First of all, I would like to thank everyone who responded to the IPMS survey last month. We received a load of great feedback that will be used in the coming months by the IPMS/USA review committee. As would be expected by a wide cross-section of IPMS'ers, we have received a wide range of suggestions and thoughts for each of the tougher questions. The beauty of this feedback is that we're already getting some significant pros and cons that go beyond what many of us had considered and will help us lay out our recommendations to the IPMS/USA Executive Board. What was more interesting was some of the feedback from non-IPMS'ers and from members of the hobby trade and their perceptions of IPMS/USA members. There were some great (and troubling) reflections of our group as a whole. There was also some interesting feedback from modelers around the globe who see the hobby industry responding to all of the demands of the modeling community and, in turn, pricing kits beyond the reach of young modelers. In essence, we may be creating the demise of our hobby. While some of this feedback pertains directly to the charter of our review committee, some of it does not. Nevertheless, all of this feedback is important to the health and well being of IPMS and of the hobby industry in general. In fact, the review committee has held its first meeting a week before Christmas and will meet monthly to work our way through the issues. Our charter is to deliver our recommendations to the IPMS/USA Executive Board meeting at the 2003 National Convention in Oklahoma City. I have also been monitoring many of the discussion groups on the internet that are expressing their concerns over our review committee and what will be done with these surveys and feedback that will come in over the next several months. Rather than make everyone wait for our recommendations to be presented, I will be posting updates on the IPMS/Fort Wayne website (www.cybermodeler.com) in the coming weeks to share some of the statistical pros and cons over each topic area, excerpts of the inputs we've received in the surveys, and some of the more interesting commentaries that we've received. We'll also post the review committees positions and recommendations in each area once we're ready for the Nationals. In this way, each of you can still take part in the process of keeping our hobby and our organization moving strongly into the future. Have a happy and prosperous 2003, and oh yes - go build a model!
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