The Ink Zone
September
2000
Number 96
Change and the AAPA
Oxymoron or opportunity?
During the Hayward AAPA convention, Dean Rae and Lee Hawes orchestrated a visionary group session addressing where the AAPA is going in the 21st century. Simulating and provocative, the duo will no doubt detail these findings in their own publications. In my perspective, we succeeded in capturing good ideas however stopped a bit short of defining what to do. If we don't know how we are going to get there, we might well end up some place else.
The AAPA's successes, a vehicle for writers, printers, graphic artists and poets to explore their talents without fear by having fun, are well recorded in the 64 years of history; our journal record. To make his point that the past is not the key to the future Professor Rae asked us to check our baggage at the door while we squint into the future to see if the organization is willing to change with the shifting times.
The basic conclusions I retained from this brainstorming session to maintain a healthy AAPA are to:
~ Recruit new and younger members
~ Provide encouragement and positive feedback to the membership
~ Encourage change
~ Promote being active
~ Maintain our non profit status
~ Have Fun!!!!
Laudable ideas all, but will the AAPA tolerate change or encourage it? It is either an opportunity for the AAPA or an oxymoron! The actions we take can lead us in quite different directions if we are not focused on what is important. We can adopt status quo stoic conservative activity where we continue to react to the changes forced upon us or we can blaze the path leading new and old members alike into the future.
Well, it is obvious to me that if
we want to the AAPA to survive, we must embrace and encourage change. Make it
happen rather than wait for it to happen to us. I expect that the ideas and
recommendations that follow will be controversial at best, however I do hope
that those with merit will be somehow forged into making the future as fun and
productive as the past. The actions we might wish to take are detailed below:
Recruit:
Continue with the successful
campaign to recruit on the internet. Find ways to endorse and work with graphic
arts departments in secondary and university education programs. Advertise in
the “zines”. Be willing to embrace and include people from around the world.
Mount an aggressive program to contact the graphic arts departments with details
of our association. Recruit regional members to identify and work with working
printing museums and post the AAPA endorsement of their activities to continue
the 'black arts into the future'.
Expand & Embrace:
Find ways to expand our basic educational service, mentoring, and the locations for our members work to be shared. Make the bundle available on several mediums tailored to the members need including CD, the internet, and of course the paper tactile bundle.
List how many folks contributed during the year = encourage diversity. Jack Scott told me that it is nearly 100 different people each year. Make a big deal of this and not just make special awards for the most active that we want to read. List and award the most active is ok and perhaps award certificates for those with at least 12 submission per year.
Listen and encouraging ideas and feedback on just what the AAPA should be doing and how we can get there is vital. The Rae / Hawes session is a good start. There have been others as well, including a full day session facilitated by Gale Mueller in 1994. Perhaps an opportunity for one of the VP's is to collect and disseminate these ideas in the AAJ
Encouragement:
Find ways to encourage the efforts of those willing to submit items for the bundle. There might be awards for the first of something to appear in the AAPA. The first totally laser color printed journal or the first hologram, etc. Make it important to try new things. Continue the comp card program with positive feedback, not just the notification of the number to errors, etc.
This years Past President award is a good example of were a feedback / reward kept a good new member. There are no secondary level awards in the AAPA, all have a real value in helping the membership stay active.
Form a “Shadow Laureate Committee” composed of members under the age of 25 to come up with what they see as laureate accomplishments;-no rules just what they see as awards worth extending (within or outside of the constitution!). Gray hairs are leading the upstarts, perhaps it should be the other way around?
Consider restructuring the laureate awards to be more consistent with where we are and were we are going, not where we have been. Do the gray hairs have too much baggage? Advertise the awards-make it obvious to the members. Notice that the people of today are interested in subjects, not just the classic categories of Fiction and Non Fiction. Perhaps we can use the subject categories from Barns and Noble as an example of what contributions might we judged:mysteries health humor cooking travel history science romance Art business sports Graphic arts poetry
In Non Letter press consider awards or recognition for things:
Tactual
Audio
Visual
Zines (Zeens dean as in magaZINE)In the letter press category perhaps it is still important to separate good original art, sound and clear graphic design and layout, good writing and poetry, and the best overall journal. What might help here is a simple annual encouragement that gives the general qualifications for these awards. I have been a member for nearly 20 years and I have yet to understand the criteria or qualifications. While that has not stopped me from publishing the membership in general can be further encourage to contribute and compete and this might well be yet another way to provide stimulators..
Celebrate milestones. As the Past Presidents award is for the first effort, it is important to celebrate the achievements of other achievements. While I am not suggesting a Hallmark-like set of awards like wedding anniversaries, it might well be worth a mention in the AAJ of people who reach 25, 50, 75, etc.
Above all, continue to make the AAPA the place to
Have fun
Awards:
It is not necessary to make formal presentations for all the categories or awards suggested. One simple solution is to publish annually a special article in the AAJ that lists the 'winners or bests' in categories. At the same time list the new things tried in the year and in general talk about the awards and the good things that happened.
It is important to make the membership aware that jobs well done and new things tried are as important to the AAPA as they are to the people who do them. Encourage the participation without making it a fierce competition.
Define the AAPA / What is Amateur?
Some of our members have writing skills honed to the precision of the dull pencils we rested on our young shoulders in second grade to print, as best we could, on wood chip papers. Other, [professing to be amateurs], posses free flow of ideas from the heart to the papers as they quill ordered words into pictures we all can see. This is only amateur in that they do not accept money for their efforts. What is a true amateur? The awards appear to go mostly to the latter group. Should there be some recognition of those who's primary profession is outside journalism?
Amateur Journalism, often sighted as the back bone of the AAPA by some, does not adequately explain the breadth of the organization, present or future. We are printers, writers, graphic artists, communicating ideas and thoughts through a variety of mediums. Lets make this obvious to the membership and in our recruiting efforts.
Change our image
Please don't change the name of AAPA, rather give it a second title that says “a association of hobby printers, writers, poets, and graphic artists having fun”. As with many modernized companies, it might well be sufficient to say AAPA and not spell out the words, especially if we adopt a descriptive second title.
Modernize the offices
If it proves necessary to amend the AAPA constitution, consider please defining the officers duties to include the above ideas and functions.
The Challenge:
Our collective challenge is to find ways to make the changes necessary rather than look for all the reasons not to. It is easy to do nothing. On the other hand it is rewarding to find positive solutions.
G.E. McKelvey
GEM Press
9485 E. Conquistadores Dr.
Scottsdale, Arizona
85255-4345
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480 473-9320
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