My Toot-toot
By Mark Tumarkin
Dave says I should toot my own horn on the AHA Board elections. Well, ok, I can do that. In case you don't know by now, I've been elected to the American Homebrewers Association Board of Advisors. The final day for voting was May 17th, and the announcement of the winners was made in the Homebrew Digest and on the AHA website the following week.
The AHA has been going through some changes over the last several years, most of them for the better. One of these changes involves the Board of Directors. BOA members had always been appointed by Charlie Papazian, the President of the Association of Brewers, the AHA's parent organization. Two years ago, Board positions began to be filled by election, with all AHA members eligible to vote.
Unfortunately, voter participation numbers have been extremely low. The first year, there were only about 70-80 votes placed. Last year that increased to approx. 120. This year, the turnout increased by 50%. That's the good news; it's also the bad news because that's still less than 200 votes out of a membership of over 10,000. Pretty pitiful. Though, I guess I shouldn't complain too much since the lower number of voters made it easier for me to get elected. Increasing voter participation (actually increasing member participation in all aspects of the AHA) is going to be one of my personal goals as a board member.
I'd like to do as much as I can to make the AHA more relevant to homebrewers and brew clubs. How many of you are AHA members? I'm going to try to increase the tangible benefits to being a member, while also working on educating people on some of the less tangible benefits. These are also very important to the long-term success of our hobby.
Most of the work of the BoA is done by email. There is an email list on the AHA server for Board members, similar in nature to our Hogtown list. Most of the committee work and communication takes place on this list. There is only one physical meeting per year. This is held at the AHA National Conference. This year the conference will be in LA. It is held in a different city each year, and as I've told you previously, we are making a bid to hold the conference in Orlando in 2002. The site of next year's conference will be announced in LA.
The beauteous thing is that the AHA pays for all the costs for BoA members, including airfare, hotel, and conference charges. Being a board member is a volunteer effort, and this is the AHA's way of thanking us for all the time and effort. All I can say, is thank you very much I'm there!