I look forward to the day you join the AFA! On that day, I'll know that the AFA has turned its attention to promoting the farrier and not farrier competitions.

Rick

Does this mean that you will do away with the annual competition at the convention, because this is the only D***n contest they put on.

Jaosn G.

Luke Chapter 14-

13 That same day two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles out of Jerusalem. 14 As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. 15 Suddenly, Jesus himself came along and joined them and began walking beside them. 16 But they didn’t know who he was, because God kept them from recognizing him.#

So we have at least one reference where an identity of a completely upright person was purposefully hidden…
I want to start by saying the reason IMHO anonymity is no longer “en vogue” is that the owner of this site has his own non-transparent motives. Since he is in such a close relationship with the not-so-dynamic duo, he hopes horseshoes.com will attain a higher value as a(n) official site for the AFA.
This is a new rule that he has chosen at a most opportune time to fit his own personal agenda…
(nice segue for the topic of Transparency)
We currently have SEVERAL officers of the AFA that have what may be construed as a conflict of interest… talking about neutrality here.
We have the current Pres who holds pre-cert clinics and certifications at his forge.
We have people who started other organizations (WFA)
We have people who publish other publications- cert. guidelines.
We have a guy running for office who is a tester for another farrier organization (GPF) - right Rick?

The FOCUS of this thread was supposed to be on the transparency of the candidates running for office… something Ron and Rick have been loathe to discuss in detail because of their own personal agendas.
The facts are that neither of them are qualified by their character… Mr Karmeeee…whatever… simply has not nearly enough experience in this trade and has in the past sought to bring himself glory during the Katrina disaster… “I’m in charge here”…
And Mr. Burten has a conflict as a tester for the GPF… not to mention his apparent priority to spend so much time on this site.
So we argue about Mr. Childs NEED to remain neutral… Mr. Gillis’ NEED to be more timely in his attempt to allow the Pres to reply… when it’s obvious the Pres just flat dropped the ball (I direct your attention to a recent PF edition where e didn’t even have the time to write a Pres letter because he was too busy fishing)

I kept my identity to myself because in the past, on THIS site, I have read where SEVERAL people have been attacked personally for their candor and accused of illegal activity by some of you jail house lawyers… and quite frankly, I didn’t want to be subjected to that kind of treatment.
The proof of that being this new rule by Baron …where many anonymous posts have been made without consequence before… is now forbidden.
I always thought farriers were supposed to be a pretty thick-skinned lot but from what I’ve sen on here, that particular breed seems to be vanishing like periople on a quarter horse.

Since we don’t get the transparency from the very candidates who started this thread from the get-go, I make a motion to cancel it altogether and move on to finding some people that might give Mr. Elsbree (my apology sir) a run for his money.

Sincerely,

No, it means I think the emphasis and importance needs to change. O.K. so you feel that the competition gets more emphasis than the Other venues at the convention, I would have to disagree.
Truth is Jason, that there is now a proven model that shows a convention can be very, very successful without a forging competition. Sounds like you want it to be like the hoofcare summit. And, with the advent of WCB, new doors and opportunities are opening that will, I believe, be mutually beneficial. And since the AFA competition tends to be revenue negative, I for one want to take a good hard look at alternatives that will reverse the flow of dollars from out of the AFA's coffers, to into the AFA's coffers.So is the AD&D policy are you going to take a hard look at that as well.
Rick

(snip)I kept my identity to myself because in the past, on THIS site, I have read where SEVERAL people have been attacked personally for their candor and accused of illegal activity by some of you jail house lawyers… and quite frankly, I didn’t want to be subjected to that kind of treatment.

The proof of that being this new rule by Baron …where many anonymous posts have been made without consequence before… is now forbidden.

Tom,

I have not declared that I am going to test for the CJF, just that I intend to finish the CF in the spring. I will not declare my intent. I do disagree with your premise however. The new officer structure is VP to President Elect who becomes President after a year. The VP is automatically a candidate for President Elect. But he is not the only candidate for president elect. Anyone that is in the qualified pool can run for president elect. It is not an automatic as the premise has been suggesting. The reason for the qualified pool is to insure that the candidates have some knowledge and experience in the governance process. The President Elect to President step was intended to all for the outgoing President to mentor the incoming President.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: I have to disagree with you on a couple of points here.

First, it is a common misunderstanding/belief that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects all speech. It does not. It protect us from the government attempting to restrict speech. See {First Ammendment}. It is well within the bounds for any organization to restrict the speech of their employees.

Second, I disagree that everyone is going to be able to make the separation in their head that you make in yours. The AFA has been dealt a major blow to the credibility, honesty and integrity of its publication by the former publisher and editor of Professional Farrier Magazine. The AFA needs to create a set of cir***stances and conditions that leave absolutely no doubt as to the neutrality and lack of bias in its publication. Because the Managing Editor of PFM speaks with the AFA’s voice anything that he engages in that would give him an appearance that could be used to call into question his neutrality or be construed as being biased, regardless of the source, official or unofficial, is simply in my opinion not good for the credibility of PFM. Is this fair, probably not, but it is the cold hard reality of it. This is the exact point that I made to the EC and that the EC apparently agreed with. It is my hope that Mr. Child will stay on as the Managing Editor because I believe that he, above all of the other possibilities currently available, has the stature, experience and credibility to actually help reestablish the credibility of PFM as a completely neutral and unbiased reporter of fact.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: I would support the development of internal performance measurements. These measurements would take into account every aspect of the testing process and normalize the tester pool by eliminating people that were outside the norm. Here is a simplistic example how this would work. Every tester’s scores would be tracked. Lets say that 80% of the testers give 7’s on a test, of the remainder 5% give, 5s, 6s, 8s and 9s respectively. Those that give 5s and 9s would be eliminated from the pool, those giving 6s and 8s would be run through the standardization training again. Over time you develop a pool of people that all have the same eye. Then as you develop a new way to look at the scoring process the testers you are using are significantly more likely to see it the same way and yield a more consistent result. I am currently developing a program to be used to capture and analyze this information for the certifcation committee. Mr. Nolan has seen and test a couple of early versions.

Also by knowing what the majority average is allows you to put in place safety measures at the certification exam. This way when a tester scores someone more than one point off of the norm an automatic review of the scoring can be implemented with another tester or the examiner rescoring the test. This insures that each candidate receives as much consideration and consistency as possible.

I think Rick & Dick spoke to the other issues fairly well. I do however feel that we need to emphasize returning the certification process to its roots and allow anyone that wants to test to test, regardless of their membership and that we need to restrict testers to trained testers. There is no way to insure consistency if that restriction is not in place and everyone deserves a level playing field.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: I think that there needs to be a comprehensive marketing program that focuses our efforts on both certification and the simple fact that we exist. I think that this is a project that need a lot of thought and that resulting plan needs to be well funded. Beyond this I am going to say that there is not enough know right no to say what that plan needs to have in it. I know it isn’t what you wanted to hear, but that’s were I am at.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: As you have already so adroitly observed the professional rodeo guys have it. I have suggested that someone in the office call them and ask them who they are using and how that was arranged. No plan that requires the membership to give up their existing coverage for something temporary is going to have a chance to succeed. This is a nut that we have to crack and I believe it is crackable. If I’m elected I intend to make it one of my major priorities.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: I talked to Randy Lukiart at AAEP about this issue. He had arranged for the AFA to be in control of the testing and certification component of licensing if the USDA made a move on the issue. He told me that when he presented this solution to the BoD he was roundly pilloried for his efforts. Frankly I think that something like that makes a lot of sense. Beyond that I agree with Rick.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: Yes. I’d work to develop better value to membership, better benefit programs, better education, and much better marketing. I’d also like to see the BoD create a member retention program that include multiple rounds of solicitation to renew. Today we only send one notice.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: No. I will not advocate for this. When I&A left the AFA setting high and dry on the magazine it not only canceled its contract after the copy deadline for the Nov/Dec issue of the magazine and I&A kept all of the advertising that would have been included in the issue.

While I&A likes to shout loud and long that it was a free magazine it was not. Publication of the magazine was paid for by the advertising in the magazine and I&A kept any advertizing revenue in excess of publication costs as its contractual compensation. Because of I&A’s taking those advertisers the AFA is now having to pay for the publishing costs out of its pockets. To make things worse when I&A decided to publish its own version of the magazine it contracted with the advertisers that had been supporting the AFA to advertise in their publication instead of PFM. These advertisers are having to choose between supporting the AFA or turning their backs on the AFA and supporting I&A’s adventure. I&A claims that these advertisers have always been I&A advertisers, I’ll let you be the judge, the contract anticipated that I&A would handle the advertising on behalf of the AFA and keep the excess revenue as their compensation.

Needless to say, this is going to take a bit of time to recover from. But until the AFA is able to rebuild its advertising base it will not be in a position to look at reducing the dues and by the time it does it would likely not be an issue anyway.
Tom Stovall, CJF wrote: Rick has already pointed out that the Bylaws have already anticipated and allowed for this.