President's Message

January 2019

    Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all had a joyous and blessed holiday season with family and friends. This is my first message as your new President of FSMS, and I want to start by again expressing my thanks to you, the membership, for affording me the honor, privilege and opportunity to serve this great Society.

     2018 was another year of positive change for FSMS under Bob Strayer’s tremendous leadership. I’d like to highlight some of our accomplishments here:

    1) We changed our Officer and Director terms to follow our budget and calendar year. I truly believe that the benefit of having our new Board members attend a fall meeting, having our new committees get head starts on their goals, and having our budget be consistent with our terms of office will become more and more apparent.

    2) We added the benefit of a free 3-CEC voucher for every Full member who renews with FSMS, which will continue this year. This means that every biennium, a Full member will receive 6 total free CEC’s by taking any two of our 3-hour course offerings.

    3) We have made ALL of our meetings open and transparent. We have Committees that take the lead on specific matters, but everyone can participate by putting forth ideas, recommendations and solutions to issues. Our Board and Committee meetings have taken on a new air of comradery and teamwork that I, personally, have never seen before in this organization.

    4) With the leadership of Randy Tompkins, Rick Pryce and Allen Nobles, the Florida Surveying and Mapping Council has taken the lead in determining how Florida will be impacted by the 2020 Datum change. It’s been great to see this group come back together to work towards a common goal.

    5) Richard Allen has very capably assumed leadership of the Surveyors In Government group. Richard, and government surveyors around the state, began working on long-needed revisions to Chapter 177, with a specific focus on the Plat section. Richard also writes a monthly column in The Florida Surveyor about government surveying.

    6) Our Annual Conference at the Tradewinds this past summer was one of the best I’ve ever seen from an attendance perspective, as well as from an educational perspective. The social and entertainment events were great too, with an overall vibe that was easy-going and comfortable. Our new Vice President and Annual Meeting chair, Matt LaLuzerne, is already well underway with his committee in getting our 2019 conference in Orlando organized. Great things are happening for next summer!

    7) We have a GREAT administrative staff in our Tallahassee office. Tom Steckler, Rebecca Culverson and Dominic Levings have done an outstanding job. This past year, they oversaw the change to our new webhost, MemberClicks, published our newsletter magazine The Florida Surveyor each month, and made our conference run smoothly and efficiently. And I can’t forget Cathy Campanile, who works tirelessly in anyway she’s asked to help our Society - especially with our conference planning!

    This is by no means all that has been done this past year. We are prepared and looking forward to 2019 and to making even more effective changes and improvements to all aspects of this organization.

    One last item: Our membership numbers in 2018 were great, but we need to continue to improve our numbers so that this Society can truly represent our industry in Florida. If you haven’t yet renewed your membership for 2019, please take the few minutes it takes to do so. The renewal process is very easy through our new website, or you can contact our office in Tallahassee. Encourage your support staff to become Associate members, and your companies to become Sustaining Firms. There are benefits for all, and always remember…our Society is YOU, the member!

“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”  -Vince Lombardi

Dianne Collins