2020 Directory

5 AIA WYOMING PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE It just hit me that this is my last President’s message that I will write as my two-year term as President of AIA Wyoming comes to an end. I want to sincerely thank all our members for trusting me with the responsibility to serve in this role. BY CLINT TAYLOR , AIA 2 020 has been a unique year, to say the least. While it is easy to see the negative of everything that has happened this year, we as Architects are trained to look deeper. We can still find the positive side of events, regardless of how small that side may be sometimes. While we can’t ignore the negatives, I choose to focus on our victories this year and our triumphs over individual adversities. For example, we don’t have to worry about murder hornets anymore...ha. When it looked like we would not be able to hold our Spring Conference in Cody due to COVID, we quickly formed an Online CES Task Force that included Suzanne Norton, AIA, Britney Sulzen, Assoc. AIA, Lewis Matthew Miller, AIA, Susan Menghini, Executive Director and myself. The intent of the Task Force was to find the best way to hold a virtual conference and provide our members with quality continuing education credits while following the new AIA/CES requirements. The timing prohibited us from having the Spring Conference virtual- ly, our awesome volunteers on the planning team were able to move several sessions and speakers to our Annual Fall Conference in Casper. I extend a hearty thank you to our sponsors and exhibitors who stood by us through the transition. Your Board of Directors also reevaluated the 2020 budget. We cut travel budgets and trimmed program budgets in response to the anticipated loss of revenue from the Spring Conference. Our Annual Fall Conference planning team and staff outdid themselves by planning essentially three conferences in one. They had the conference mostly set only to have to change venues to accommodate new social distancing requirements. They had to find a much larger venue where our mem- bers could safely attend and stay 6’ apart. They were also able to broadcast all of the sessions to create AIA Wyoming’s first vir- tual conference at the same time. We were able to serve our members who could not attend in-person and respect our members who did not feel safe attending meetings, while making them feel like they were still a part of the conference. The comradery and fellowship of our conference was still preserved (admittedly at a lesser degree) through the hard work of our volunteers on the planning team. I am so proud to be a part of this organization that works so hard for its members. In addition to the Annual Fall Conference we held our Design Awards Program. We were able to safely celebrate our members, their firms, and their accomplishments. While this wasn’t a typical awards reception, your planning team was able to preserve the key aspects and transform the event into something more. I believe this is just one example of how our training as Architects and our finely-honed problem-solving skills allow us to adapt to these changing times. Through the hard work of the planning teams, a strong attendance by our member- ship, the continued support of our sponsors and exhibitors, and an outpouring of our firms submitting for awards our Annual Fall Conference and Design Awards were able to generate more revenue for your Chapter than what we had predicted they would. This combined with the quick budget reaction of your Board allowed for this year’s budget to remain in the black. I am still concerned looking forward to 2021 and the economic uncertainty involved. In response, the Board of Directors has implemented a Non-dues Revenue Task Force made up of Dan Stalker, AIA, Rachel Delventhal, AIA and Susan Menghini, Executive Director to review our current programs and initiate some new ideas to increase revenue for the Chapter. Our membership stepped up this year with several candidates volunteering to serve you on the Board of Directors. With all the uncertainty and chaos in this year, we bounced back from last year when we didn’t have a single volunteer at election time. Perhaps it took a pandemic to shake us out of some level of complacency. Maybe it was just several members seeing the opportunity to grow through these hard times and help our profession. Maybe it was a combination of several other factors, but it was most defi- nitely not a coincidence that when the going got tough our members stepped forward. We welcome in 2021 Dale Buckingham, AIA as our President-elect, Brandon Daigle, AIA as our Treasurer and Tim Schenk, AIA as our Director. I also thank our other candidates for stepping up to run for office. CONTINUED ON PAGE 6