AFA Board of Directors invade Lexington Kentucky:

Members, start looking for more forward motion in the AFA over the next several months.  Your Board of Directors have initiated bi-monthly brainstorming sessions so if you have any questions or concerns, please let your Representative know so we can bring that forward at the next session.

For the first time in the history of our Association we held a Board of Directors training session. The training was held the day before Mid -Year at the 4 Points Sheraton in Lexington, Kentucky. We started with our training session with two dynamic guides Dr. Rita Davis, The Associate Dean - The School of Business and Marcel Robles Ph.D. Professor of Management, Marketing and International Business, both from Eastern Kentucky University.  After our icebreaker, we started on the objectives for the meeting. It was a great session and brought us together.  By the end of the morning we formulated a plan to have a brainstorming session along with our afternoon session.  I will give more detail about the morning session in my Professional Farrier Magazine article.

The afternoon session, "Meetings can be fun! Get it over with and go home" was headed up by our gifted and very funny Parliamentarian, Mr Steve Small.  He explained the procedure under which we run our meetings and why using these procedures makes meetings run smoothly and efficiently. He identified for us how our Policy and By-Laws both support us and limit us. He helped us see that Policy is not meant to be static. That Policy should change and "grow" as the association does.  He helped us create a plan so that we can hold regularly scheduled brainstorming sessions as a Board.

After an entertaining session with Mr. Small, we went into an incredibly amazing and productive brainstorming session. (At the end of the morning session we created a list of what we as your Board need to address for the forward progress of our association), our President Mr Trosin led us in a fantastic session. We identified the most important issues in front of us. Marketing/Advertising/Public Relations came up as our number one committee in need of leadership and support. We worked together to come up with a short list of candidates for Chair for Marketing and a list of people who have expressed a willingness to serve. In addition we discussed, and will continue to negotiate with the AAPF to bring Continuing Education Units to our members for attendance at the AFA Convention.  AFA will begin fundraising for the purpose of beginning the search for an Executive Director.  We took a closer look at our AFLAC member benefit (check it out!).

 We discussed the many issues that involve our Policy and By-Laws and the need to review our policy and identify how it stifles our forward progress.  We discussed the Boards need for more informal format for brainstorming problem solving and we came up with a Bi-monthly conference call. The calls will focus on one or two agenda items, have one person running the agenda and allow us to discuss ideas and work together to find solutions.  We are all looking forward to this new way to interact as a Board.

Saturday was  "The best Board of Directors meeting ever!" and I quote Steve Eastman (who has participated in Board meeting for more than 25 yrs). We started at 9 am ran through a full agenda and spent time in for the good of the order and we were finished at 2:30 pm. You can not imagine our surprise when we called the meeting to an end and it was 2:30!  the meeting ran incredibly smoothly thanks to our Pre meeting session. Look for the pre meeting  to be a tool we use in the future.

 As this is supposed to be a synopsis, I will give you a meeting synopsis in the next e-blast and a full report in the next e-zine. If you would like to serve the AFA we need members to work on Fundraising/Sponsorship, Membership, Member Services and Education. Please email President Elect John Blombach at phantomfarrier@comcast.net or call him (978) 430-1757.

This is respectfully submitted by your Vice President, Margie Lee-Gustafson CJF #2100 on behalf of your Board of Directors.