The time of disappointment is over and it's now time for action.
-Ed De Gennaro, from the OptiBoard thread
Education and Professional Organizations > State Leadership meeting announcement
For those of you following "As OptiBoard Turns," you probably know we have had quite a few Opticianry threads that all point towards the need for strong national organization. However, there appears to be only a few of us posting about the subject.

I think we need a core organization to speak for us legislatively. If you don't think that is important go back and read the posts regarding the deregulation of a couple of states. Those state societies and others fight to keep Opticianry as a regulated profession. Wouldn't it be easier if all of us had that kind of national support?

In the past, some of us have expressed dissapointment at OAA; however, we have been promised changes recently by the new board. I see one problem with this. One of the allegations made was that the OAA was an "Old Boy" network. That may or may not have been true but there is one way to change that - new members. If any organization has a limited membership, of course it is easy to call it isolated. The only way to change that is by increasing the number of members. An organization with 1,000 members is not going to be as diverse as one with 10,000 members; that's just plain old math and statistics. We are the reason the OAA isn't been what we want it to be. (Note - I am not currently a member of the OAA)

My main questions is: Can the OAA lead Opticianry into the future?

I urge anyone who has a constructive opinion to please post it here.