AMIA AT 14 -- A CALL FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION

Last year's AMIA at 13 session packed a room in Minneapolis and was a fruitful and deeply felt discussion. We've now been asked to help put together a session for this year, called AMIA at 14: Communicating Our Needs and Desires, and we are asking for your help.

AMIA at 14 is designed to engage members in discussion to strengthen our common mission and guide the organization. We want to ensure that your voice is heard in the planning of this session. We've therefore set up a special, unofficial discussion group called AMIA at 14. To subscribe, please send a message to amia14-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Your participation in the planning of the session is of paramount importance! From the listserv discussion, we will pull ideas to help shape the session, which will be moderated by Ray Edmondson.

Initial topics under consideration include:

-- Community building so that AMIA works for all of its members and the members work for the Association.
-- Advocacy efforts in sectors connected with moving image and cultural issues.
-- National and international developments and inclusion.
-- Leadership, mentoring, and communications within AMIA.
-- Understanding resources available to individuals and organizations and ways AMIA might work to solve inequities.
--Seeking membership views on issues that should be being covered in conference sessions but which are not at present.

AMIA at 14 is not a Board-sponsored session and is not intended to focus on specific issues of AMIA's management and governance. Rather, the session is a forum for developing consensus on direction and energy within the organization and in its relation to the world.

We invite people to read the transcript from last year's session AMIA at 13: Surviving our Teenage Years chaired by Sarah Ziebell Mann and Rick Prelinger in Minneapolis. That session was amazingly well attended and full of energy. Also, take a look at the AMIA Strategic Plan, a very useful document for insight into possible directions and concerns.

Please prepare for and participate in "AMIA at 14": the session is yours.