A few notes from the Tampa AAG meeting

Geographers working at the Tampa Convention Center lobby, during the AAG annual meeting

I met Jenny Zorn only a few minutes after I had picked up the registration materials.  Over the couple of days, I met a few more from our region.  With the sessions spread across the rooms and the buildings, I did not get to meet many APCGers though :(

The respective presidents of the different regional divisions of the AAG got together for, as I understand it, the first time ever.  I hope to get a copy of the group photo that they asked us to pose for, especially because it will serve as a reminder for me to get our own Executive Council group photo done at the Tucson meeting--and, hopefully, we will continue to do such group photos at every annual meeting.  Of course, over the last two meetings, we have also been sharing on Facebook our own photos from the meetings.  We will have quite some photo collection over the next few years.

We regional division folk met as a larger group that included the AAG presidents--current, past, and incoming--and regional councillors (including our rep, Scott Mensing,) and AAG staff.  The spring issue of Pacifica will include a report from Scott on this meeting and on other items as well.  As Scott notes in his report, we identified a number of issues that the divisions face and the idea is to put together a "best practices" manual that we can all use.

All the people present there appreciated and lauded the innovative ways in which we try to stay connected as members--examples like the listserv, Pacifica, and Facebook caught their attention a lot.  While it was good to know that others, too, face very similar issues that we do when it comes to membership or budget, it was encouraging to know that we in the APCG have actively pursued a great number of new ways of thinking about them.

Here is to continuing with being in the forefront of many more "best practices."