Northeast Blacksmiths

NBA Presidents Message About The ABANA Conference

Message regarding the 2008 ABANA Conference Planning

NBA President's Message   Spring 2007

Well, it has been a wild couple of years. Our group has been riding high on the prospect of hosting the 2008 Artist-Blacksmith Association of North America Conference. We approached ABANA in the Spring of 2004 and were chosen as the host affiliate at the October 2005 ABANA Board Meeting. We formed a Steering Committee of NBA members to navigate the planning stages of the conference and negotiations with ABANA. This committee has been meeting to establish policies and complete tasks assigned by ABANA, as well as researching the resources of the region. We accomplished quite a lot and developed a good working team. That's the good news. The bad news is that ABANA has had their own problems to deal with, of late, and they have told us that they are not able, at this time, to produce a conference. It really is too bad and a great disappointment. We had developed a dynamic program and the buzz about the conference had been growing up and down the East Coast. But that's the way the cookie crumbles. It was not something we could control or influence, we did our best. And, as a charter member of ABANA, I can only hope that ABANA can bounce back from the problems they are now facing.

One outgrowth of the work we have done that might serve us well is to put our knowledge and energy into producing a Regional Meet of our own. And by our, I mean, the Blacksmith groups in our part of the country with whom we share a sense of solidarity. There are strong groups all the way from northern New England down to Virginia and to the West of us, that we have ties with. This will be a topic that we will talk about at our Business Meeting on Saturday evening May 5th, during our weekend Hammer-In. Bring your ideas and input.

So in closing I would like to thank the members of the Steering Committee, and others in the NBA, who put in a lot of time and worked hard to develop our concept of an International Blacksmith Conference, in no particular order: Jim Moran, Fred Morse, Ryan Blessey, Kelly Anson, Dave Caccamo, Tim Neu, Tom Ryan, Carl Davison, Fletcher and Deborah Coddington, Ian Rose. As well as all the other members of the NBA who offered ideas and comments and expressed a willingness to volunteer at the conference. Let's move on from here together and with your participation build a better NBA.

Jonathan Nedbor

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