I hope each of you had a wonderful holiday season. I wish you a satisfying and productive New Year! For me, I have many challenges ahead and am looking forward to embracing the future with hope, enthusiasm and positive thoughts to a new beginning. It is during uncertain times that I realize the importance of our ARMA connections and the knowledge that we have a special bond within our chapters and region. It is this bond and body of knowledge that I would like each of us to focus on for the New Year. I know I have shared this many times, however it never ceases to amaze me as I look to the dedication and sense of purpose ARMA brings to our profession. I know I will use this as a bright shield as I move forward on my own path in the RIM profession. I encourage each of you as you start your year to take time to reflect on and appreciate your connections and friendships within ARMA.
To start off our new ARMA year, I want to remind you of the upcoming ARMA International 2007 Board of Director elections coming up in January. Take a moment to visit the online candidate forum at My ARMA to review each candidate’s bios and perspectives on key issues. These statements are intended to help you in becoming more familiar with the candidates. You are also welcome to ask the candidate questions that will help you decide who is best suited to lead our association. Ballots will go out on January 8th and will be due back February 16th. Please don’t forget to vote for your selections in January. This is the only way to make your choices known and help shape the direction of our association and our profession!
I also want to remind each chapter of the two new exciting grant programs recently announced at the 2006 conference. These grants were made available by ARMA’s Leadership Development and Training Committee. The new grants are as follows:
The ARMA Region Leadership Training Grant
This program is to provide chapters with funding to assist them in sending chapter leaders to their region leadership training. Two grants of $400 each, per fiscal year is available for each of the ten ARMA regions.
The ARMA Chapter Speaker Grant
This program is meant to provide chapters with funding to assist in getting quality speakers for their educational programs and allows for individual grants of $500.00 per Chapter to bring in a speaker for an individual program. There is a maximum of 25 speaker grants per fiscal year.
I encourage your chapters to use this resource! All chapters are eligible. Each grant will require an application to be submitted to your Region Manager,
Finally, I want to encourage you to submit a review of any RIM-related books you recently read and recommend to the Information Management Journal. They are currently seeking reviews and reviewers of books of interest to those working in the RIM profession. If you are interested in either submitting a review or reading a book to review, contact Jody Becker at jbecker@arma.org. Guidelines for writing a review can be found at http://www.arma.org/pdf/journal/InReviewGuidelines.pdf. This is a wonderful way to learn about new material and pass along fresh ideas to ARMA.
Again, I wish you all a wonderful New Year and remember that your region is here to help each of your chapters gain better connection to ARMA International and help guide the way to healthy chapters and a solid membership base. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with ideas and to relay your accomplishments as a chapter and individually as an ARMA member.
Very truly yours,
Fran Blaylock
Great NW Region Coordinator
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