2012 Annual Meeting Highlights

National Association of Presort Mailers Annual Meeting – 2012

The 29th Annual Meeting was an information rich session, with speakers from both the US Postal Service and the mailing industry. Held from Feb. 23-25 in Ft. Myers, FL, the 116 members and guests enjoyed networking opportunities and valuable information on upcoming changes in the mailing industry.

“With Change Comes Opportunity,” this year’s theme, provided a forum for the latest USPS information and initiatives from the mailing industry as a whole. Seeking to highlight the challenges ahead, to embrace opportunities and instill a “prosperity” consciousness, initial feedback indicates the Annual Meeting was a success. Many members expressed a much more positive outlook on the future of both the mail presort business and mailing industry, as opposed to their outlook prior to the meeting. For a more detailed description of the meeting sessions, please look through the Annual Meeting Program guide.

Meeting Highlights

Rich Gebbie, President, NAPM Board of Directors opened the meeting with a discussion of the association’s significant strategic objectives: expanding our mailing profile to include additional mail classes and services, developing greater value for the membership, and driving opportunities with the Postal Service. As part of creating value, Rich discussed more emphasis being applied to using “committees” to accomplish business objectives for the membership. This was followed up by Board Officer and Director reports, many of which included the various committees they are chairing and the accomplishments and goals of the committees.

This year’s keynote speaker was Ronald Stroman, Deputy Postmaster General USPS, who discussed the current state and the future direction of the Postal Service. Mr. Stroman explained the current financial state of the Postal Service and fiscal challenges that no other agency (or business) has ever had to address. He then discussed the Postal Service’s “Plan for Profitability” and how the industry can help the Postal Service get back on sound financial ground.  . Mr. Stroman then opened it up to take questions and listen to ideas from the audience.

The remainder of the 3 day meeting was filled with industry and USPS speakers covering a variety of topics from business diversity and change, recent changes in Labor Law, the USPS Network Optimization implementation, to the Business Mail Acceptance transition for the new network.

The USPS also provided two mail acceptance experts who met individually with members to discuss everything from CSA concerns to acceptance issues. We had many of our vendor members speak on the changes ahead and the products and services they have to offer that enables mailers to easily meet those changes. This year, in response to our member’s voice, we held the Smaller Volume Mailer Members meeting on Friday afternoon. This open forum session was facilitated by Pat Parvin focusing on the more specific needs of this segment of our members.

On the closing day our new Executive Director, Bob Galaher, discussed his thoughts on the industry and the changes ahead. He then talked about the NAPM accomplishments of 2011 and the focus for 2012. The final session was a brainstorming event where all the membership participated in developing ideas for how our industry segment can partner with the Postal Service and within the industry in the future. The session provided a lot of information to be considered for developing future opportunities for our members.

To view the presentations given at the annual meeting; log in to access the “Members” section, select “Meeting Presentations”, and look under “2012 Annual Meeting Event.” The presentations are listed by the day of the event.

Elections were conducted to replace three vacating board of director positions. There were 6 nominees submitted to fill the 3 positions. All of the nominees are extremely talented and committed members so this was a very tough election. The new board members are Beth Bell from Access Mail Processing, Ty Inman from National Presort Inc. – Midsouth Technologies, and incumbent Rich Gebbie from Midwest Direct. Two of our previous board members, Jay Gillotte and Joe Vanlandingham had decided it was time to make way for some new talent on the board, declining to run again this year.

However, the board was immediately planning on what committees that Joe and Jay would be “volunteering” for. The Board also elected new officers for the year: President – Rich Gebbie, 1st V.P. – Steve Krejcik, 2nd V.P. – Mark Kolb, Secretary – Beth Bell, and Treasurer – Kevin Yost.

Acknowledgements

The NAPM wishes to thank the many companies and members who each year make this event happen through their generous contributions.

Golf Tournament, Reception, and Dinner:

The golf tournament was hosted and coordinated by Mail Automation Inc. A great time was had by all who participated. Mail Automation Inc. also provided many gifts and prizes that were won by the participants. We also want to thank Parascript LLC for the special “hole-prize” won by a lucky golfer.

We also express our gratitude to Mail Automation Inc. for the two prizes they provided for our Opening Reception, a $500 cash drawing won by Mary Williams, Presort Solutions Inc., and the Cruise Giveaway drawing, won by Neal Salvey, Corporate Mailing Services, during our Friday night dinner event.

Meeting Sponsors:

The NAPM also wants to recognize the generous contributions of our meeting sponsors. These sponsor help with general costs of the meeting, enabling the association to host events like the wonderful reception held on the evening of the first day. This year’s sponsors were:

Platinum – Bell & Howell, and Engineering Innovations

Gold – Mail Automation Inc. and Siemens Inc.

Silver Sponsors – National Presort Inc.

Bronze Sponsors – Monticello Software, and Parascript LLC.

Speakers:

The NAPM wishes to thank all of our speakers who presented or participated in panels and discussion forums. We want to recognize the following guest speakers who presented on specific topics:

Ronald Stroman, Deputy Postmaster General, US Postal Service

Paula McCollum, Industry Outreach, US Postal Service

Martin McGuire, Manager Business Mail Entry, US Postal Service

Michael P. MacHarg, Attorney, Partner at LeclairRyan, Los Angeles CA

Special Contribution Thanks:

Sue Foster, Executive Administrative Assistant, NAPM

Don Caddy, Engineering Innovations Inc.

Kelly Lorchick and Lance Bell, US Postal Service

Tim Ward, Marketing Consulting

Rich Gebbie, Midwest Direct