HWA Member Meeting – President’s Statement
This is the President’s Report to HWA members, given in New Orleans in June 2013. It gives all a good overview of the many things that HWA is doing on a daily basis.
HWA MEMBER MEETING – PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT
Good Morning and Welcome to our annual Members’ Meeting.
The HWA has come along in leaps and bounds in the past year. Last May we had than 700 members – we now have over 1000 – over 40% growth in a year! And don’t forget that at the time of our first Bram Stoker Awards Weekend four years ago we had 240 members. Membership numbers are a great measure that not only are we retaining our current members because they are happy with value from their Dues but that also our outreach programs combined with our growing reputation are bringing in new members.
And let me acknowledge here the great work of Jim Chambers and his membership committee.
Despite investing larger and larger sums each year as Dues grow – into our website, our backing for our appearances at literary festivals, BEA and the like, our finances are sound. We have made a small number of hardship loans in the last year and hope to make our first scholarship announcements in the next period.
Hopefully, you’ve seen our new website design, which is much more modern and active. Thanks to Angel Leigh McCoy for this and her superhuman efforts for us all as Webmaster, backed an extensive team of volunteers. Our new voting systems alone have saved hundreds of man hours.
The new website design builds on such innovations as our new Young Adult horror section, which is getting great viewer numbers, not the least of which is down to a great weekly interview series run by Jonathan Maberry. If you haven’t visited it, I encourage you to do so. Greg Faherty has driven this YA section concept from day one and deserves our plaudits for delivering on it, including our new relationship with Ray Billingsley of “Curtis” fame.
We are about to launch another dedicated website section for Poetry.
Greg has also done great work on our outreach to Librarians – we had a very successful booth and panels at the American Library Association Conference in Seattle and we’re rapidly expanding our contacts with and database of horror friendly libraries and librarians. As members you can contact them for readings and the like.
Our enhancements to the Bram Stoker Awards continue apace – last night’s awards finalized our second year with a half-Juried system and new Juries are well in place for 2013. We continue to refine the Rules to enhance and protect the integrity of our most visible public brand. Both Amazon and ibookstore have set up dedicated sections promoting the Bram Stoker Awards, which benefits both HWA and the authors. A number of other websites carry reviews, adaptations or other promotions of the Awards and we are working on adding yet more – we won’t stop until the Bram Stoker Awards are as well-known as is possible. Of course, thanks go to Ron Breznay and Norm Rubenstein and the entire Awards Committee for their sterling work.
In other areas our Grievance Committee dealt with the two matters referred to it; one resulted in full payment, the other is still in progress. The Newsletter has had a particularly strong year thanks to the editing skills of Kathy Ptacek (as an aside, we are writers, so why don’t more of us write for the newsletter). The Internet Mailer is well run by Derek Clendening, even if members don’t take advantage of the facility as often as they should.
Our Facebook page, on which we allow non-members to participate is one of great success stories, with 1600 members and has been a driver of new membership. Thanks to Andrew Wolter for doing a great job moderating. We continue to explore how best to participate in Social Media, headed by Anita Siraki.
We successfully revised the ByLaws in November with all six questions carried by large margins.
Our Mentor Program is a real highlight of the last two years since Charles Day took it over – we currently have 31 mentors and 39 mentees in place, with another four new mentors to be allocated (these numbers are a record for our organization). We have a waiting list of mentees of course, so don’t hesitate to volunteer if you can serve as a mentor.
Another great innovation is our Member Guide book, which Jim Chambers and I put together earlier this year. No matter how long you have been a member can I urge you to download a copy and read it – I guarantee you will be surprised and find at least one member benefit you didn’t know about.
In the year ahead your Board and I are committed to yet more growth and improvement. The relaunch of Chapters will be a major focus, we will definitely expand the number of events HWA members have an official presence at – from large events down through literary festivals and on to local stages such as libraries. We will continue to innovate in social media and on the website. We will continue to grow our YA and Poetry sections and of course we will be in Portland at World Horror Convention 2014 hosting the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet.
On a personal note I want to thank every member of my Board and all our volunteers for their great work – it is gratifying to lead an organization with such enthusiastic members.
Rocky Wood
President, HWA
