From the President- November 2010

2010 AAPG Leadership Conference–Tulsa, Oklahoma
 
On August 27 at 7:10 AM it was 83 degrees F in Houston. When I landed at Tulsa at 8:40 AM it was 62 degrees F. Wow, What a difference! It stayed between 64 and 88 degrees all weekend. That was the good news. The bad news was I stayed inside all weekend in meetings. Other good news was that the meetings were humorous, entertaining, and educational. The Leadership Conference is held yearly in August at a resort hotel outside of Tulsa. The event is attended by Tulsa AAPG management staff, national elected AAPG officers, AAPG Committee Chairmen, Regional and Sectional Presidents, representatives of Sectional AAPG Young Professionals, and Student Chapter leaders from around the world. An extremely impressive group.After a very humorous and educational keynote speech, “The Power of Influence”, by Andrew L. Urich, JD, Puterbaugh Professor of Ethics & Legal Studies in Business, we split up into focus groups. The focus group that I found very interesting was entitled “AAPG in 2035”. It was led by AAPG President-Elect Paul Weimer and Regional Vice-Presidental candidate David Blanchard. The quote that preceded the discussion was from Niels Bohr: “Prediction is difficult, particularly when it concerns the future”. The discussion centered on what the AAPG would look like in 2035. We “crammed” a scheduled two-hour discussion into three hours and could have gone longer had we had more time available. After numerous scenarios and many predictions, we came to no conclusions (see above remark by Niels Bohr).
The discussions that interested me most concerned membership predictions. AAPG has a total membership of 31,887 as of July 1, 2010. The figure displayed here is a chart that was shown at the meeting. As you can see, the largest age groups are 51-60, students, and under 30. The concern for the AAPG is what will happen 10 years from now when most of the greater-than-51 age group is gone from the membership role. The two groups that have the potential to fill the gap are students and under 30. Students do not have a great record of remaining with the AAPG after graduation. The other areas of potential are the various international regions. The AAPG predicts a massive decrease in membership by 2020 if nothing is done to increase enrollment of the student, under 30, and international groups.
 
I have not done an age/percentage chart for the HGS, but I believe that our age distributions are similar to those of AAPG. This means that we need to emphasize increasing our membership, especially with the younger geoscientists in the Houston area. The NeoGeos Committee Chairman Carrie Kidd is leading an effort to get that group more involved in membership growth. They manned our exhibit booth at the recent NAPE using a laptop to sign up new members on the spot. They also have been at the last two technical talks to help recruit new members. Jeff Allen, a NeoGeos member, has recently volunteered to be chairman of the Membership Growth Committee of HGS. His enthusiasm and interest in membership should go a long way in helping alleviate a potential problem for the HGS.
 
Let’s all work to recruit new members.
Laissez les bon temps rouler
 

source: 
John Tubb
releasedate: 
Thursday, October 28, 2010
subcategory: 
From the President