Hello ADPA Community,
I am happy to report we had a great start to the year! A mid-year snapshot will show our community members have been hard at work conducting the routine business of the Association, putting on another successful Professional Development Week (PDW), and starting the planning process for our in-person Symposium and Networking Event later this year.
The Board of Directors held their mid-year and strategic planning meetings in early April in Long Beach, California. In addition to the Board’s normal agenda topics, business operations, and committee updates, the Board also discussed the need for an incremental dues increase to ensure the Association’s financial stability into the future, as well as a potential update to one of the requirements for Professional Membership. Consideration was also given to the feasibility and value of developing a Diversity Committee and/or Statistics Committee (more to come on those in a moment). As these things come further into focus, we will be sure to keep you well aware of the details for any initiative(s) that directly impact the membership.
Our virtual PDW was held just before the Memorial Day weekend. I want to give a special thanks to Jonathan Langham and the rest of the PD Committee for putting on an amazing week of engaging and meaningful workshops. An immense amount of time and effort goes into putting this event together and we are very grateful for their efforts. If you registered for PDW but missed any of the workshops, the recordings are available in the Member website document repository. During the event we also gauged interest of those who might be willing to serve on a Diversity Committee, or support the continued collection and collation of statistical data from our community. The feasibility of these is very much dependent on support from the membership. We are a member-driven organization, so if you have both the time and the interest to support either one of these, please reach out to our Secretary, Ashley McCarthy – amccarthy@neaq.org.
Symposium planning is also now in full swing. The Symposium Committee has been busy securing event spaces and pulling together logistics for the hands-on Training Day and in-person Symposium and Networking Event. If you are planning to attend, please consider giving a presentation on some of the amazing work you do! Requests for speaker information have already been sent out to the membership. Lastly, a reminder to our new members, and those who would be first-time symposium attendees, don’t forget to check out the Brett Dodson ADPA DSO Scholarship, which provides financial assistance for symposium related travel. There are two scholarships available this year and applications must be submitted in full no later than August 1st. I hope to see many of you in Las Vegas. Until then, dive safe my friends!
#WTTADPAMF
