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Howard A. Merten Partridge, Snow & Hahn Providence, RI
AsIsithereona Saturday afternoon at 4:00 p.m., I am moved to write about what I witnessed today. I just spent the past seven hours in FDCC
Philadelphia. It would not have been surprising if the participants were a little down for a Saturday Zoom meeting instead. They were not. (Well, there was some wholly justified West Coast grousing about a 6:30 a.m. P&O start, but everyone quickly agreed that was totally Casey Stansbury’s fault and, blame duly placed, we moved
on.) Everyone was so engaged and on point for both meetings that
if anyone was watching college football in the background, you couldn’t even tell.
For those of you who do not know, the P&O Committee is comprised of all the Substantive Section Chairs. This committee has been described as the engine of the FDCC, its lifeblood, its heart, its muscles, the locomotive, the wind beneath our wings... (Oh, wait, that last one
is a Bette Midler song.) All true. P&O is integrally involved in just about every aspect of our Strategic Plan. This morning, more than twenty section leaders and FDCC leadership spent three hours talking
about how to improve member value, deliver more meaningful interactions amongst section members, enhance communication and community within our sections, generate more and better intellectual content, and more. We finished with breakout discussions about programming excellence, increasing members’ section engagement, and more again.
Casey Stansbury, Lee Hall,
and Caroline Berdzik deserve recognition for putting together and running an excellent meeting. So, too, do all the section leaders who got up early to help move the FDCC forward.
A quick 15-minute break and many of us were back at it again for a Zoom Board meeting. (I made and ate scrambled eggs in 12 minutes because 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday is early for me, too, Stansbury.) You would think the second 3-hour meeting would be tough to take, but to the contrary, it was great! The FDCC is at a critical juncture
Zoom meetings -- and we finished early! First up was the Projects
& Objectives (P&O) Committee meeting followed by a full Board meeting. You would think I would be exhausted and ready for some football. But this article is overdue, and I really am sitting here excited about the last seven hours. Really. I am happy because the Federation is in great hands. I was blown away by the level of passion and commitment I saw today, as well as the substantive contributions
I heard. Relatedly, I wanted to publicly thank and acknowledge the people who are driving this organization in the right direction – and on a beautiful Saturday to boot.
These Zoom meetings were supposed to be in person in
Officer Reports
The FDCC’s Engine is
BY: HOWARD A. MERTEN
6 summer | federation flyer
www.thefederation.org