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<< back to the 2003 archive listing << Food Protection Trends COMMENTARY from the executive director “We are a group of individuals who come together to help produce the
leading food safety meeting in the world!” Summer is a busy time for most, but it is an especially busy time for IAFP. May and June brings warmer temperatures, green grass, leaves on the trees and lots and lots of work for our Members, Board and staff! By July, the time starts closing in and there are only weeks to go until Annual Meeting starts. Registration and hotel reservation cut-off deadlines pass and we know our time is near. We have been very fortunate over the past years to see a steady growth in the number of attendees and exhibitors at the IAFP Annual Meetings. Although this creates more work and a few new problems for us here at the office, these are great problems to have to deal with. We would much rather deal with growth problems than the opposite! An example of our growth can be seen in the number of attendees. This year we expect 1,450 to 1,500 attendees. It was just six short years ago when we first broke 1,000 attendees. Think of what that means in terms of our staff processing registrations. In comparison, the workload increased by one-half but our staff size remained the same. We had to find more efficient ways to process registrations with the same number of people in order to keep up. The IAFP Web site and online registration has helped by making our registration process flow smoothly. Why do you think the attendance has grown by 50% in 6 years? We think we have the answer, “because ours is the best meeting for food science and food safety, hands down!” This is evidenced by the number of symposium proposals (46) and technical papers (426) received this past year. We will have more than 500 presentations at IAFP 2003 in comparison to half that many only three or four years ago. We now have five concurrent sessions compared to three just four years ago. The number of presenters has significantly increased over the past few years and each presenter must be communicated with at least three times prior to their presentation. Again, this essentially doubled the workload in this area and all the while our staff size remained the same. (Are you seeing where I am going yet?) Since the number of presentations has grown, the Program and Abstract Book of course had to follow this same trend. In 1999, our Program Book was 116 pages; this year there are 236 pages! It is easy to see that this is two times as many pages and easily twice the work! Yes, you guessed it; our staff size remained the same. Another area of fantastic growth has been in our exhibit hall and sponsorships. In this year of hard economic conditions, we were able to improve our sponsorship monies by 50% over the amount raised in 2002 and increase our exhibitors by 10 over last year. This was welcome news to us in June and July when preparing for the 90th Annual Meeting. We are indeed fortunate to receive the support of the leading companies involved in providing a safe food supply to the world’s consumers! One last time, during this growth, our staff size remained the same. What I really want to say here is, “a huge thank you to the IAFP staff for all of your hard work and dedication to doing a great job in all that you do”. We have the best staff a director could ever wish to work with! Our staff of 10 gives 110% to prepare for the Annual Meeting because we know what it means to our Members, our exhibitors and to our attendees. It is the one place you can go to gain knowledge of new products and services, learn about the latest research and to meet new friends who could lead you to new discover-ies or help solve problems that you might encounter later in your career. The IAFP staff recognizes the importance of what we do and we enjoy the working relationships with our members. We are a group of individuals who come together to help produce the “leading food safety meeting in the world!” Sure, it takes a lot of work, but the pay off is knowing that we have done a job to the best of our abilities and that our work was appreciated. To the IAFP staff — thanks for everything you do and the sacrifices you make! I want to end this month with a short note about Harry Haverland. As Anna Lammerding mentioned in her column, Harry passed away in June of 2003. We will surely miss Harry and his unending enthusiasm and support for IAFP and the IAFP Foundation. Anna also pointed out that IAFP 2003 is dedicated to the memory of Harry. He was one fine gentleman and always willing to do whatever he could to help IAFP. Our thoughts are with his family. |