Thank you for the opportunity to serve as your Chair for 2019. I promise you I will do my best to preserve the mission of APSG by challenging our committees to make valuable improvements to enhance your membership experience.
I would like to thank our outgoing Chair, Jason Humber, for his hard work and contributions to the organization and wish him the best in future endeavors. I would also like to thank Greg Pilgrim for all of his contributions as Membership Chair over the past three years. He has decided to move on to other opportunities and will be greatly missed.
On the other hand, I would like to welcome Chris Echols to the Executive Committee in the position of Vice Chair. Chris has always been a strong supporter of APSG, and we look forward to his help in moving this organization forward. I want to express my gratitude to Bobby Saleh, our Treasurer, and Jennifer Still, our Communications Chair, who are remaining on our team this year. Both bring critical skills to the organization and will ensure the success of APSG.
Going into the new year and a new term, we have set specific goals that I would like to take a moment to share with you. First and foremost, we strive to continue hosting successful biannual meetings and supporting student chapters. These are essential to maintaining connections as APSG members and are foundations on which this organization was built. Beyond those immediate goals, we also plan to strive for efficiency when it comes to our own efforts as an Executive Committee. This will include organizing and creating easy-to-execute processes for the various committees to ensure we consistently deliver to you as promised. Other areas on which we will focus this year are partnership and participation. We want to seek alignment with the APSG Education Foundation to better define our relationship and help ensure their success. We retain the goal of increasing our membership. Having more members is beneficial to APSG because it creates more diversity in the organization which leads to greater networking opportunities, educational opportunities, and increase the pool of volunteers for events like GIS and Esri PUG.
On that note, we would like to encourage our members to participate in the committees within APSG. With such a variety of backgrounds, roles, and expertise represented in this organization, we want to ensure these unique qualities are reflected in our committees as well as the education we provide others. If you have interest in getting involved, please reach out to me or anyone else on the Executive Committee so that when opportunities present themselves, we know you are interested.
Thank you for your continuing support and participation in APSG. From the entire Executive Committee, we wish you and your family Happy and Safe Holidays!