Perspectives from North of the 49th
June 2006

“The ‘Future Search Process’ as our strategic planning was called, consisted of various stages ”
By Jeffrey Farber, IAFP President        

As I am writing this column, I am up in the clouds cruising at 35,000 feet. I am still in a state of euphoria as all IAFP staff and Executive Board Members took part in a wonderful full day strategic planning session in Des Moines, Iowa. We also had the great pleasure of welcoming our new incoming Secretary, Vickie Lewandowski and our Affiliate Council Secretary, Maria Teresa Destro, to our meeting. We had our last strategic planning session a short 2-years ago, and, as was pointed out by David Tharp at the beginning of our session, we already reached many of the goals that we hoped to achieve in a 3–5 year time frame! This was a great way to start the day, realizing that we had achieved so much in a short 2-year period.

The “Future Search Process” as our strategic planning was called, consisted of various stages. We started off the day with an account of the history of IAFP and how the Association was started back in 1911 by a group of dairy and milk inspectors, two of whom were from outside the United States (one from Canada and one from Australia). As an aside, for those of you who are not aware, the history of the Association is neatly summarized in our booklet entitled IAFP History 1911–2000. The first step, as mentioned above, focused on the past. We then focused on the present, as organizations need to be aware of what is happening in their internal, as well as external environments. Then we examined some of the critical issues facing IAFP, defined as the internal or external factors or trends that pose opportunities or threats to IAFP during the next 3–5 years. Next, we focused on the future, setting the past aside and designing an ideal future for the organization, while identifying the key actions and milestones needed to make our new vision a reality. A gap analysis was then done to compare where we are now with where we want to be. The final steps consisted of planning and selecting key issues to pursue and developing specific action plans to overcome any potential obstacles or to pursue opportunities. We had great input and enthusiasm in the room and many excellent ideas arose.

We discussed ideas around seven major themes, which we had prioritized from a larger list. These included (1) international growth; (2) communications; (3) outreach: education and policy; (4) the IAFP Foundation; (5) financial growth; (6) Affiliates and (7) the Annual Meeting.

In terms of international growth, we felt a very strong need to develop our international presence. A survey will be conducted to find out the views of our international Members and face-to-face discussions will be held at IAFP 2006. We also need to keep up the momentum started by our first international meeting, which was held in Prague last year, and hold an international meeting every year. Another area discussed was to show our presence at other international meetings, either by
co-sponsoring or exhibiting at the meetings. In addition, our dues restructure planned for January 2007 will make it easier to attract and keep International Members.

For the Foundation, many of you are aware that we have produced a DVD highlighting the Association and the Foundation. We have also produced print material to go along with the DVD (as an aside we will be showcasing the video at our Annual Meeting!). Now that we have all this great material, we are developing a plan for how we are going to roll this out when we go to visit potential donors. The Board felt that we need some professional help in terms of a training session for how we approach companies for donations. For this themed area, we also talked about having a tiered recognition program for our Foundation contributors.

For the Communications theme, we discussed a number of issues. Among the top ideas was the possibility of having a dedicated Editor for our new electronic newsletter, which will be starting up officially around the first of the New Year. We would also like to use more teleconferences for our PDG groups, etc., as well as make more use of video conferencing and web casting for our workshops and meetings.

A “translation strategy” was also discussed for some of our printed and/or educational material. For example, having some of our applied booklets or white papers available in Spanish. An idea arose that we should be examining the benefits of having our own “IAFP Press” to publish books. Lastly, we want to enhance the “Members Only” section of our Web site.

With regards to outreach: education and policy, an idea was to have a trial run for our rapid response series, so that we could just “press a button” when we want to organize a one-day symposium on a very hot topic. We also are strongly considering expanding our student travel scholarships, as well as setting up an IAFP expert network. Our University Speaker Program will continue to be promoted.

We want to reach out more to our Affiliates and conduct a survey to determine and more closely tailor the needs of the individual Affiliates. It was discussed that our dues restructuring will help enormously with IAFP Membership growth from the Affiliates. We would also like to produce new promotional materials for the Affiliates and consider some permanent displays for them.

In relation to financial growth, some seminal thoughts included job postings on the IAFP Web site, getting advertising revenue from our new e-newsletter, being more creative with our sponsorships to maximize value and expanding our auction items.

For our Annual Meeting, some of the dialogue revolved around adding more discussion to the symposia, surveying members to find the best “novel” ideas for the formatting of future Meetings, as well as having the Board re-evaluate the schedule and all aspects of the Meeting on a regular basis.

This is just a minor snapshot of our strategic session. As you can well imagine, we had a very busy and fruitful day, one that energized each and every one of us. As I have said often in this column, the future of IAFP is looking very bright and this is mainly due to all the great work and hard efforts of David Tharp, Lisa Hovey and the whole IAFP staff! Keep up the great work everyone! I will keep you updated on the progress of our strategic planning as we make progress on it.

Dr. J’s Science Corner:

• A very interesting project entitled the “New Orleans Mold Project” is comprised of a group of mycologists, engineers, imaging experts and software designers. One of the objectives of the group is to try and identify molds in real-time, and one of the ways they are doing this is by gener-ating spectral patterns for mold speciation by a pro-cess called hyperspectral imaging. Because if its tropical climate and persist-ent moisture, New Orleans has had to deal with fungal disease issues for a long time.

• A recent US survey of the best scientific organizations to work for in 2006 found that the top 5 most import-ant employee satisfaction factors for employees were (1) personal job satisfaction; (2) providing the equipment and services needed to do the job; (3) contributions being appreciated along with good teamwork; (4) companies setting and adhering to high ethical standards and (5) adequate funding (for research).

• Some new research on the benefits of calcium in relation to women’s bone health has shown that calcium does work, but only if taken regularly

• An important study on “chronic fatigue syndrome” has shown that there appears to be a clear “biologic basis” for the syndrome and physical changes in certain genes do occur

• As recently reported in a Canadian Medical Journal, another in the line of herbal remedies that might react with other medications is chamomile, which is known to contain coumarin, an anti-coagulant. Taking too much chamomile may be dangerous if a patient is already taking a blood thinner such as warfarin.

As always, I can be reached by E-mail at: jeff_farber@hc-sc.gc.ca and would love to hear from you!

Have a great month!