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When this year began, marketers and message strategists used the back-to-back 20s to play on the concept of perfect vision. Meeting planners promoted their conventions as opportunities to bring industry leaders together and see their shared future with 20/20 clarity.

Alas, we have been handed a year in which what lies ahead is profoundly unclear. The Association is navigating the uncertainty by planning for the best- and worst-case scenarios and consuming every scrap of information available to know which scenario may materialize.

Association staff and the Board of Directors are watching developments around COVID-19 and will prioritize health and safety as we look toward fall. We know you want to reconnect, and we know fall convention offers opportunities to sell your products that cannot be duplicated. If there is a way to be careful and be together, we will be together.

Among the scraps of information that help guide our planning: registration data. Our ability to predict attendance takes on a heightened importance as we navigate questions around creating distance among executives during speaker sessions and meals. The Association of course understands you may be reluctant to commit, so it has introduced a guarantee to refund registrations practically until the day the convention begins. (Details on pages 10 and 11.) If your best-case scenario is to be there, please register. We understand you face the same questions.

If circumstances prevent the Association and the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista from staging a convention that would meet your professional expectations and guard your health, we will be ready with alternatives that help members stay connected and informed.

To focus on that work, which goes well beyond the question of fall convention, the Association has hired Matt Rice to lead its membership effort. Matt has been the director of projects and grants for U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) Shimkus is not seeking another term, so Matt is transitioning from a career in supporting elected leaders—and serving himself as an elected leader in a county office—to Association work.

His focus will be on building membership and developing new services for members. I have had the opportunity to talk with Matt, and I am confident he is going to elevate membership for all of us.

There is an irony to this pandemic. It disrupts our opportunities to gather when we most need to connect. We have our usual shared challenges—labor, the farm economy, shifts in the dealer landscape—and we have the shared challenges created by the coronavirus. We are an industry of innovators. I am certain many of you have built creative ways to adapt and even thrive. We have much to learn from one another. I look forward to when we are all together again. 

Janea Danuser
Association President
President@FarmEquip.org