall annual revenue of the association with 21% provided by member dues. Growth in revenue for the association is needed and membership continues to decline. Both of these issues were areas of concern for Headquarters staff and the other members of the SLA Board. Recruitment and retention of new members is an issue that all of the divisions and chapters were asked to set as a goal for 2013.
The slides of John’s presentation and the other presentations from the 2013 Leadership Summit are available here: (member login required for access) http://www.sla.org/content/resources/leadcenter/LeadershipSummit/13leadsummit/slides.cfm
President Deb Hunt and the Strategic Agenda
Throughout the Leadership Summit, Deb Hunt repeated the five strategic agenda areas that all divisions and chapters should embrace and incorporate into their action plans for 2013. These are:
- Strengthen and improve the Annual Conference as a source of revenue for the association and as a source of professional development and continuing education for our members.
- Provide more professional development opportunities for our members throughout the year using local, regional, national, international and virtual events and venues.
- Creating richer volunteer experience to develop in-demand skills.
- Opening new markets through collaboration.
- Growth through diversity of professional activity.
Our division’s communication activists, the members of the PR Committee and the Communications Committee will be working with me to help promote and implement discussion on the SLA Strategic Agenda.
Division Cabinet and Joint Cabinet Sessions
No new business was undertaken in either Division Cabinet or the Joint Cabinet Sessions. Awards were given to the CI Division, the Taxonomy Division and the Solo Division for adding the most new members in 2012. Several Divisions reported on the success of webinars as professional development opportunities for their members throughout the year. If you have ideas for webinar topics that would be of interest to Sci-Tech Division members, please send them to me. I would like to plan one or two professional development webinars in 2013, send me a note (helenj at Stanford dot edu) if you are interested in helping.
2013 San Diego Conference
The Leadership Summit concluded with a message from Deb Hunt encouraging us to attend the conference in San Diego. Deb is sponsoring a contest for member recruitment with the winners joining her for lunch at the beautiful Hotel Coronado on the beach in San Diego. Details on the contest will be available soon.
If you have any questions or comments about the Leadership Summit, please contact me.
See you in San Diego,
Helen Josephine
2013 Chair
Science-Technology Division
