Events - President's Message
I am honored and feel privileged to serve as your next President. The Pacific Coast Society for Prosthodontics and all of you members have been part of my extended family for my entire professional career. You have mentored, supported and nurtured my development and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you. I look forward to working with all of you as we celebrate our 75th annual meeting in Silverado.
On behalf of the membership I would like to congratulate Bill and Alicia Schmidt for orchestrating an outstanding annual meeting. Sunriver was a wonderful venue and ensured that our 74th annual meeting will not be easily forgotten. Rodger Lawton and his committee provided us with unforgettable social events and Don Reikie put together a brilliant scientific program. Together they have set a very high standard which is going to challenge future chairs.
My very first meeting was Sunriver and my very first presentation was at Silverado, what a coincidence that I will have the privilege of presiding over our next annual meeting at Silverado after being installed in Sunriver. Don Curtis and Fritz Finzen are working on a very exciting scientific program – “The Future is Now”. Bill and Ann Putnam are orchestrating a number of social events and the Bocce Ball tournament is being organized by the Harman’s and Jacobson’s. We will be adding a few Indian touches as well – yoga, bollywood dancing and an evening with Indian street food.
Change is inevitable – after being in existence since 1930 this is the first year that the PCSP will be functioning without our regional structure. I would like to thank Carl Rieder who planted the seed for this change and the committee led by Baron Barnett that allowed the seed to sprout. One of my objectives this year is to start the process of ensuring that our society continues to thrive under our new structure.
In order for us to continue growing we need new members. I was encouraged to attend and join by my mentors Tom Curtis and Jim Kratochvil. Steve Sadowsky has done an amazing job with the graduate students and now that we accept the graduate student presentations and manuscripts as a membership requirement we have removed some of the hurdles that prevented young prosthodontists from joining our society. We have not been very successful in reaching out to our dental students. Gary Solnit, Amerian Sones and Bob Simon are in the process of putting together a program with the dental schools to promote our specialty and we hope this will help us accomplish one of our missions.
Chris Travis deserves our gratitude for all his efforts during his term as secretary/treasurer – thank you Chris and Diane. As Charlie Swoope used to say “only a past secretary/treasurer really knows what the job entails”. I would also like to thank Rodger Lawton for accepting to serve as secretary/treasurer and I have the utmost confidence in Rodger’s abilities to take the society to next level.
Escalating costs of our meetings is a challenge and if it was not for David Guichet’s efforts we would not be able to have meetings of the caliber we have grown accustomed to – thank you Dave for last year and for the year ahead. Your council will be looking at ways to cut some of the expenses and we have targeted the AV area to start this process.
The executive council will be meeting in January so please get in touch with us with suggestions – we are all part of this amazing family and need to work together to make sure that the PCSP continues to host the very best social and scientific meetings.
Once again thank you for your trust and support – remember I am only a phone call or email away and would love to hear from all of you.
Best wishes.
Arun Sharma
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