Many AERC activities are carried out by volunteers: ride managers, pulse takers, timers, committee members and chairs, your directors, and many more. The new Volunteer Service Award was established to honor an AERC member or members who have devoted an extraordinary amount of volunteer effort, time and service on behalf of AERC for many years.

I was the first recipient of this award in 2007 for work with Russ Humphrey that provided Internet services for AERC members. While it was an honor to receive the award, it really belongs to both Russ Humphrey and me. Russ is a Northwest Region rider who has been a member since the start of our Internet activities in 1995.

The relationship between endurance riding and the Internet may not seem obvious at first. It certainly wasn't back in 1995 when Steph Teeter, Russ Humphrey, and I started providing endurance and AERC information online.

We first met by e-mail and didn't actually meet face to face until several years later. Even though we hadn't met, we were still able to originate services that are used today by many endurance riders around the world -- thanks to the capabilities of the Internet.

Today about 95% of AERC members are online. Almost every member today is affected in some way by the Internet and most of us can't imagine a time without it.

The original online service was from Russ. It was an online calendar which supplemented Endurance News by adding an overview, ride description, and directions. Over time this has grown to a custom calendar with links to flyers/entries, a Google map to the ride camp for some rides, the ability to display rides by time period, distance, ride type, state, region and other parameters.

Russ and I developed a partnership -- he handles the program development and I handle testing, support, and working with the AERC board and committees to develop new projects. Together we were able to accomplish something that neither of us would have been able to accomplish separately as volunteers.

Through the efforts of volunteers like Russ and myself, the AERC online services now include horse and rider history back to 1984, lifetime mileage, point standings updated every two weeks directly from the office database, annual statistics by distance/region/year, ride results, the ride calendar with links to entries/flyers/webpages, a display of your horse's pedigree if it is AHA registered, and a personal member webpage to access/change AERC information on you and your horses.

For ride managers, there is online input of ride results, a paid members list by region that can be downloaded to take to rides to check on day member charges, and lookup for all the needed information for the ride results for AERC members.

For trail service volunteers, there is an online way of keeping track of volunteer time spent on trail support.

Volunteers have played a significant role in AERC having the Internet presence it does today. Each of you can contribute in similar ways -- either as an individual or as part of a team -- by volunteering at rides, serving on or leading committees, serving on the board of directors, putting on rides, and even providing feedback to your directors for the future directions of AERC, to name a few.

I urge all of you to participate in our organization and give back something to the sport that we all enjoy. Mike