September 2017
In This Issue
Wingman
Field Operations Update
As I come to the end of my first year as the Vice Chairman of the Board for Field Operations I must send out a big shout out to everyone of you in the Field, although this has been a challenging year in many ways it has also been very rewarding year which has allowed me to work with all of you.
 
We have accomplished several things, most noticeable a new way to pay our Chapters and soon a better leaner way to do reporting.  Your Field Council has completed tools to help you with your advocacy efforts, self - paced training modules to educate your chapter leaders, a Wounded Airman Program that continues to provide direct and indirect support to our Airman, the most robust Emerging Leader Program to date, the technology team is working with HQ IT to provide use with the right tools as our IT system transitions into this century.  And for the first time we have a revenue generation sub-committee that have gathered all the great ideas that you, the Field, have come up with and we will be able to share those great ideas with each other.
 
Yes, the budget cuts have hurts us.  I promise that I will remain true to you.  I will stand firm on not taking draconian cuts to save money at on the backs of the Field.   We will be smart and ask you for ideas, help us identify any waste so we can eliminate it. 
 
Every dollar helps, if we can save one here and there, we can leave our field programs alone.  One such idea is our Bulk Leader program.  For years we have sent around 100 chapters ten magazines a month.  Beginning 1 Oct, we are going to ask each of those chapters to validate the need for those magazines.   If you are using them in your advocacy efforts, great!  Keep it up, you will still be a part of the program.  However, if you are no longer using them, maybe someone from years ago signed up and they end up in your recycle bin, please save us the cost of mailing them to you.  Maybe 10 is too many, revalidate and let us know what that number is.  This will be simple.  If you want to continue in the program please send Nia Reeves ( nreeves@afa.org) an e-mail and revalidate your need NLT 1 Oct.  We will do this each year on 1 Oct.  If you no longer need the magazines, do nothing and you will stop receiving them after October.  We will update all this in the next FOG update.   In the next week, I will send a note to the individuals involved.
 
Again it has been a great year and I am so thankful for all of you, your ideas, wisdom, and in many cases, your mentorship. I look forward to seeing many of you at the Convention.
 
As always thank you for everything you do for our great association each and every day.

Mac MacAloon
Vice Chairman, Field Operations
Airman for Life
AFA's 2017 National Convention and Air, Space & Cyber Conference
As you know, our 2017 AFA National Convention, held in National Harbor, MD at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center is this weekend! We are looking forward to another fun, exciting, and busy weekend. National Convention is held on September 16-17. A full delegate agenda can be found here. Remember that you must be listed on your state's delegate roster to be an official delegate, so please be sure to coordinate through your State President. Again, this year we will have table assignments for our Saturday night Field Awards Dinner. Your table assignment will be printed on the dinner ticket you receive during registration check-in. Our Air, Space & Cyber Conference and Technology Exposition will begin on Monday, September 18, and runs through Wednesday, September 20. A full conference agenda can be found here .
Aerospace Education Council Update 
We have great news regarding the Rolls-Royce and AFA Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Teacher of the Year (TOY) Program!  Rolls-Royce has agreed to become a Platinum Sponsor for the program.  This means that the majority of the funding will come from Rolls-Royce.  We are extremely grateful to the leadership of the Rolls-Royce Company for enhancing their sponsorship and recognize their contribution to the future of our nation by supporting teachers who are educating our youth in STEM.  We hope they will continue the sponsorship and lend their prestigious name to our program into the future.

Another great sponsorship is being afforded by Webster University.  As a Silver Sponsor, they are providing funds in support of our Educator Grant Program.  Again, the teachers who receive these grants are providing exciting and innovative lessons to their students in STEM classrooms across the nation.

Our hats are off to both Rolls-Royce and Webster University! For the full AEC update click here
Commissaries and Barnes&Noble Locations to Purchase Air Force Magazines 
Please click here to find out about the various commissaries where you can purchase the Air Force Magazine. Please click here to find out about the various Barnes&Noble locations where you can purchase the Air Force Magazine
Training Subcommittee Update
This will probably be the last of these articles I write since I am, as of this writing, the only candidate to replace Tim Brock as National Secretary. Presuming the election goes as it seems that it's going to, next month Riq Baldwin will become the subcommittee chairman and author of these articles, and I'll become one of his worker-bees.

Last month I wrote that our contract with Brainshark was going to end on September 1st. That's what I thought. What I didn't know was that someone on the National staff decided to extend the contract a month, so all the links you see in the Training Modules box on the Field Leaders page of the AFA web site still work. Come October 1st, however, they won't.

We're in the final stages of sorting out exactly how the modules will work from their new home on the Training Modules page, which you'll get to from an option on the menu bar on the Field Leaders page. When you click on a link on the new page, you will not have to complete anything like the Brainshark guestbook to start a video. There will still be a survey at the end of each video, but it will be longer than before because we have to use it to capture some of the information we used to get from the guestbook.

The new page has links to all of the old modules on it. They will now stream from this page but remember that when you're invited to take the end-of-module survey, that survey no longer exists. The same is true for any references to tables of contents: they don't exist either. We will modify these videos to replace all the references to Brainshark-provided tools over the next several months. Updated modules will have Updated! next to their titles.

I still plan on having Nia send out a special edition of Newsline with a quick tutorial on how to access and use the videos in their new location. Look for it later this month or in early October.

The other big change that's coming is that we will be disconnecting most of the modules from specific months. Some modules still need that connection, like the planning and reporting ones, but most do not. We'll still recommend you watch certain videos each month, however: we don't want you to forget about them.

And speaking of that, this month we suggest you watch the Advocacy, Part 1, video. With everything Congress has on its plate, including passing a real Defense Department budget to replace yet another Continuing Resolution, now is a good time to brush up on how to do advocacy.
Spencer Scholarship Congratulations 
Click here if you would like to read the congratulations letter to Lt Visconti for being one of the three Spencer Scholarship winners. 
A FA's eBay Page
AFA is selling merchandise on eBay. You can find USAF 70th Birthday t-shirts, the 2017 almanac, various art prints, and Airmen for Life merchandise. If you would like to check out the page, please click here.
Mitchell Update
Upcoming Mitchell Institute Events:  
Sep 26: Nuclear Deterrence Breakfast with Rep Mike Rogers, Chairman, Strategic Forces Subcommittee
Sept 28: Huessy and Minot Task Force 21 Nuclear Triad Symposium in D.C. at Capitol Hill Club
Sept 29: Space Power Seminar with General Thompson of SMC, CHC in Washington, D.C. 
Oct 13: Space Breakfast with Lt Gen John Thompson, Space and Missiles Center Commander
Oct 27: Space Breakfast with Air Vice Marshall Simon Rochelle 
 
Mitchell Institute Releases New Study: Survivability in the Digital Age
 
The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies is pleased to release the fifteenth entry in its Mitchell Forum paper series, The Cyber Edge: Posturing the US Air Force for the Information Age, by Lt Gen William Bender, USAF (Ret.).
 
In his paper, Bender examines the challenges and foundation changes necessary for the US to remain the world's greatest Air Force in the information age. The service should move to increase its focus on information mission assurance, resiliency, and risk mitigation, rather than merely keeping its various information technology systems (IT) "compliant" with patches and checks. The service must also move to build a cyberspace force focused on maneuver in cyberspace domain and less focused on IT procurement and maintenance activities, he notes, and the services should strive to use data from across the cyber enterprise to improve the Air Force's efficiency and effectiveness. The Air Force, he argues, has to fully embrace cyberspace as an operational domain, and notes that "operations in, through, and from cyberspace represent the current focal point of asymmetric combat advantage." The US must continue to ensure its dominance in the cyberspace domain, as well as the air and space domains. However, to achieve this dominance "will require making changes that will challenge the Air Force as an institution and its culture," he argues.
 
Please click here to view the press release. 
Health 21 Magazine
AFA is pleased to announce a new partnership with AMSUS, the Society of Federal Health Professionals, who has created the Health21 E-magazine. Health21 supports a new vision of wellness and health care for the 21st Century. The magazine provides thought leadership articles, encourages civilian and military interoperability and shapes the future direction of health for all. I hope our members enjoy this new E-magazine, which we plan to send to our members, free of charge, starting this month.  
AFA Member Surveys
In order to get a better understanding of our members' interests, we plan to send two electronic surveys to our members in September. With many of our members shifting from reading hard copy to digital magazines, the first survey will be a survey asking if you would prefer to "Opt out" of receiving the hard copy of Air Force Magazine. This is our way of going "green," while saving the cost of printing and mailing the magazine, so please help us by completing the short survey. The second survey is geared at learning more about our readers' interests and demographics. Please be on the lookout for both surveys from our Membership Department.
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