First, to all those who made the convention possible a very large THANKS! Everybody that I talk with concurs that we just had a great convention, probably AERC's best ever. Particular thanks goes to:

-- The Convention Committee, chaired by Robert Ribley and ably assisted by his wife Dr. Melissa Ribley who also chairs our Veterinary Committee, plus Peter Ansorge, Vonita Bowers, Paulette Brehob, Darolyn Butler, Diane Fruth and Jan Jeffers

-- The Texas Endurance Riders Association who provided great local support

-- The office staff of Kathleen Henkel, Liz Bryson, Judy Hall, and Troy Smith and their family and friends who put in countless hours to make this work

-- The Auburn Printers owners who flew from California to Texas to volunteer as speaker introducer (Brad) and run the AERC raffle booth (Merrill and daughter Lizzi)

-- The outstanding educational speakers -- Robert Ball, DVM, PC; Deb Bennett, PhD; Denny Emerson; Jim Mitchell; Kerry Ridgway, DVM; Thomas Tobin, DVM, PhD, and Paul Zeck

-- The sponsors and vendors who supported us -- please give them your support

-- John Parke, who led the Hot Topics discussions and emceed the regional and international awards presentations

-- John Parke and Laura Hayes who emceed the national awards banquet, and

-- Bob and Julie Suhr, who provided what was the personal high point to me, the narrated slide show entitled, "The Way We Were, the Way We Are," which they dedicated to my personal mentor, AERC Past President and Hall of Fame member Maggy Price

-- All of you who attended.

The convention also coincided with two board meetings -- the outgoing board meeting on Thursday night and the incoming board meeting on Sunday morning. I have challenged our board to take AERC from being a good organization to a truly great organization. As preparatory reading I sent the Board of Directors members the monograph entitled "Good to Great and the Social Sector" by Jim Collins, author of the bestselling book "Good to Great." I recommend this monograph to any of you participating significantly in a nonprofit organization.

In the monograph Collins explains how nonprofit organizations differ from for-profit commercial businesses and what distinguishes the merely good social sector organizations from the truly great organizations. I believe AERC today is a definitely a good organization that serves its members well but not yet a truly great organization.

In subsequent columns I will be talking about the steps we will be taking to meet the challenge of becoming a great organization. One of the most important steps is to change the organizational structure of the AERC committees reporting to the President to meet the more complex needs of AERC today as defined in our Vision and Mission statement (see page 1 of EN).

We will provide the details of the structure in next month's Endurance News, on the AERC members forum and on the website. We will have group leaders for committee groups organized into these categories:

--Marketing, including Education, Membership, and Convention

-- Competitions and Events

-- Trails and Research

-- Finance

-- Legal and Governance, including Welfare of the Horse

-- Veterinary

Technical.

AERC has the potential to be really great organization. Let's go for it!