Annual Meeting
As I reported briefly in my column last month because Proceedings was on deadline, the Annual Meeting was a winner. The highlight of the program was the address by Admiral Mike Rogers, U.S. Navy, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, Director of the National Security Agency, and Chief of the Central Security Service. The Cyber Czar provided fascinating insights into his cyber challenge, the cyber state of play, and stayed for an extensive question-and-answer session with Members.
As Members know, the Naval Institute’s Constitution and By-Laws require a report on the Institute made at the Annual Meeting. For those who could not attend the meeting, it was my honor to report:
• Our Naval Institute is doing very well.
• We have the financial health to perform our mission; we were $1.27 million to the good in 2015.
• Membership growth is positive for the fourth year in a row; we surpassed 50,000 members in 2015.
• Our Foundation achieved an all-time record for the second year in a row.
We also had the opportunity to honor the following authors:
• Naval Institute Press Author of the Year: Mr. Vincent P. O’Hara, Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory
• Naval History Author of the Year: Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, U.S. Navy (Ret.), “Naval Air Strike North Vietnam.” (December 2015)
• Proceedings Author of the Year: Lieutenant Commander Brian Smicklas, U.S. Coast Guard, “The Demise of the Cutterman” (August 2015) and “Cuba, the Coast Guard, and Chaos” (October 2015)
• General Prize Essay Contest Winners: First Prize: Lieutenant Commander Jared M. Wilhelm, U.S. Navy, “Admiral Nelson’s Twitter Feed” (April 2016); Second Prize: Commander Brendan R. Stickles, U.S. Navy, “Twilight of Manned Flight” (April 2016); Third Prize: Fleet Master Chief Paul A. Kingsbury, U.S. Navy, “What Makes the CPO Mess Tick?” (April 2016).
The election results for the Board of Directors and the Editorial Board are reflected in this month’s mast head on page three. Also on the mast head are the Naval Institute’s Board of Trustees.
Finally, I am happy to report that both ballot initiatives were approved by the Members. For Members to review the specific wording, please go to www.usni.org/about/state-of-the-institute.
The Annual Meeting was recorded and is available on www.usni.org/about/mission.
Call for Volunteers
The Naval Institute’s greatest strength is found in its members. We are a very lean organization. The only way we are able to achieve the results I reported on at the Annual Meeting is because so many members so freely invest their time and energy in the Naval Institute.
We have two big projects we would like to have volunteers help us tackle:
Opportunity One: We are doing the important work of preserving and digitizing our photographs. That work includes associating the captions and other information we have in our archive with scanned digital images. We have an excellent team of undergraduate and graduate interns starting work this month to transcribe and generate descriptive information about these scanned images. While many images have captions and notes associated with them, these are sometimes difficult to decipher or, in some cases, incorrect or missing. We want to team these young interns with experienced eyes of volunteers who have the knowledge and feel for our image library content. If you live within commuting range of Annapolis and would like to volunteer a few mornings or afternoons per month to assist us, please let me know.
Opportunity Two: In addition to the digital image project, we are making the final push on making completely word-searchable versions of our digitized Proceedings archive available to members and researchers. As you recall, we have digitized and posted copies of Proceedings on our site over the past two years. While the scanning and preservation work are complete, we still need to make the final push to make fully word-searchable versions available from World War II to the present. We need volunteers to clean up the scanned and word-searchable articles and make them look like the original…. The scanning technology only takes you so far!
It would assist the Institute immensely to have a knowledgeable volunteer take a year—12 issues—and comb through these to clean them up. So, if 1957, 1967, or 1977 were great years in your life—you can relive them! You just do not get an offer like this very often…. If you live within commuting range of Annapolis and would like to volunteer, we can train you on the process. After training, much can be done from home. We will assign a point of contact to you to assist with any questions. The “skills” required are your general knowledge/experience, an average proficiency in MS “Word” and some patience!
Please drop me a line at [email protected] if you are willing to volunteer for either of these opportunities!
Peter H. Daly, VADM, USN (Ret.)
Life Member and Member since 1978