I write this on my long flight home from another successful WAS conference, Aquaculture America, held in New Orleans (Feb 20-22). This conference was well attended, with nearly 2000 participants, and a strong and diverse program. Particularly encouraging was the strong student representation, evidenced by the exceptionally well-attended student reception. (I counted nearly 200 students at the event.) The US Chapter of WAS (USAS) focuses heavily on student events as it recognizes students as the future of the Society and a driver for future growth. Throughout WAS, we try to invest in engaging students through sponsorship, awards and student-targeted events. I would particularly like to acknowledge the contributions of Chris Green, who works hard as Chair of the WAS Student Activities Committee to facilitate a wide range of creative student awards and events.

I chaired the mid-year meeting of the WAS Board of Directors after the conference. We reviewed progress on some key issues and moved forward with some initiatives that are summarized here.

Chapter Secretariats

Chapter Secretariats have been initiated and Executive Officers (EO) appointed for both APC and LACC chapters, with both starting work late last year. It is too early to effectively gauge the impact of the secretariats but it is already evident that the presence of the EOs on the ground is increasing visibility and the scope of activities of chapters. The APC has already held two regional meetings in India and Iran, attracting nearly 200 new members. The new APC-EO (Genie) greatly facilitated the organization of these meetings. The EO of LACC (Nash) was able to attend part of the mid-year Board meeting, helping her along the steep learning curve to understand the policies and procedures of the Society. There was a general feeling that the secretariats will have a positive impact on the Chapters and the Society. The Chapters are committed to reporting a number of performance indicators related to the new secretariats. We welcome any feedback from Chapter members on their interactions with the new secretariats.

Journal Reinvigoration

We are now in the final throes of the selection process for an Executive Editor of the journal and we hope to have an announcement within a month. There is very active discussion among the Publications Committee and the Board about the future of the journal and how to improve its quality, especially its impact factor that, like it or loath it, appears set to remain as the main performance indicator for any journal. Personally I believe that it’s long overdue that universities and governments address the issue of the over-reliance on this imperfect measure of research ‘quality,’ especially in applied science. Equally important though is how JWAS can effectively differentiate itself from competing journals and there has been a lot of good discussion around this issue and some interesting ideas under discussion. Again we welcome input from members about what would stimulate you to publish quality work in JWAS and of course to read the journal. The Board also agreed to continue with the printed version of the journal for the time being.

Redefining Working Groups

WAS has had a category known as working groups for many years. These were established a long time ago to support discipline-based technical exchanges on key topics. A number of working groups have been formed for specific purposes but in recent years there has been relatively little activity within working groups and most have been disbanded with only one remaining. One of the reasons for the apparent redundancy of the working group concept is likely to be their relatively inflexible structure and onerous requirements for formation.

The Industry Relations committee is moving forward to develop a proposal to create a new more flexible entity to be known as a "Community of Practice" or "Special Interest Group." These will be flexible in structure, with WAS providing a range of support services to facilitate communication within the group. We envisage these groups to be relatively small and related to disciplines or industry special interests that have not yet formed their own associations or are currently too small to warrant this. WAS will facilitate communication and networking to allow the group to build cooperation and collaboration, which can obviously include the organization of special sessions at conferences. In some respects these groups may be incubators for cooperation on issues that may grow into more formal associations. A proposal will be submitted to the Board in May and we want to create examples of two or three such groups for approval at the same time. If you have any ideas for initiating communication (or formalizing existing informal communication) with such a supportive structure please let us know and perhaps your group can become pioneers in this space. Although this initiative is being built with industry in mind, there is no reason why groups cannot be discipline-based or academic.

Review of Communications Strategy

As a traditional knowledge broker, effective communication is at the heart of almost everything the Society does. Our traditional communications through publications and networking events, particularly the regular conferences around the world, are well established. We have also introduced some new initiatives such as the WAS app, improvements to the website and some presence on social media, such as the WAS and WAS-APC Facebook sites. However, we are inconsistent in communication directly associated with conferences (such as media releases during conferences) and lack an adequate overarching, coordinated and proactive communication strategy. A renamed ad hoc Communications Committee will review our communications practices and needs and present a comprehensive strategy to the Board at the next meeting in May

Student Activities

The relative success of student activities, including current and future sponsorship of awards, has generated a requirement for greater coordination of activities, for example to ensure that we do not generate a plethora of individual awards that ultimately devalues each award. We are thus conducting a review of student awards to develop a coordinated strategy between the parent society and the chapters such that the awards can provide the greatest impact for sponsors and awardees. We are also considering an approach suggested by Alltech, which introduced the concept of WAS awardees gaining entry to their prestigious global young scientist program, which has now been running for ten years.

Promotions and Membership

In my first column as President I wrote that the "fact that we are not growing our membership indicates that one or more elements of our value proposition are off target or simply that we are not communicating our value proposition effectively." We are planning to address the communications issue with a new communication strategy but we are currently embarking on an analysis of the value proposition of the society for current and future members. Over the next four months we will be seeking friends, members, ambassadors and key contacts in industry and academia to conduct interviews with non-members from various sectors of aquaculture, targeted at understanding what people representing aquaculture industry sectors want and expect from a professional society such as WAS. This will inform the development and communication of the value proposition of WAS going forward. Please contact me if you would be willing to assist us in this task. I reiterate my previously expressed view that, if we can get the Society value proposition right and communicate it effectively in under-represented areas, we could have a dramatic and relatively rapid impact on our reach and our membership.

On my way out of New Orleans I took a slight detour to visit the WAS Home Office in Baton Rouge, which was only a 90-min drive from New Orleans (not a particularly pleasant experience in driving rain!). Most WAS members, including the Board, never get to visit the Home Office so I thought I would visit Carol and Judy in the engine room of the Society where all financial matters and membership issues are handled. Based in an old building on the campus of Louisiana State University, it’s a quiet location and probably does not receive too many visitors, so I hope that that Carol and Judy appreciated the brief interlude. Thanks for all the good work you do in support of WAS!

If you would like to provide feedback on the issues raised in this column please respond to the WAS Home Office (carolm@was.org) or directly to me (graham.mair@seafoodcrc.com).

— Graham Mair, President