EXECUTIVE PERSPECTIVE A Challenging 2020 time for people and businesses world- wide, and here at ALOA, we have weath- ered the storm as best we could. Like many organizations, we were unable to hold our conventions, and we have had to make some difficult decisions to ensure ALOA remains the strong association it’s always been. As you may know, the ALOA and I SAFETECH conventions produce a significant amount of revenue, which allows us to maintain all of your member benefits. To mitigate that financial loss, we formed committees to determine how to best ease this pain. We began to make cuts in several areas, including administration, publications, operations and governance. Staff was cut by a third, and all board and staff travel was canceled indefinitely. We have taken advantage of technology to hold virtual meetings and continue business operations. As you know, we also had to make the difficult decision to move Keynotes and Safe & Vault Technology to a digital-only format to save on printing and postage costs. ALOA also took advantage of the for- givable Payment Protection Program loans from the federal government. Hav- ing this extra boost of funds was helpful in getting our feet on solid ground while we sorted out our way forward. 6 KEYNOTES SEPTEMBER 2020 t’s been quite the year for us all. The world as we knew it seemed to screech to a halt, with the path forward not clear to anyone. It’s been a confusing Through all of the changes ALOA has made, we have continued our daily op- erations and kept your member programs alive. We’ve even enhanced our education offerings with a great number of webinars throughout the summer. I hope you’ve tak- en advantage of them. See “What’s New” on page 8 of this issue for details about sev- eral weeks of education that we’re offering in conjunction with HL Flake, as well as the online trade show later in the month. The staff and board continue to serve you. Please keep reaching out to us when- ever needs arise. Or just check in to chat. We all are missing human contact! Plans for the Future Although ALOA has been forced to make some of the changes discussed above, we are hoping that some of them can be rolled back in the future. We hope to return to printing the magazines while continuing to offer them in digital form. Thank you to everyone who has embraced the digital change. Please keep reading the magazine and supporting our adver- tisers and partners. We are also moving forward with plan- ning SAFETECH 2021 in Reno, NV, and ALOA 2021 in Orlando, FL. Thankfully, a large percentage of 2020 exhibitors al- lowed us to transfer their fees to the 2021 conventions. We will continue to moni- tor the international health situation and make adjustments to plans as required. ALOA also hopes to keep enhancing member benefits. Just as we found a creative educational solution with all of the webinars, we will continue to look for ways to bring you more value during the pandemic and beyond. We would like to offer free limited le- gal help to members as well. Email your questions or concerns to [email protected]. We will reply to your email, publish the response in the magazine, or both. Hope- fully, we can help with some common or novel concerns that you have as security professionals. Thank you all for your patience and continued support during this challeng- ing year. We are hoping for the best, but we anticipate it will take years for us — and the world — to fully recover from the events of this year. ALOA is prepared no matter what, and we are so thankful for all of our members, sponsors and adver- tisers. We’ll see this through together. Mary A. May Executive Director [email protected] WWW.ALOA.ORG
