How Quickly Things Change
President's Message | March 25, 2020
How quickly things change. My original “March message” written in late February and published in our Water Resources IMPACT Magazine shortly thereafter, was full of hope for our then-upcoming Spring Specialty conference and co-located Maidment Symposium. Sadly, events quickly overtook us, and we made the call to postpone our spring in-person events. It is a disappointment among many as our planning committee had worked so very hard; however, the health and safety of our staff, organizers, attendees, presenters and the community at large had to come first. We are working to reschedule and hope all our presenters will be able to share their talks at a later date.
In the meantime, I hope everyone is managing well in these very uncertain times. We know that many of our members are still reporting to work and ensuring the nation’s critical services continue. On behalf of AWRA, we extend our personal gratitude to each of you, and wish you the best of health and well-being as we navigate forward.
AWRA also remains on the job. We are leveraging the capacity of our virtual operations to provide you with needed resources as you continue your work or find time now to explore new horizons. Now more than ever, staying connected with colleagues and friends is critical. Hopefully, we can take this opportunity to give and share in new ways. In that spirit, we are committed to providing you with the information exchange, professional development, and educational opportunities you’ve come to expect.
Over the next few weeks, AWRA staff and the Board of Directors will begin to roll out additional networking and learning opportunities available to you through your AWRA membership. Please stay tuned for updates and announcements. If you have ideas to share, please contact our CEO Dresden Farrand ([email protected]) or me ([email protected]). Work on our webinars and publications will continue while we develop new content. For your convenience, we’ve provided links here to our upcoming and past webinars, Water Resources IMPACT Magazine, and JAWRA (the Journal of the American Water Resources Association). All of this, and more can be found via the AWRA website.
AWRA Conference Update
We had planned to spend the week of March 23 in Austin, Texas, enjoying the AWRA 2020 Geospatial Water Technology Conference: Complex Systems. This wonderful event was to be co-located with the Symposium in Honor of David Maidment: GIS in Water Resources and More, sponsored by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI). We thank and appreciate everyone involved in helping us make the decision to postpone the Austin events. We also want to thank our organizers, sponsors, presenters, and those who registered for their patience as we work to reschedule the conference and symposium.
As an organization committed to use of best available science, we will continue to work with the planning committee, conference hotel and public health officials, to determine when we can safely hold these events. For more information, please see our announcement regarding the postponement. In the interim, our goal is to provide special, additional programming to our registrants, so again, stay tuned.
Planning for the AWRA 2020 Annual Water Resources Conference, to be held November 9-12 in Orlando/Kissimmee, Florida continues. Naturally, we are closely monitoring the situation surrounding the COVID-19 virus and will communicate any changes about that conference to you. In the meantime, please email Dresden ([email protected]) with any questions you have about our events or activities.
Please take care of yourselves.
We always appreciate hearing from you. Please feel free to correspond with me directly at [email protected].
Betsy Cody is the 2020 president of AWRA.