President's Report

Ruth Beattie
University of Kentucky

rebeat1@email.uky.edu

On behalf of the entire ABLE membership, let me begin by thanking Jen VanDommelen and Mindy McCarville for all their work as hosts of the 2010 ABLE conference in Dalhousie. With 200 participants, this was the largest conference in recent years.  As a past host I am aware of all of the planning that takes place, the little details that have to be followed up on, the difficulty of choose the right menu for each event, and calculating how many gallons of coffee are needed for each morning break.  Thank you for a very memorable conference.

Over the past few years we have increased our use of technology in many areas. These include:

• An improved listserv for communication among our membership;
• Completion of the electronic conversion of past editions of the Proceedings  (begun by Corey Goldman);
• Electronic membership renewal that accepts credit card payments;
• Electronic submission of proposals for workshops and posters;
• Electronic submission of manuscripts for the Proceedings;
• Publishing the 2010 Proceedings in online format instead of CD format.

Many thanks are due to Mark Walvoord, Web Manager and Chris Beck for all their work of the past year on moving us so far forward on the technology front.

Congratulations and welcome to our new officers/ Board members:
Larry Blumer – President -Elect
Judy Guinan - Secretary
Karen McMahon – Member at Large

We have had a very successful recruiting year with a substantial increase in membership evidenced also by the large number of newcomers (1/3 of attendees) at the ABLE conference in Dalhousie.

The 2011 ABLE Conference will be held at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, June 14 – 17, hosted by Ralph Preszler, Amy Marion, & Lina Urquid.  See the ABLE web site for conference information.

I’d like to finish by thanking all of the Board members and officers for all their work throughout the year. So much of the running of the organization is carried out behind the scenes and often unnoticed unless you know where to look. Thank you for your dedication to ABLE.