There’s an old saying that nobody likes change except a baby with a wet diaper. There’s probably a bit of truth in that, but if there is one thing that journalists and communicators have to face, understand and help their audiences navigate, it’s change.
Right now, IFAJ is in the center of some big changes, and they are exciting. Most dramatic, we must change the organization’s name as we file for official recognition that will allow us to function as a registered non-profit. Under the British laws governing our registration, our voting procedures are not aligned with the definition of a “federation.” As a result, we must redefine ourselves with a new name. We could take any of four approaches:
- Keep the IFAJ acronym and use a different word—”fellowship,” “forum,” or something else—to fill the “F” position.
- Just operate under the “IFAJ” acronym, like KFC or BASF do.
- We could keep most of the structure of the current name but change the descriptor to something like “Alliance” (IAAJ), or “Conference,” “Caucus” or “Community” (ICAJ).
- We could take this opportunity to rename the organization entirely.
That’s a big step, especially for many of us who have grown up with the current name and have emotional ties to it. But it’s exciting, too. We have the opportunity to shape our organization and prepare it for a rapidly changing future.
This is hardly the first change IFAJ has seen in its seven decades. After all, the name International Federation of Agricultural Journalists reflected a change from “International Union of Agricultural Journalists” in 1963. In the meantime, we have navigated the rise of television, the switch from typewriters to computers, the advent of desktop publishing, the explosion of the internet, digitization in audio and visual capture…and now we’re going to figure out artificial intelligence together.
Our organization—whether we end up calling it IFAJ or something else—is preparing daily for changes in our industry through our webinars, our programming, our use of social media, and the Vision 2035 Committee and the other committees that are positioning us for the future. Change is the one thing we can always count on. What we can also count on is that we will greet change together and learn from the opportunities it creates.
Steve Werblow
IFAJ President