Secretary’s Report
Business Meeting
NAAL January 6, 2018

Proxies reported:
For Dick Vosko and Ruth Langer: Troy Messenger
For Timothy Fitzgerald: Vicky Tufano
I begin my term as Secretary with thanksgiving for the pleasure of serving with the many wonderful members of the Academy Committee during this year, and appreciation to you, the members of the Academy, for your support and graciousness. I want to give particular thanks to Troy Messenger, whose work in this role and ongoing tech support early on has made my work and learning curve much easier.
As you may be aware, the Academy Committee uses a variety of software platforms to support our work. The secretary in particular uses Neon to manage our membership database, event registration, and communications; Joomla as the primary interface for posting to and editing our website; and Sched.com as our scheduling app for the annual meeting.

This is now the third year we have used Sched.com to provide our online meeting program. We have also tried to supply additional printed resources as needed to those who have asked. Sched has changed its interface a bit this past year, but I will report the tech support from this organization is outstanding. And our expense for the online program this year was only $125, actually $25 less than last year.

I remind you to complete the Online Survey. A link may be found on your program for Sunday morning. I will also be emailing the link at the conclusion of the annual meeting.

In the survey you will see an opportunity to make Berakah nominations. You may also make recommendations directly to the President.

You will also find a question about the possibility of changing the dates of our meetings to avoid meeting over Epiphany/Theophany (January 6 or 7). We seek your thoughtful reflections on this question of hospitality for our Eastern Rite and Orthodox members.

Please keep your email address updated with us, since that is our primary mode of communication with you. You can always contact me, .
And if you haven’t already, be sure to tweet your photos of this event to the hashtag #naal2018. We will use them to refresh our website.

Finally, thank you, members of the Academy, for the opportunity to serve you with our delightful colleagues in the Academy Committee.