First day of ASRA's new board

Last night, if you saw it live or watched the Youtube video, ASRA had their annual AGM and has a new board.

The new ASRA board is:

President: James Hopkin (myself):

Vice-President: Tony Streets

Secretary: Bruce de Graaf

Treasurer: Haggy Strom

Three Committee Members

Jackson Shapiera

Michael English

Pete Smith

I am not going to introduce them, we will do some news articles in the future about the new board members.

In my promise for transparent and communication, I will be doing regular news articles on what is happening at the board level. I am hoping to inspire our members to get more involved and take the initiative to help. Don't expect daily updates :-), I think they will be monthly.

This was my email to the board today:

Welcome to the 2015-2016 ASRA board.
Strap in, it is going to be a lot of fun.

First off, lets get the tone right for the next 12 months.
This is not about me. And it is not about you. Everyone on this board is super talented, and shown they are happy to get in, get dirty and get some work done.
I think we are going to get a lot achieved in 12 months.
We all come from diverse backgrounds, different parts of the sport and industry. When we put on our ASRA hat, we leave all that politics behind, there should be no personal/industry politics - bias - alliances etc. It's going to happen, because we are human, don't let it stop us from doing awesome work for the sport and the ASRA members.

In the past ASRA has been about a few individuals doing extraordinary work. New ASRA is going to be about enabling anyone to do amazing things. For example it is not about ASRA putting on events like Newton's but it is about enabling anyone to organise and run an event.

This board is going to be about making ASRA into one of the best National Sporting Associations in Australia. To do that we need help from across our membership, sport, industry, and government. The only way that will happen is if we are open, transparent and communicate. We also need a direction and a vision.

If we can get that right, it will set ASRA up for the future, and be an important achievement for this current board.

The next 30 to 60 days I am hoping we can get as much input from our members on what direction ASRA should be going.

The board will set short term, long term and aspiration goals for ASRA. This will give us our direction and vision.

We will then mark out the path we need to achieve those short term goals (12 months) and make progress on our long term and aspirational goals.

Be warned, I'm going to be writing articles on ASRA home page, based around these emails, communications and our work. I want what we do to be more open and so members can see what is happening, get inspired and get involved!

The board has started their work, that was day one, we are just getting ourselves organised. We look forward to hearing your opinions on ASRA's future direction.

James Hopkin

President