NEWS - Chairman's Report

In the past eight months I have sent out many letters regarding the upcoming 50th anniversary festival in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, I do not have current addresses of all our former presidents and board chairs. If you represent either category and have not received a letter from me, please contact me as soon as possible. 

The IJA Winterfest in Las Vegas was a great success and fun for all. Lots of great guests showed up to show their stuff and be part of the crowd. I was even able to prove to Elliot Goldstein that I can juggle! 

Many thanks to festival coordinator Ginny Rose for putting it all together, to Norman Schneiderman, his wife Becky and Richard Dingman for manning the table all week and all the others who helped make the festival a success. 

Six of the seven IJA directors attended the Winterfest and spent many hours with staff in meetings of the board, as well as in subcommittee meetings dealing with Juggler's World, endowment, membership and affiliates. All the discussions were aimed at developing programs, ideas and strategies that will increase IJA membership by retaining current members and attracting new ones. More information will be forthcoming as plans develop. 

The board did decide that a major change in Juggler's World's magazine, the flagship of the IJA was necessary , not only in terms of format, content and structure, but in frequency as well. IJA director Sam Kilbourn explains what we hope to achieve in another article in this section. 

Another highlight of the board meetings was viewing an hour-long videotape brought along by director and founding father Art Jennings. The tape showed the early days of the IJA, and had us spellbound for an hour. Members attending the festival in Pittsburgh will have the opportunity to view this tape exclusively in the History Lounge. This is something that you definitely will want to see! 

Another piece of good news for the Pittsburgh festival is that former IJA secretary and president Rich Chamberlin will receive the IJA Extraordinary Service Award on that occasion for his many years of service to the organization. 

I look forward to seeing all of you there! 

Over the past few years a group of IJA members has been looking into an overhaul of Juggler's World magazine, and this has culminated in some decisions reached at the committee's meetings at the January 1997 mini-festival in Las Vegas. The Board of Directors has decided to expand the magazine to eight issues per year initially, with possible further expansion in the future, and to make some structural changes in the way the magazine is put together. These include a division of responsibility between an Editor-In-Chief, who would supervise the overall content and production of the magazine and work directly with the designer/art director and printer, and who would be responsible for editorials and such "op-ed" features as letters to the editor; a Features or Articles Editor, who would be responsible for writing and collecting feature articles on various subjects for inclusion in the magazine, editing the same, and forwarding them to the Editor-In-Chief; a Departments Editor, who would be responsible for the numerous recurring departments including for example, entertainers notes, props information, juggling routines, humor, poetry, and the like, editing and forwarding as above. The Chairman of the Board of Directors would be de facto IJA Editor of reports coming from IJA officers and directors, affiliates information, and the like. (The Affiliates Newsletter would be folded into the magazine and no longer a separate publication.) In addition, we want to create the position of Advertising Director for the magazine who would be responsible for reaching a specific goal for advertising pages per issue and who would be paid on commission. The Article and Departments Editors would have modest budgets for payments to contributors, in appropriate cases. 

The purpose of these changes would be to spread the workload of producing the various parts of the magazine, to seek a more diverse group of authors and a wider form of input, as well as dispersing the editorial control so that the various subeditors could develop a rapport with their contributing authors. Another purpose of the change would be to stimulate more letters t8 the editor and more discussions of topics of interest, and yes even more "controversy" in regard to anything of interest to the membership. In addition, we are considering the possibility of a new name for the publication and we seek your input. Thus far we have "Juggling Arts Journal," "Juggler's World 2000," and "Juggler's New World" on the table. 

So we need your help with these changes. If you would like to take on an editorial role, or take charge of advertising, or, if you know someone who could, please contact me as soon as possible. We will be looking for appropriate experience and samples of work, etc. Contact: Sam Kilbourn, 22 Mechanic St., South Portland, ME 04106. (Please do not use e-mail - I am not actually on-line, and I don't even play one on TV!) For the Committee, Sam Kilbourn, Director 

Absentees Get New Chance At Auction Items This Year !!! 

If you guessed that this will be our 4th First Annual IJA Auction - YOU GUESSED RIGHT!!! If you guessed that we're going for "Twice the Treasure, Twice the Fun" - YOU GUESSED RIGHT!!!!! And if you guessed that everybody can donate; and that everybody gets a chance to bid on Auction items this year - YOU GUESSED RIGHT AGAIN!!!!!

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