From the Editor

New Year's Resolutions

‘Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions.

When it comes to the Almanac, I don’t wait for Jan. 1 to make improvements. We are constantly fine-tuning the magazine to make sure it is the best it can be every month. But, we are entering this new year with a list of changes that you can look for in the Almanac now and in the near future.

The Almanac was the beneficiary of a great deal of useful advice collected from participants during a focus group meeting at the AOPA National Assembly last fall. We gathered individuals from all aspects of the profession, and they told us what they think about the magazine, what they’d like to see more of and how we can improve it still further.

The focus group said they want more basic information in the magazine. So I crafted this year’s editorial calendar with that in mind. Several of our cover stories this year will take the “how to” approach. We will be looking at industry problems and hot topics from a more basic angle.

And, we have invited marketing expert Elizabeth Mansfield to write a basic marketing column for the Almanac. During her Assembly presentation, she outlined some solid steps any company can take—regardless of size—to get its name out there in the industry and the community. She will be sharing her secrets with us every other month, starting in February.

Technician’s Corner has proven to be a popular column, so we have moved it to the front of the book. Even though I know nothing about fabrication, I enjoy reading these stories that combine humor and expertise to impart basic knowledge about fabrication. It seems fitting to put our technicians with the rest of the O&P experts in the front part of the magazine.

You may notice that one of our experts is absent this month. We decided to make December the last installment of the HIPAA Advisory column. With the last compliance deadline just a few months away, our author—AOPA’s Senior Manager of Reimbursement Services Virginia Torsch—felt there was nothing left to cover. That doesn’t mean Virginia is done writing for the magazine. Expect to see her sharing her expertise in the pages of the Almanac in new ways in the future.

We are always looking for news stories with an O&P angle, and this month, we found two. Staff Writer Marique Newell called every Crittenden in the San Francisco area until she found “Survivor’s” Chad Crittenden. When he was voted off the island, she joined a sea of mainstream media fighting for interviews, and she got not one but two—getting, according to the CBS rep, more time with him than anyone else had.

And while it’s much too late to be covering Paralympic results, there was one story that needed to be told: why there were almost no U.S. media representatives covering the Paralympic Games in Greece. Freelance writer Beverly Millson doesn’t give us any solutions to the problem, but she does outline the extent to which our media was far behind the rest of the world in covering these important events.

I feel good that we are starting the year off with a strong issue full of information and interesting articles. I resolve to improve on this all year long. a Lisa Gough is the editor-in-chief of the O&P Almanac.

Lisa Gough is the editor-in-chief of the O&P Almanac. You can reaach her at (571) 431-0815 or by e-mail at lgough@AOPAnet.org