Letter From The President - June 2014
Change Happens
There were some exciting changes that happened during the May 2014 AUGI Board of Directors meeting. First, as you have no doubt noticed, it’s my face here in AUGIWORLD as the newest President of AUGI while maintaining my role as Chairman of the Board. David Harrington stepped down as the President of AUGI in a planned transition to myself. David’s term as president was immensely valuable to the organization and he did so much for AUGI. But David isn’t disappearing!
AUGI is taking the responsible step of creating a management team to handle the operations, communications, and finances of the organization. David will be our new Director of Operations, which allows him to stay involved with the organization about which he feels so passionate. Kevin Merritt is AUGI’s Director of Communications, a role that he was already in, and is working on the external face of AUGI to the rest of the world. July Ratley, our current accountant, has agreed to become the new Director of Finance, a position for which she is well qualified, to make sure AUGI is well-funded and fiscally responsible.
These three directors form the management team of AUGI and report to your Board of Directors. The board is confident that this management team has the skills, knowledge, and talent to provide you with more features than AUGI has ever provided in the past. All three of these individuals have already been acting in this capacity to some degree so there is actually little disruption to the day-to-day operation of AUGI.
The creation of this management team frees the Board of Directors to concentrate on strategic planning for your organization. For years it has been recognized that the board needs to be more strategic and not buried in the day-to-day operation of AUGI. So what is next for the board? We ask that you participate in upcoming surveys and tell us what you want. While the board tries to determine what is best for AUGI, we love it when you talk directly to us. Please reach out to the board members to tell us what is important to you. You can reach us in the forums, by email (board@augi.com), and by speaking to us at events. We want to hear from you.
Another significant change is that Ray Eisenberg, AUGI’s liaison at Autodesk, will be leaving Autodesk soon. This means that we have a new liaison, Olivier LePord. We met with both of them at our meeting and we know Ray is leaving us in capable hands, but Ray will still be missed.
In closing I want to express my appreciation to the Board of Directors for theirconfidence in electing me as President of AUGI. Change happens, and I hope that my term as President helps AUGI provide even more reasons for you to want to be a member of AUGI.
R. Robert Bell
AUGI President/Chairman of the Board