Welcome New Dispatches Editor Jim Enderle

Hi Everyone,

This is a great time for me. Over the last three and a half years, we have grown so fast and gone so far thanks to the hard work of the officers — Mike Mullins, Pat Avery, Buddy Cox — and Board members — Ray Morris, Dave Brown, Dwight Zimmerman, Bill McDonald, Richard Lowry; Lead Reviewer Jim Greenwald, Consultant Maria Edwards, Dispatches Copy Editor Nancy Bonar as well as reviewers, judges, and volunteers. It truly takes all of us to fuel this engine. We've introduced many new concepts; been successful with some, not so much with others. However, we've kept our eyes on these goals — education, support, and recognition.

It's now time for the next new thing — the transition to new leadership. The addition of new hands and new ideas will enrich this organization and re-energize us. As you know, I'll be stepping down as President at the end of the Conference in Dayton. But before that, there are many things that I've been doing that haven't been specific to that role. One of these jobs has been as editor of our Dispatches magazine. This issue, I'm happy to say that I'm turning over the reigns of that position to new member, Jim Enderle. Together with Dwight Zimmerman and Nancy Bonar, Jim will build on our baby steps and create something bigger and better than I could ever do. He is multi-talented and has some great experience. He is about to retire from the Navy, although he spent his tour in Iraq with the Army. I've found him to have a quick mind and a tender heart. I encourage you to volunteer your time and talent to help him. For m—ore information about Jim, read his article introducing himself in this issue. 

I also encourage everyone to take advantage of our MWSA website's enormous advantages for social networking exposures. If you write an article, tweet the URL to all of your followers (I do that already to the MWSAPresident followers), and post it to your Facebook pages, your websites. Take advantage of your numbers to help each other. If you help a fellow author one month, he/she'll be likely to help you the next. Also, take advantage of your blogs — I somethings grab an url from an interesting post and tweet it as well, or post it to Facebook. This is an enormous tool; don't waste it.

Finally, I'm firming up the program for the 2012 MWSA Conference and will post the the schedule in the May Dispatches. Good luck, Editor Jim!  I know our membership will love the work that you do — and that they will help build our Magazine with you at the helm.