William Swartz, who has been Vice President for the past year, was elected to serve a 2-year term as President at the October 24 Annual Meeting. He addressed the members in attendance, thanking all members for support of his nomination. He then outlined his appraisal of recent trends in the Association and his ideas for its future. The following are the words he used to make the points he presented and wants to broadcast to all the readers of this publication.

No organization, large or small, can stand still. It must either move forward or fall back. And for several years key trends, membership, Clearing House Inquiries (CHIs), and attendance at meetings have all been trending down. I have been participating for the past 5 months in a Repositioning Committee whose purpose was to shape proposals for the future. Now as President I am establishing the following goals and objectives for the next year to help reverse these trends.

1. To achieve a net gain in membership of 8 additional members by June 2001 and a total of 20 additional members by the end of 2001.
2. To complete by January a final report of suggested changes for the Association as developed by the Repositioning Committee and endorsed by Council.
3. To submit to the general membership in March a formal plan for repositioning the Association and by the end of April to complete a total membership vote to approve the proposal.
4. To begin an expanded outreach program to increase contact and interaction with other consulting groups like ours.
5. To evaluate the feasibility of offering a one day "Consulting as a Second Career" seminar/workshop to prospective consultants. The workshop would be conducted by our members and would be offered for a fee sufficient to cover the cost.
6. To develop a data base of addresses that can be used for communicating information about the group to prospective members and clients. It will also be used in a expanded public relations effort to publicize our meetings and activities.
7. To double the circulation of the Newsletter to include past and prospective clients, prospective members and sources of new members.
8. To make the Association's Internet presence more user friendly and informative.

Now, here is my main message to you: It will take a major commitment by all of you among the entire membership to achieve these goals. But they are based on the results of our membership survey you participated in several years ago. More important, you have shown that you can get behind an effort such as this and make it happen. It is more than one person can do, and it is more than a small group of members can do. It will take a major effort by the entire membership, but I think you will accept this challenge.

Starting now, Council will be doing more in the public relations and marketing area. The marketing effort will be split into two areas, with a Marketing Chairman for an effort directed toward prospective members, and another Marketing Chairman for finding more prospective clients to help generate inquiries for our services.

Not all committee chairmen have been selected so there are opportunities for you to get involved, and help reach our goals. Just let me know. If your location prohibits attending meetings in person, we can keep you involved electronically. We plan to use more electronic communications and less "snail mail". Be sure that Linda Townsend has your e-mail address and FAX number. As much of Council's business as possible will be handled over the internet in a effort to increase our speed of response and efficiency.

With the help of a committed membership, we can accomplish these improvements. Our biggest need is increased membership, and with that comes additional financial means to accelerate our repositioning. If only 20 of you bring us one new member each, we are well on our way to one of these goals. And, if everyone gets involved in helping to reach the other goals outlined above, we will all be members of a better organization.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to serve as your President, but unless I have the help and commitment of all our members it will be hard to reach our potential as the leading Association of Consulting Experts. Sincerely, Bill Swartz

When you as an independent consultant are learning how to start a practice or improve one that needs invigoration, don't overlook the Public Library. There you will find books and even tapes and videos that you can go to school on. One of those books is Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss, a well-known author and speaker on consulting.

This book, costing a mere $15, is one of 20 titles of Alan Weiss books listed by the internet bookseller Amazon.com. The subtitle is "The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice." In its 270 pages are pieces of advice, some of which you may have learned from other consultants or mentors who are willing to help you. The Chairman of the Mentoring Committee, David Armbruster, recommends this book.

The tone of the book is established in Weiss's preface. Here he lays out the following 5 pieces of advice for consultants.

1. Remember to retain your sense of humor and perspective at all times.
2. Develop the kind of personal relationship with each client which makes you part of his business family.
3. Don't take things for granted. Be alert to new signs that your image and your relationship to the client need refreshing.
4. Look for opportunities to turn nasty surprises to your advantage and not be negative influences that hold you back.
5. Be confident of who you are and what you are ready to bring to your client and don't lose that self-esteem when a setback occurs.

The three sections of the book cover a wide territory.
Strategy - Establishing Your View of the Profession
Here you learn what a consultant is and what he is not. You learn that a consultant is paid not merely for completing an assignment but for results. Another important part of your view is understanding and implementing a favorable image in the eyes of past and future clients and Weiss tells you how. Above all, your view should be based on thorough and careful planning with the establishment of your ideal goals based on your desired future, not your past. Your view should be founded on the core principle of maintaining a balanced reputation of competence and client-centered action. This section also includes a list of 10 ways to develop relationships, 8 secrets for retaining business and the 10 principles of Million Dollar Consulting.

Tactics - Implementing Your Vision of Your Firm
Here Weiss homes in on the structure and elements of any successful consulting practice. These include your performance, the choosing of allies and associates to work with you and your actions to help their contributions strengthen the firm. Also included are fee setting, tips on client communication and how to promote yourself and your services through such things as publishing, speaking and joining trade associations.

Success - Achieving Self-Realization.
In this section you learn about the financial realities of consulting; including assuring a reliable cash flow, how to collect receivables and ten expense management techniques. Also covered are ideas and ways of expanding your reputation and cash flow, gaining long term contracts, assuring ethical practices among your associates and expanding to international business.

Don't expect reading Million Dollar Consulting to transform your consulting skills and income overnight. Those should come with studying it and coming back to it for solutions to new problems and challenges.

Dr. David Armbruster (pastpresident and member #622) reports that his latest education programs in radiation curing processes and markets were grand successes. He and his faculty presented them in New Jersey and Amsterdam. One was The 9th Annual Advanced Radiation (UV/EB) Curing Marketing/Technology Seminar, in September at the Newark Airport Marriott Hotel. It was attended by 38 participants, mostly from the US but including persons from Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy. The other was The 14th Annual Radiation (UV/EB) Curing Course, held in October in Amsterdam and had 25 participants from many countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

Attendees at both programs included chemists and chemical and process engineers, corporate executives, managers of various functions like marketing, manufacturing, product lines and research, in addition to sales and technical service personnel. Evaluations by the participants were very positive. These programs have enabled Dr. Armbruster to enhance his worldwide consultancy, generate new business opportunities and strategic alliances. They emphasize the value of courses and seminars for the growth of consultancies.

Commercial operations have been organized to hasten the removal of the Greenland icecap. Global worming may do it in time, but businessmen are moving some of it now.

Greenland Water Production has an ambitious goal of bottling as much as 500 million liters of water a year hoping that people far away will want to drink crystalline water that has been locked in the icecap for thousands of years, long before humans started pumping pollutants into the atmosphere. They are using glacier runoff.

Another enterprise, Greenland Ice Cap Production, started exporting ice to Europe in 1997. They advertise "Put the bright, sparkling ice diamonds in your glass, and hear the soft whispering sound of the past," says an advertisement in Britain for "Greenland icecap rocks."

Consultants often serve as technical experts in court and help the trial lawyers present complicated and esoteric opinions and arguments to juries in arguing a case. The judge in such situations may lack the specialized education to follow the arguments as they do their duty of overseeing a fair trial. Is there a need for specially qualified judges and courts to hear such cases?

Microsoft recently lost its federal antitrust appeal before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the Federal District Court. The judge subsequently has said that the trial was so technical that he was unable to comprehend the facts. James L. Thompson, a former president of the Maryland State Bar Association has commented: "For Judge Jackson to honestly make the comment that he was ill-equipped says something."

Mr. Thompson said, "There are a lot of judges, state judges and federal judges, who are in the same boat as Judge Jackson." There is now a Maryland study group, the Business and Technology Division Task Force, charged with making a report on the subject. Its chairman, Wilbur D. Preston Jr., commented: "The idea is to have a judge who tries nothing but business and technology cases."

It would help the court system to deliver justice in these cases but many sudents of today's problems of overloaded courts see drawbacks to the idea. Even Mr. Thompson, former president of the Maryland bar, who favors creation of a technology court, acknowledges that granting special status to certain kinds of cases could harm other kinds. The issue is similar to the argument used against school voucher programs, he said, adding, "What happens to the rest of the kids?"

(The editor relied on information for this story from a September 11 story by Marty Katz in The New York Times)