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 ARBA Convention Recap...
The Minnesota group put on a wonderful convention in an excellent facility that was conveniently located downtown. Once we parked our truck it never moved until we left. Next year's Convention is in Indianapolis and the subsequent Convention was awarded to Wichita. Both of the next Conventions will begin on Saturday, rather than Sunday, so plan accordingly.
The big news from the ARBA Convention this year for District One was Linda and Ron Jinings Open Best In Show win with a Broken Holland Lop and Hannah Mowry's BIS Youth Cavy with a White Crested. Washington wins included the Uptagrafft's winning BOB Fuzzy Lop and BOS Coronet Cavy, and Autumn Dennistoun's BOB Youth Hotot. Bill & Marianne Mairs of Canada had BOB Flemish and Ben Easton of Idaho had BOB Youth French Lop.
District One Youth this year, comprised primarily of Washington and Idaho, did very well in Minneapolis. The big wins included Callie Weber's ARBA Queen honor combined with her national Crafts Education first, 1st runner up in Senior Breed ID and participating on the 2nd place senior Breed ID team. Reni Lucido was 3rd runner up for Queen, 1st runner up in the National Management Contest and also participated on the 2nd place senior Breed ID team. Hannah Mowry was 1st runner-up Duchess and participated on the 2nd place Intermediate Breed ID team. Garret Todd was 1st runner-up Duke, Noelle Adams was 2nd runner-up Princess, Riley Collar was 2nd runner-up Lady, and brother Austin was named the 2010 ARBA Lord. Washington teams took 2nd Intermediate Breed ID (Mowry, G. Todd, Carrie Nolan and G. Nice), and 2nd in seniors (Lucido, Weber, Autumn Dennistoun and Jessica Forbes). Idaho had a very good showing, as well with Jenny Easton 4th runner-up Queen giving District One 3 of the 5 national placements in that category. Gwen Brunelle was the National Intermediate Breed ID winner and 3rd runner-up Duchess; Ben Easton 2nd runner-up Duke; and the Idaho Intermediate Breed ID team was 3rd overall. Additionally, Jasmine Bocksnick of Montana placed 3rd in this year's
T-Shirt Contest. As always, D1 was represented by a great group of young people accompanied by an equally great group of adult advisors. Very special thanks goes to Michelle Uptagrafft-Smith for her work on this year's ARBA Youth Committee.
The new ARBA Standard of Perfection goes into effect January 1st. Both the SOP and a companion document entitled "Highlights of Standards Changes" are now available for purchase. The SOP is only changed every five years, so this one will be in effect until December 31, 2015. Publication of the Standard takes a tremendous amount of work and the ARBA Standards Committee is to be commended for its effort, as is Eric Stewart, the ARBA Executive Director, for his hand in printing and facilitating the publication.
The ARBA Board meetings in Minneapolis were efficient and productive. Highlights:
- The ARBA Board decided to let the Mini Satin and Satin breeds continue under the auspices of a single club. This had been a contentious issue but in the end, nearly 80% of the breed club's members voted to keep the breeds together and the ARBA Board honored the club's vote.
- The next ARBA Judge's Academy will be hosted on the west coast in District 2, (California). The Board felt that this opportunity needed to be moved around so that more members could take part and hopes to build on the success of the RabbitCon education project launched by the Del Mar Convention group and successfully repeated at the Minneapolis Convention.
- The Board decided to explore what the ARBA can (and cannot) do with regard to lobbying, legislative activity and involvement with local government agencies that consider laws and rules effecting the breeding and housing of rabbits and cavies. The intended goals are to document what we can do, develop materials that assist members as they deal with these issues directly, and explore the direct involvement by the ARBA in political action. The ARBA is a 501(c)(5) nonprofit corporation. As a nonprofit, there are restrictions on what the organization can do with regard to direct involvement, but it is clear that the ARBA can take open positions on legislation and rules that directly impact our members. The ARBA can also provide education to those involved in the law and rule making process. In the upcoming year, we will explore what we can do and what we can afford to do in this regard.
- It was generally acknowledged by Executive Director Stewart and the ARBA Board that we need to make information and technology improvements this coming year. The top priorities are improving the software used to implement the Registration system in order to process applications more efficiently and a new, integrated web site. The current registration software is woefully outdated and only allows one staff person to do data entry at a time, slowing the process down unacceptably, but in a way that cannot be helped with the current tools at hand. We need to give our staff the tools they need to do the job that our members expect. The budget was increased to accomplish these goals.
- Jennifer Whaley, Chair of the Membership Services Committee, proposed that we survey the membership on a variety of key issues and that we allow her committee to update marketing materials in an integrated way to better "brand" the ARBA. Both recommendations were accepted. The survey will be available on line, and for those unable to access that method, in written form. I encourage you to participate so that we can have real information about what the association membership considers important. The online version will make it much easier to tabulate results, so if you have an option, please use that version.
- The penalty to Registrars for mistakes on Registration applications was suspended pending review and evaluation of the process. There were clearly two important sides to this issue. The Board felt concern for penalties to Registrars that seemed too harsh and on the flip side, acknowledged that the mistakes made by Registrars on the forms presented noticeable staff time expense. Both issues need to be addressed for a reasonable solution. Late registration form submission penalties remain in effect.
- Because less than 20 people per year visit the ARBA office, we discussed ways to make the library and history of the association more accessible to members. Two ideas that surfaced were a "virtual" tour of the library (like the house tours you can get when you look at houses for sale on the internet), and moving the library materials around from place to place similar to the way art exhibits are moved from city to city.
- The Board agreed to explore production of the Registrar Study Guide in Japanese. It is not that we think there will be a large volume of Registrars from Japan, but rather to experiment with an instructive guide in Japanese that might support the interest in and growth of the ARBA there. If we can obtain free translation of the guide, the production cost of the booklets is minimal.
- Some convention equipment needs to be replaced. Of primary concern are the small cages because that is the area of greatest growth in the ARBA, though there are issues with the largest cages as well. The cages that are up for replacement are some of the originals purchased after the 1979 ARBA Convention. These cages have been powder coated once to extend their use, but they are at this point worn out. Gary Mohr, Equipment Manager, got a "winter" bid for replacement that kept our cost down and we looked at spreading the cost over two fiscal years to better manage the expense. Cages were to be tagged for replacement when loaded from this Convention. The goal is to have the cages ready for the Convention next year. Additionally, there is intention to insulate the trailers that hold the equipment to reduce the moisture and subsequent rust.
- There was discussion of combining elements of the Yearbook, Guidebook, and Secretary?s Handbook. That idea is being explored further by ARBA staff.
- The Convention Guidelines, tweaked just about every year, will again be reviewed to bring them up to current expectations. That task will be handled by the Board between now and the next Convention.
- All committees and ARBA representatives will be appointed before January 1st. There was a comment during the recent ARBA elections that committees should populated by general members and not ARBA Board members. ARBA Board members do not typically sit on committees and that has been true for many years. You can find last year's committee members still on the ARBA website, so you can see that for yourself. This year will be no exception. The vast majority of committee members will come from the general membership.
- The 2012 ARBA Convention was awarded to Wichita and will begin on Saturday instead of the usual Sunday. Note that the same is true for the 2011 Indianapolis Convention.
- The Board reviewed a presentation by Jeff Hardin using the IPAD to integrate the Standard of Perfection with video clips, pictures and notes that can be added by the user. It is a phenomenal technological advancement over what we now have in use.
- The Board considered budgets for the two year period that were both positive in their bottom lines. We expect to have the funding available to improve the technology and purchase the equipment discussed above, as well as other important projects. It is also expected that the ARBA will move to conform its financial reporting process to generally accepted nonprofit practice this year. This should not alarm anyone as the current system has been in place for longer than I have been a member, but it should bring us current with best practice for nonprofit organizations.
In what is becoming a big day at the Conventions, the new breed and variety presentations included 31 presentations. The two 'no shows' would have brought the total to 33. Nine of the new variety presentations were failed by their breed clubs and not presented to the ARBA Standards Committee. Of the 22 presentations that the ARBA Committee reviewed, 13 passed and 9 failed. Of the successful presentations, I only recognized two from District One (please let me know if there were more). Theresa Mueller was successful with all three of her Lionhead variety presentations (REW, Tort and Black) and my Otter Mini Satins were also approved.
If you have questions about the ARBA, the Board's agenda and decisions, etc. please do not hesitate to contact me.
And remember, you can connect with me and a little silliness on facebook - look for
"Doc Satin".
Best regards,
ARBA Director, District One
4685 W Griffin Creek Road
Medford, Oregon 97501
districtone@jeffnet.org |
