Hi John. Glad you took the time to look up a straightforward term. The new board has been VERY busy. I'll have to double-check, but I believe we have around 30 new tasks or projects that board members (mostly the new crew, I'm happy to say) have proposed. This is in addition to the ones left over from last year that we didn't have time (or board desire) to complete. A lot of things are underway but we decided go get away from "gonna dos" and "in progress" reports and try to stick with "we did this and this and this" instead.

The things that were "done" were reported on. Everything else will either appear in the next magazine or be discussed at the next board meeting where it's warranted.

Also, most of us were quite busy with the post-convention activities (processing registration cards, membership updates, writing articles for the magazine, cleaning, repairing, and updating convention inventory, calculating convention finances, paying bills, remitting auction consignment checks, shipping auction items, updating our corporate info (which included securing a "street" address instead of using the address of whatever local member would allow it), getting a registered agent (Jerry Vergatos was still listed as ours), updating officer info (this was over a year old), continued cleanup and organization of 2 storage lockers, writing code, restructuring our org chart, writing job descriptions, teaching the "new kids" how our google workspace is organized and how to use the more common tools we use, etc.

Come to the board meetings, John. We would love to have you listen in so you can report on it firsthand and ask questions about pretty much anything except "Why doesn't the CCA spend $5k+ to send someone across the country to man a table at the FUN show?" Same goes for the rest of you who are commenting on operations you're not familiar with. We leave the mics open for questions/comments the entire time and will continue to do so as long as everyone continues to be civil (which everyone has, thankfully).

It was quite notable that we had only 10-12 people come to this last meeting. If you google the meaning of "10-12 attending a meeting", it will probably tell you:

1. A dozen or less attendees took the time to find out what's happening in the club
2. Over 10 people expressed interest in the goings on of something they hold dear
3. Several hundred people avoided the peril of becoming informed
4. Meeting allegedly boycotted by all but a handful of concerned citizens
5. Obama and Trump were mysteriously absent from collectibles summit. What are they hiding?

The real reason MAY be because many of those who attended as guests in the past are now ON the board (yay!).

I know that at least 3 regular attendees (not board members) were traveling. I nearly didn't attend myself as I am in Las Vegas this week for a conference and didn't do my usual prep of things to report on (much of which I just tossed out here or will be in one of 2 articles I wrote for the magazine this issue).

Interest becomes action. Action becomes investment. Investment creates gains. Gains beget more interest.

I would encourage anyone reading this to show more interest in building than tearing down an institution that you arguably have used and treasured for years (or we wouldn't be having this conversation). Turn that interest into positive action. And let's create some more gains.

I'll see myself out. Take care!

-- barry