Greetings NOWA members,
NOWA’s 2019-2020 motto/mantra: NOWA continues to be strong and growing.
2020 Conference
The Shilo Inn in The Dalles, Oregon is the site of our 2020 Conference. The dates are April 30 through May 3.
The Shilo has changed hands recently. The new general manager started work on Tuesday. Will keep the membership informed of the conference preparations.
2021 Conference
Suggestions for 2021 Conference sites are welcome. Having a site picked before the next conference will allow our members to plan for the future.
Officers and Board Members
Update on our president, Ron Kerr from Debbie Kerr on Tuesday, July 16:
Ron got home from his final treatment in Kelowna this past weekend. Definitely not something he ever wants to repeat. Because his cancer was deemed “aggressive” they were doing fairly intense treatment, and have told him it will be a few weeks before the effects begin to wear off.
Unfortunately, during the process, which we don’t believe had anything to do with the cancer treatment as far as we know, Ron has been losing his voice and cannot carry on a conversation. He is scheduled to see a specialist to find out what that problem is. Seems lately that if it is not one thing it’s another. Needless to say Ron will not be chiming in on the conference call, but wishes you all the best and congratulates you, as do I, for rebuilding NOWA.
NOWA board member Sharon Wilson resigned effective July 16, the same day of our July board meeting. Dave Vedder was elected to fill this position, until the 2020 conference.
Constitution and Bylaws
A new page has been placed on our website with the proposed Constitution and Bylaws changes for review. Members are encouraged to review the document and contact Bob, Dennis or Risa with questions. Janie and Bert Gildart are also members of this committee.
Also, when working on Constitution and Bylaws, the question always comes up: Why change them? They were written back in the 1980’s with few changes, so most of the changes fall under the heading of “modernization.” Also, there are some small changes to the grammar and other stuff. Check them out: https://nowaoutdoors.com/nowa-constitution-and-bylaws/
Membership
The membership committee continues to contact members for reinstatement. They are also working to recruit new members.
Website and facebook page
The NOWA website and Facebook page have become our information hubs.
Dave Kilhefner maintains the website and John Kruse maintains the Facebook page.
Members Only Area
Interest has been expressed in an online Members Only area. NOWA is testing this concept using Dropbox (it’s free) and has a password protected document storage area. The current documents available are all the newsletters from May 2009 to Jan 2019 plus the last 4 membership directories. If you’d like access email Dave@kbi-ins.com.
Finance
Dave Kilhefner is the chairman of the finance committee. Committee members include Ron Kerr, Peter Schroeder and Jeremy Johnson. We’ll upload the committee reports in the Dropbox members only area in the near future.
Board meetings
The board of directors held a teleconference meeting on Tuesday, July 16, from 6 to 7 p.m. Chris Batin was the chairman.
We will schedule and hold a board meeting every month. The meetings will be short, an hour or less.
Electronic voting
OWAA uses electronic voting. NOWA is reviewing this way of voting away from the annual conference. Basically, each member’s e-mail address gets one vote. The program allows only one vote be cast from an email address.
Qualifications
NOWA is working on simplified qualifications for the various categories for membership, following the example set by OWAA. They also don’t use a committee to approve the qualifications for membership.
NOWA is currently working on a Blogs membership catagory and is following OWAA’s lead, who lists a membership category of Blogs as:
“You are a citizen journalist who writes for a blog or other digital media that is updated with original content at least twice a month and receives 500 AUVs (Average Unique Views) per month over a 12-month period, or generates income.”
Greg Gulbrandsen has volunteered to be our NOWA Blog/Vlog authority in the capacity of answering questions about these relatively new categories.
He suggested changing the term “citizen journalist” to “digital journalist.” An OWAA representative indicated some OWAA members were reluctant to accept the category, but it was finally accepted.
Greg said blogging and vlogging can be a money-making way of communicating. NOWA needs to recruit new members. The old way of newspaper and magazine writing is coming to an end. Perhaps blogging and vlogging will provide new/younger members for NOWA?
What do you think?
Questions/comments?
The board is open to any and all questions and comments. Open dialogue is encouraged, as are e-mails and telephone calls between members.
What did I forget? Let me know.
Dennis
NOWA Vice President