Annual Member Meeting Held in Las Vegas

September 24, 2015 @ 5:30 pm Annual Member Meeting Las Vegas, Nevada at The World Cup Competition and Show Roll call was taken and a sign-up sheet provided Betsy Ketcham opened the meeting with a welcome and introductions Betsy walked through some of the Activities from the Board of Director’s Management Committee which consists of Kim Boyer, President, Betsy Ketcham, Vice President, Miguel Nunez, Vice President and Joan Mack, Executive Director

• We had a change to our staff earlier in the spring when Virginia Sabater joined us as an Inscription Coordinator This reduced the turn-around time for inscriptions in the office to about 5 working days for inscriptions with no issues
• We continue to generate a lot of buzz on Facebook – we are now well over 27,000 Likes
• We continue to manage a very successful USPRE COPA program along with some of our other programs A reminder to file Declarations of Intent on our website was reported and most results from these programs will be available around the middle of October
• The website was moved from one platform to another which took some time to manage We had some glitches but they were ironed out quickly We encourage members to contact us quickly if confronting issues accessing parts of our website
• We had a very successful USPRE Week in January 2015 and look forward to another successful event in January 2016
• USPRE Week 2016 is January 26-29, 2016 with the big party on January 27
• USPRE Board presented Year End Awards once again – these were presented at the Member Dinner during USPRE Week The Board of Directors determines these awards around the end/beginning of the year
• Continue to host Revision tours twice a year
• Continue to support the Breeders Committee and by extension the Feria Del Caballo twice a year and the World Cup in Las Vegas in the fall
• We offer free tickets to SICAB to members If you plan to go, contact Joan or Tanya in our office
• We continue to sponsor, with 100% underwritten sponsorship, Global Dressage Festival in Florida, January to April Members who visit us have access to our table in the VIP tent, and must contact Joan for more information
• Betsy went to Costa Rica earlier this year to accept an award on behalf of USPRE from the Costa Rica LG studbook
• We have issued 102 New Breeder Codes so far this year, 31 New Owner Codes, and over 400 Changes of Ownership-- which means the PRE sector is getting stronger in breeding and selling
• There was some discussion about a TRC in 2016 and Betsy indicated that she agreed we should begin to plan this
• Bill Taylor and Adrienne LaFar, from the Breeders Committee, reported that the Committee met already twice this year again and continued its support of two Feria shows and the show in Las Vegas The Breeders Committee will also discuss the TRC for 2016
• Joan reported on office activities: we experienced far fewer issues than ever while processing service requests As we have had the studbook now going into our 4^th year, our experience has resulted in breeders who understand the system better, our website is far more responsive and easy to use, and our staff shows continuing improved customer service We have Fresh Desk software that helps us track services and communication from customers This has greatly improved our ability to respond to our customers, to understand where issues are and communicate results
• Joan also reported, on behalf of Kim Boyer, the introduction of the USPRE Catalog of Breeders and Breeding Stock She handed out a working description of this new feature and explained that the current Stallion Directory will be phased out, and, in fact, we are no longer taking new stallions for this We have a waiting list already for the USPRE Catalog Kim wants 20 breeders who will help us work through the initial launch of this site and Joan will record those names In the next few weeks more will be announced but we plan to officially launch the online Catalog  during USPRE Week in January 2016
• Some questions about this new Catalog, questions about announcing the results from COPA, questions about SICAB and discussion about USPRE Week ensued
• With no further business or questions, the meeting was adjourned at 6:30 pm