Category: President’s Blog

Thank you Board I am very proud of how the board is getting down to business! Since July 1 we’ve discussed and voted on 19 motions! We’ve done a lot and have quite a way to go till we’re caught up again. As you might know we now meet every 3rd Thursday of the month 7PM Central for 90 minutes on Zoom. The Zoom link is found in the events calendar on the home page. All members are welcome to sit in on all meetings. The meeting agenda is published 1 week in advance. Meeting minutes, AI transcripts, and Zoom recordings are posted to the BOD Meeting Records page. Motions passed will continue to be published in Fusion. We are doing a great job of sticking to our agendas and time frames. All of us are improving our skills at using Robert’s Rules of Order to conduct a respectful, orderly, and productive meeting. Between meetings the board stays in touch with it’s own discussion list so mundane issues and procedural stuff doesn’t clog up meeting time. If you have questions about what the board is doing, I’d encourage you to reach out to your director or to me or hop on a Town Hall Zoom call. I’m trying to schedule those to land on Saturdays after board meetings to discuss questions, concerns, or share compliments. This is a democratically run organization. It will succeed if you participate in the process of letting your voice be heard. Bylaws Changes On 10/16 the board discussed motions made and passed at the June 2025 BOD meeting. Bylaws require 2x approval separated by at least 4 months. The second vote was carried out on 10/16. We approved three bylaws changes which are now part of our governance. To read the actual wording of the bylaws and the changes made you’ll have to wait just a bit for the bylaws document to be updated. It will be posted as soon as it’s available. It will also be published in the next issue of Fusion. unfinished…..

Virtual Symposium While I was in Germany the board had it’s next meeting and agreed to my proposal that next year’s symposium be a virtual (online only) symposium followed in 2027 by an in-person symposium. This will temporarily reduce our expenses, give us an opportunity to reach out to populations that traditionally have not attended a symposium, give the regular volunteers a much needed break, and start a 2 year planning cycle for future symposia. The virtual symposium will have most of the same events you are used to with the exception of hands on glassblowing. The virtual in 2026 and the in-person in 2027 will be will be planned by two separate groups of volunteers starting as soon as possible. Moving forward I hope to keep this 2 year planning cycle going. It would make hotel interactions much easier and put less time stress on the symposium organizers. Stay tuned as I find these committee folks and get them started. I will schedule a Town Hall Zoom Call in the near future to discuss this decision and the virtual symposium in greater detail with all interested members. VDG Meeting I got back last night from a great trip to Germany. It was a wonderful 2 day symposium attended by 165 folks from all over the world: Germany, US, Canada, Italy, Belgium, France Norway, Denmark, Poland, and a bunch of other places. The VDG hired live real time English translators and offered wireless headsets for us non native German speakers to use during seminars, business meeting and demos. It turns out English is the universal glass language, who knew? I sat in the VDG business meeting and met several BOD members. I hope that good connections have been started between the two organizations. In some ways the VDG faces the same sorts of problems we do: every year fewer volunteers to help with the work, mostly the same faces stepping up to volunteer, declining society enrollment while at the same time facing increasing expenses, fewer training opportunities for folks entering the field, business challenges from China and India which have rock bottom prices, not enough good quality content for their journal, ever increasing difficulty in finding a symposium location that is willing to allow open flame sessions, …. all this just like us. On the other hand, the apprenticeship training program in Germany is government supported, produces very high quality glassblowers and continues to function well. The Certification program (Apprentice Journeyman, Master) and is universally welcomed by industry and research, as a means of determining skill levels (and pay). The VDG has a board of governance to manage the business of the VDG and a second “board” of sorts which organizes events like the annual symposium. I am intrigued by the idea and will explore this a bit further. Klaus Paris organized a wonderful lunch conversation with the VDG magazine editor Thomas, myself, and the newly formed Polish society President, Pieter. We explored the idea of sharing articles across our Read More …

Website The most recent updates are to the menu structure. I’m slowly adjusting where things are to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. As I add new pages it may take some time till locations are stable. I apologize for any confusion during this transition period.  Archives I’ve started adding documents to the Archives and will likely be adding more for several months as I find them on various folks’, hard drives or bookshelves. BOD I’ve been working to finalize bank account access for the new Treasurer and President. Thanks to Doni Hatz our past Secretary the documents needed have been passed along to the home office. I hope this is the last bit needed to conclude the changeover from the old board to the new board. I’ve also had good conversations with Jerry Cloninger the Executive Secretary and Andy Gibbs the Board Secretary about how to document board meetings. The goal is to make the records concise and easy to use and at the same time not lose any information. This will need to include the Book of Motions which hasn’t been updated for about 20 years. We’ve got our work cut out for us, that’s OK the team is strong and getting stronger. VDG Symposium This will be my first time at a VDG symposium. I look forward to meeting VDG board members and learn about how we might cooperate and collaborate more. Both of us face the same issues of declining membership and a changing work environment for scientific glassblowers. I’m also hoping to establish better connections with European businesses who would benefit from sponsoring or advertising with the ASGS. Membership The new membership committee continues to work with Don in the home office plus Jim and Laura Cornell past membership and home office gurus, to get access to the records they need and become familiar with the process of onboarding new members. There’s a fair bit of behind the scenes work involved with bringing on a new member. I’m working with the membership committee, the home office, the publications committee and the board to look for ways to streamline the process. We are making progress. A bit hearty thank you to everyone involved for making the effort. It’s taking a while to get this figured out. 

     Website work I’ve started deleting old pages and moving others to storage in the hope that the site becomes 1) easier for web administrators to navigate on the backside 2) loads and runs faster. Also I’ve moved the member login to the main menu on the front page to make it very obvious where to log in. Let me know if you see other changes that would make the site easier to navigate. The home office has started a Stripe account for us so we can stop using PayPal for credit cards. The next step is to get into the guts of Membership works and QuickBooks to remove Paypal and insert Stripe. I’ve gotten a lot of complaints about how hard PayPal is to use and am excited for this change. Don in the home office thinks we may be able to go live with Stripe next week. Archives I’ve started collecting documents that have gotten misplaced and might be of benefit to our membership to have access to. Things like the Methods and Materials Handbook. Old members will remember this as a pair of 3 ring binders mailed to each new member filled with helpful hints about glass, glassblowing, lab technique and basic chemistry. It hasn’t been given out to new members for a number of years as a cost saving measure. If the board agrees to make it available again, I’ll post it to the website for all members to use. Another one is the Book of Motions. This was a chronological list of every motion made by the board, what it was about and if it passed or not. It seems to have been misplaced since 2017 when it was last updated. I’ll find a spot for both of these documents on the website and am looking for someone interested in helping to update the Book of Motions. No big tech skills are needed: just a willingness to browse old Fusions on the website looking for the board section in each then copy and paste those published motionsd into an excel file. It’s very low stress, the work environment couldn’t be better: sit on your couch in your bathrobe sipping coffee while you read and type. Payment is a hearty thank you from me. Let me know if you’re up for helping with a small project.  Videos The link to The Flow magazine’s video site where we are supposed to be able to see our symposium videos is broken … again. I’ve started the process (again) of looking at what’s not working (this time). The real fix is to bring our videos back to our members on our own YouTube channel. Do you have basic video editing skills or are interested in learning? If so connect with myself or Jill Korgemagi who will be heading up this project.  Board Stuff I’m starting to prepare for the next BOD meeting. Because the Pres and Pres elect will be at the VDG conference in Germany the BOD meeting call Read More …

      For not much going on it’s been very busy since my last post mostly centered on cleaning up the website.      Events calendar The new system of adding events to the homepage using Membership works instead of WordPress is working. I’ve written a detailed instruction set for how to add events which is being tested. With luck by next week directors will be able to post events like section meetings without home office help. I’ll do an in-service training at an upcoming board meeting to get folks up to speed. Part of what goes with this is the charge that directors talk with each other before scheduling a section meeting and do their best to avoid piling meetings onto the same day. It’s a shame that I can’t attend all three on Oct 11th: Pacific Northwest which will be at Litton, the Midwest which will have hands on workshops, and the Northeast which I’ve wanted to get to for a long time. We need to find a way to be more respectful of each other. We need to find a way to collaborate and allow for greater participation by members outside your home section.       Board pages I changed the location of the board of directors page link to make it more obvious to find. Hopefully it will be.     Bylaws changes I uploaded the three bylaws changes voted on by the BOD at the June meeting. These need a second vote sometime after Oct 25th to become law. The only substantial (IMJ) change is that all membership categories will be able to vote on national issues including BOD elections. You can find the proposed motions on the board records page. If you have an opinion about them contact your director and let them know how you feel. This is a representative democracy. Contact your elected official.    Section pages Many section pages are out of date. To avoid confusion about what’s happening I added a notice to the top of pages with outdated info pointing people at the homepage calendar for up to date info. Once directors feel comfortable adding events to the calendar (or sending their update to the home office or myself)  the next step is to teach directors how to update their section page without help… one step at a time. The goal is to make it easy to keep information on the website current and relevant.      Section News page I gave the section map a more obvious menu location so it can be found a bit easier. I also updated the description of sections and how you can participate in them.      Website backend cleanup I’m working with Steve the webmaster to find a way to delete a lot of no longer used webpages dating as far back as 2016. I also hope to review and delete some of the many unused WP plug-ins. If we can accomplish this it means the site will load faster and respond more quickly.     Membership Committee I’m on the Read More …

     BOD Meeting recap The first of the new format BOD meetings last night went well. We got all our work done and finished exactly 90 minutes after we started. I’ve heard from a few folks that they like the new format. I’m happy that the work it took to get us here seems to be well received. Melissa our Parliamentarian was on the call and felt positive about how things went. There will likely need to be some fine tuning as we settle into this but for a first time out I’d say it was a success.      All the information about board meetings will be available at the Board Meeting Records page From the home page menu select “About the Society” then “Board of Directors” then use the link on that page to go to Board Meeting Records. If you aren’t logged in you will be prompted to do so. The meeting records are behind a login to limit viewing to members only.       PayPal The board voted to migrate away from using PayPal as primary credit card processor to Square which is much friendlier, costs less, and is more flexible. That should happen within a few weeks.        2026 Symposium A motion was made and discussed that the 2026 symposium be a virtual event instead of in person. Most of the symposium planners are a bit tired, we’re running short of cash and can’t afford to lose money on future symposia, attendance is well below what we’d like to see, advertising and marketing is weak, the exhibitors group strongly favors waiting till 2027 for an in-person, Chris Bock (Junior workshop chair and 2025 chair), Kevin Teaford (Regular workshop chair), Ron Biehler (Symposium Coordinator) all favor an extra year of planning for the next in person symposium. I’m proposing that if the BOD votes to approve a virtual for 2026 and in-person for 2027 we start now to form a  committee to plan for 2027.      Going forward each symposium would have a 2 year planning cycle. One of the biggest struggles we face each year is having only a short year to plan each event. Everyone feels rushed, many things get done late or not as well as they could due to lack of time, nerves get frazzled. It’s not a good way to do business.      I brought the motion to the board for discussion and had pre-planned to table it for a decision next month. This gives the directors time to consider the details, talk with their fellow directors and section members, then show up informed and ready to make a decision that benefits the society. If you have questions or concerns or want to volunteer to help contact your section director or me.        YouTube I’ve also gotten an ASGS YouTube channel started. For the time being it only holds Board meeting Zoom recordings. In the future it will hold the society’s technical videos for our members Read More …

The first of the new format board meetings is tonight. The agenda has been posted albeit a bit late. I’ve talked with several BOD members who are curious about how the new 90 minute meetings will work, yeah me too! My hope is that decisions (motions with a vote) that aren’t controversial like switching credit card processors can be made and voted on during the same meeting for efficiency’s sake. Anything needing deeper investigation or where there is a strong likelihood of more than one legitimate opinion will be handled in a 2 meeting system: At the first meeting the motion is made (and if seconded) discussion starts. It then gets tabled. This means no vote is taken we move onto the next agenda item. BOD members can then discuss the pros and cons amongst themselves (via the BOD email list) and with their section members. At the next meeting the motion is moved from the table back to the floor and official timed discussions are made by Directors who want time to present their point of view. Then a roll call vote is taken where each person’s name is recorded with their vote. The intention is to give time to the big things so informed decisions can be made and hold people accountable for how they voted. We’ll see how it works. I’ll know more tomorrow. Erich MoraineASGS President    

Board meeting I’ve been feverishly working on getting a structure set up for board meetings. The survey I sent to board members produced monthly meetings on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 8PM East Coast, 7PM Central, 6PM Rocky Mtn, and 5PM Pacific. It wasn’t easy getting this figured out. Changes to the date and time may need to happen going forward. Board agendas will be posted to the website a week in advance for all members to see.  Here is the permanent Zoom link for meetings which members are welcome to attend: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84359067111 Meetings will last no more than 90 minutes and start on time. Show up 10 minutes early if you don’t want to miss anything. Meetings will be recorded and transcribed by Zoom. The recording and transcription will be available on the website within 48 hours of the meeting. The Secretary’s official minutes will be available within 7 days.  I will do my best to use Robert’s Rules of Order (as required by our bylaws) to conduct the meetings. I am new to this so I’ve asked Melissa Moeller a trained Parliamentarian to coach all of us on how to run meetings fairly and democratically. For this first meeting she will be an observer only. After that she’ll crack the whip on us 🙂 Members are invited to hop on the call and observe the meetings live. (For the time being members will observe only. With Melissa’s help we’ll review this for future meetings)  I am looking forward to efficient, productive, well documented, democratic meetings.    Website menu changeAs you may have noticed the main menu on the home page has changed. All the menu items are still there but rearranged in a way that makes it easier to navigate for phones and tablets.  Website Calendar change and Section MeetingsOver the weekend, Steve the webmaster, took the main website offline to switch how the calendar of events works. It now looks almost the same as before but each section director (plus another person from the section) can add events themselves. In the coming month I’ll work with the directors to get folks up to speed on how to do this themselves. Directors will now be responsible for making sure their section posts meeting notices early and accurately. This should give us up-to-date meeting descriptions and more importantly: require directors to talk to each other when scheduling a section meeting. I’d like to encourage folks to travel to other sections’ meetings. This can’t happen if everyone holds their meeting on the same weekend. For an example of a schedule collision check out this coming Oct 11th. I’m looking forward to helping sections be more respectful of each other and collaborate better on meeting planning.  Website Board of Directors Changes I still need to get the meeting agendas, minutes, directors reports etc onto the website. All this needs to be easily available to all members. It may take another week to get it figured out. Stay tuned for more….Erich Read More …

The symposium has concluded. Thanks to a substantial team and the leadership of the Co-chairs we’ve put another one to bed. I’ve been busy chasing down loose ends, some of which are done, some of which are still needing attention. I hope everything will be complete and results available by the end of August.       Board of Director changes I’ve just finished assembling an email discussion group for the Board of Directors. As a board we now have a means by which we can talk to each other between board meetings. I hope this will let us do a better job of asking questions, understanding needs, and preparing for board meetings.       Executive committee changes I want to move governance of the ASGS back to the Board of Directors and give the Executive Committee a rest. I’d like to reserve the executive committee for dealing with things that are either extremely sensitive like personnel issues or events that need a decision so fast the board can’t meet in time. The ASGS is a representative democracy, the Section Directors our elected representatives need to conduct the business of the Society which they’ve been elected to govern.      Board meeting changes All board meetings will be on Zoom with dates published in advance. Any member is welcome to log in and listen. The meeting agendas will be posted in advance with minutes, and Zoom recordings posted after the meeting. I’ll do everything possible to keep meetings to 90 minutes or less. (No more 7 hour BOD torture sessions) We have to learn to be more efficient with our precious meeting time. This will likely mean we need to schedule a few additional board meetings. I think this is better than the traditional all day marathon sessions      We now have a Parliamentarian Melissa Moeller is in training to become a certified Parliamentarian. As part of her training she will be volunteering her time at our board meetings, teaching us how to conduct a meeting according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Our bylaws require it, but we seem to have mostly forgotten how to do it. Melissa is not part of the ASGS (but is married to a glassblower who is) She has no axe to grind and no agenda to pursue other than helping us make appropriate use of Roberts Rules. I am excited to learn from her, how we get our work done in an orderly, efficient and properly documented manner.      Website Update The search function for Fusions seems to be working again. It was quite a project to get it there. Thank you Steve Scranton for all your behind the scenes work. We’re going to migrate to a new calendar function that is integrated with Membership Works instead of WordPress. This will give each section director the ability to easily add/change calendar events like Section meetings on their own. Don at the home office is still available for help (as am I) but Section Directors will not be dependent on Read More …