We then heard from John Bochnovic, the current President of AIPPI, who described some highlights of the Seoul Congress in more detail, and expressed his vision for his coming term as AIPPI President. The final approved resolutions from the Seoul Congress are available on the AIPPI website.

 

The presence of a quorum was noted. We then heard from the Nominating Committee Chair, Tom Smegal, who presented the report of the Nominating Committee, which had been previously approved by the President of AIPLA. Two additional nominations were made from the floor, and the following people were subsequently elected to serve as Officers and Steering Committee members for the terms shown below:

 

OFFICERS: (One year Terms)   Jeffrey Lewis - President Wayne Sobon - President-Elect David Hill-Chair Philip Swain-Vice-Chair William Ellis-Treasurer Andrew Meunier-Secretary   STEERING COMMITTEE: Two Year Terms Ken Adamo Richard Beem Todd Dickinson Josh Goldberg Mark Halligan Samson Helfgott Ethan Horwitz​	STEERING COMMITTEE  One Year Term Alan Kasper Peter Schechter Maria Scungio Andrew Simpson Kevin Tottis Joerg Uwe-Szipl Damian Wasserbauer ​

There being no further reports or business to be conducted, the meeting was adjourned. Following the meeting, we hosted a reception to welcome the many new attendees, many of whom joined the AIPPI-US Division or received applications for membership.

As a result of this meeting, our Division is ready to move forward under its new status as a part of AIPLA. We expect to undertake many new initiatives that will provide opportunities for our members to become more active in the Division. In particular, we expect to devote a considerable effort in the coming months to the preparation of the U.S. national group reports on the working questions to be addressed at the next AIPPI EXCO and Forum in Helsinki, Finland. That meeting is scheduled for September 5-11, 2013. The working questions 233-236 are available online. If you would like to volunteer to serve on one of the working question committees, please contact us at aippi-us@aipla.org. Please mark your calendar now, and plan to attend, if you can. We are considering having a session on the Helsinki working questions during the AIPLA spring meeting, which will be May 1 -3, 2013 in Seattle.

We also hope to plan a trip to Asia in late 2013, where we would meet with our counterpart national groups in Japan, Korea and China. Other opportunities exist on our communications committee and membership committee. Please let me know if you would like to assist with either of these.

 

I look forward to the coming year with great anticipation as we work to integrate our Division into the AIPLA organization, and benefit from the expertise and active support of the committees and staff of AIPLA.

 

Sincerely,