President's Message - January 2018

Hello Everyone!

It’s 2018 and things are really picking up! I just returned from a very chilly Nashville where I attended Imaging USA with10,000 of my closest photography friends—many of whom were from right here in Oregon. I went a day early to attend the Affiliate Leaders Training meeting with a few other members of the board of directors where we learned lots of great tips from other affiliate leaders around the country. And more than that, we learned that OPPA is in a great place, affiliate-wise. We have a strong board with great strategic objectives and prioritized goals and will keep us healthy and focused on our mission of providing professional development for serious photographers. We had the opportunity to speak with David Trust, the CEO of PPA, and he reiterated what we already know—OPPA is doing great things in the world of affiliates. Several of our OPPA members received degrees in Nashville as well—April Kroenke received both her Masters and Craftsman degrees while Bryan Welsh received his Masters and Neil and Miriam Haugen received their Craftsman degrees. Congratulations to all!

We’ve got some great events on the horizon—we’ll be getting things kicked off with some CPP classes including a class on understanding the CPP Process and a follow-up study group class. Then we have, back by popular demand, Aaron Hockley’s class on Improving your Online Presence as a Photographer. He says because of the changing nature of social media, most of the information in this class is new content so it will be super useful for those of us who need to jumpstart our year with new SEO and social media tactics. In February, we will be venturing out to the Instagram world and learning how to become an Instagram Pro with Morgan Stone Grether. This is new territory for OPPA and we are very excited to hear from him! These are just a few of things we have cooked up for 2018—we are working on many more classes to fill out the calendar. Keep checking your OPPA emails and the OPPA Facebook group or website to see what’s coming next.

We are gearing up for another round of mentorships so be watching your email for a call to be a mentor followed soon after by a call to be a student. Did you know you can do both? If you have a special skill or knowledge base to share, you can be a mentor. But if you need help in another area, you can also be a student—how awesome is that?

I’m excited and honored to be leading OPPA into 2018 along with the help of our talented and dedicated board of directors. These folks put in countless hours to bring valuable programs and benefits to our members and I appreciate their hard work. Our committees are also working tirelessly to help improve your member experience and to bring value to your membership in OPPA. And we need more folks to help fill out our committees—this is where the rubber meets the road! If you are like me and love OPPA, now is the time to show it! Email me or pop onto our Facebook group and let me know where you’d like to serve—we need you! OPPA is what you make it—it’s not the board’s OPPA. We are all OPPA.

So mark your calendars for upcoming events, sign up for a committee and then invite a friend to an OPPA event. Remember—OPPA is Serious. Fun!

Lisa Dillon
M. Photog; Cr. CPP, FP-OR
503-730-5305
lisakd@frontier.com