President's Message

by Marianne Bays

IPMAAC’s 20^th annual conference is the focus of this issue of the ACN. If you weren’t there with us in Boston, you missed an excellent, thought provoking program (thanks to Kristine Smith and her Program Committee) as well as a fun social experience (thanks to Warren Bobrow and his Host Committee). While we can’t do anything about the latter (sorry), we are going to try to provide information on the former to IPMAAC members in two different ways. First, in this issue of ACN, you will find summaries of some of the sessions that were delivered by our conference speakers. And, second, we will be working in the near future to provide full, down-loadable text files of selected conference papers to you on our Electronic Communications Network (http://www.ipmaac.org).

I’d like to use my space in this issue to report to you on the reports to, deliberations of and actions taken by the IPMAAC Board of Directors at our board meeting on Sunday, June 23.

Election Results:

Jeff Feuquay is our 1997 President-Elect and Kristine Smith has been elected by the IPMAAC membership to the Board of Directors for a three year term beginning in 1997. Additionally, the Board of Directors elected current board member, Doris Maye, to a three year term as the IPMAAC Representative to the IPMA Executive Council, beginning in 1997. Doris’ remaining one year term as a regular IPMAAC Board Member will be filled by this year’s general election runner-up, Bill Waldron. We are pleased to welcome Kris and Bill and to continue to work with Doris and Jeff.

Training Policy:

Current President-Elect Paul Kaiser presented a draft of a new IPMAAC training policy. Board approval was given to a new workshop pricing approach as well as to a slight increase in our workshop instructor compensation. The new policy is grounded in a philosophy that IPMAAC should only offer its custom as well as standard training workshops (see our new training brochures) in conjunction with a co-sponsoring organization (e.g., a public jurisdiction or regional assessment group), with total workshop pricing reflecting actual costs and a very modest recovery fee. The co-sponsoring organization will provide the training facility and will work with us to find other ways to reduce the cost of the offering as well. The overall objective of the new policy is greater flexibility and affordability for the training customer and assurance that IPMAAC’s training program does not lose money. We are currently discussing training offerings with MAPAC, WRIB and the City of Atlanta.

Training Workshops:

In the aforementioned new training brochure, we have adopted the approach of modularizing the material covered in our existing Exam Planning and T&E workshops, so that customers can pick and choose among the topics most relevant to their needs. The Oral Examining workshop that is currently under development has a target completion date of Fall 1996. In addition, the Training Committee has laid in plans to begin to develop an IPMAAC Multi-Purpose Job Analysis workshop (if you want to help, please call me). Our strategy for future training workshop offerings includes using as many of those people who attended our T&E and Exam Planning train-the-trainer workshops as secondary trainers as possible. We have a ready pool of instructor talent as well as quality training material. With our new policy and training approach, we hope to be in better position to respond to member and non-member training needs.

IPMA Assessment Council/IPMA-US Relations:

The IPMAAC Board of Directors has adopted a new policy with regard to annual participation in the four IPMA Regional Conferences and the Federal Section Conference aimed at improving IPMAAC visibility and providing increased service to IPMA-US. The policy states that we will annually offer to participate in each of these conferences by sponsoring a concurrent session, the topic of which will generally be selected by the IPMA Assessment Council Training Committee Chair. Travel money will be budgeted so that up to a maximum of $500 per conference is allocated for presenters’ non-reimbursed travel expenses.

Further, in addition to inviting each member of the IPMA-US Executive Council to attend our conference which is already our policy, IPMAAC will invite the President and/or IPMA-US Executive Council Representative from each of the Regions and the Federal Section to participate on the IPMAAC Conference program and offer complementary registration for those participants as well.

Future Conference Sites:

The Board reviewed hotel choices for our June 1998 conference in Chicago, IL and selected the Holiday Inn City Centre. We also selected the following sites to be researched for 1999: Clearwater/St. Petersburg, FL; Atlanta, GA; Dallas, TX; and Nashville/Memphis, TN. Final site selection for the 1999 conference will occur inOctober. Anyone wishing to suggest an additional site for consideration (in the Southern region) prior to then, is welcome to communicate this to me or directly to IPMA staff.

In my closing remarks at the conference, I uttered an “I’m outta here!” as I turned over the microphone to President-Elect Paul Kaiser, next year’s Program Committee Co-Chairs Mike Willihnganz and David Dye and Host Committee Chair Mabel Miramon. Strictly speaking, of course, that’s not true. My tenure as IPMAAC President runs through December of this year. And, while the successful accomplishment of the conference is a major milestone in my term, there are still many things to do before Paul Kaiser takes over in January. I remain committed to the job and the organization and I invite your active help over the remaining months of my term. (The current Training Committee and the University Liaison/Student Paper Competition Committee are in particular need of help.) At the same time, planning for the June 1997 Newport Beach, CA conference is already getting underway. If you’d like to help, just give Mike, David or Mabel a call. We welcome your participation!