Dear AMIA Community,

I write to you all this week as I begin my second term as the President of AMIA to thank all of you who came to Tulsa for our extraordinarily successful AMIA 2023 conference! It was so great to see so many of you in person, and to hear about so many remarkable projects, developments, processes, and people.

We had so many great presenters, workshop leaders, sponsors, Pathways fellows, projectionists, students, vendors, Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) archivists and more that it truly made this a wildly successful conference!

Highlights: Some particular highlights that were shared among those who attended were: 1) visiting the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie Centers and being a part of the custom-designed behind -the -scenes tours of both places (thanks to Steve Jenkins, Mark Davidson and Stephanie Stewart!); 2) visiting Greenwood Rising and attending the Center’s Executive Director Dr. Raymond Doswell keynote address; 3) the special lunchtime custom AMIA tours from Experience Tulsa that highlighted the unique Art Deco of Tulsa, the Gathering Place and more; 4) visiting the Outsiders House and 5) visiting the Church studio (Leon Russell’s studio). I also heard that people had great food, a fun karaoke night and some late nights in a beer hall that was worth a mention.

Within the AMIA conference events, special thanks and shout outs to:

Conference Committee: Massive thanks to our conference committee for all of the work that they do to accept, review, and schedule the conference! Dan Wagner, Tara Kelley and Lindy Leong!

AMIA Small Gauge and Amateur Film Symposium: Big applause for the Small-gauge and amateur film symposium curators Louisa Trott, Hugo Ljungbäck and Patricia Ledesma Villon. This effort served to mark the 20th anniversary of the AMIA Small Gauge Symposium (2001) and the centennials for 9.5mm and 16mm film, the Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee hosted a celebratory symposium as part of the 2023 annual AMIA conference. Well done on this nicely-curated symposium.

Archival Screening Night: Special shout outs to Archival Screening Night and emcees Walter Forsberg and Andy Uhrich and organizers Jeremy Spracklen, Scott Martin, and to Brittan Dunham in particular—along with all of the presenters for a great night of screenings! We had a full house at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema.

Trivia Night: What a treat it was to watch the challenges presented by long time Trivia Night Master of Ceremonies and Mastermind behind the complex themes and questions, Colleen Simpson. What a nailbiter it was to see the power of Lord of the Rings and that led to the overthrow of last year’s reigning champions. Congratulations to this year’s champions team Three Lana Del Rey Billboards Outside of Tulsa.

Workshops: All workshops were full and well attended. Thanks to the organizers and instructors:

• Thanks so much to the Art of Small Gauge Projector Maintenance and Repair workshop with Louisa Trott, Dino Everett, Skip Elsheimer, Kristin Lipska, Jennifer Miko and Seth Mitter. With special thanks to Chapin Cutler, Boston Light & Sound, provided support for the workshop.
• And thanks to Rebecca Fraimow and team for the multi-day PBCore workshop.
• And thanks to James Snyder for the Audiovisual & Preservation Technology Basics for Non-Engineers.
• And thanks to the Community Archiving Workshop team who closed out the conference on Saturday with a community workshop.

Awards committee and Pam Wintle: Perpetual gratitude to our awards committee, many of whom have been serving for years! Pam Wintle, as chair in particular deserves special applause. Thanks for all that they do every year and for such a special line up of AMIA awardees this year.

AMIA staff and AMIA event staff: We would not be able to achieve all that we do as an organization without our talented and dedicated AMIA staff. Perpetual thanks to Laura Rooney, Kristina Kersels, and Beverly Graham for their all-year commitment and for working so hard before, during and after the conference to make it such a success. And thanks to the AMIA events team who come to our conference annually on their vacation time to work and make sure all goes smoothly. As they have been with us now for decades, big thanks to Shauna Rooney, Morgan Rooney, and Becca Walters. As I arrived early to help, and stayed later, I was able to see the tremendous about of work that goes into making our conferences so great.

As always, thanks to our sponsors who support our work. Huge thanks to Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (IMES), Digital Preservation Laboratories, DFT, Prasad, PRO-TEK Vaults, Duplitech, NBC Universal StudioPost, Tuscan Archival, Kodak, Digital Bedrock, Colorlab, MTI Film, Nova, STiL Casing Solution, The Media Preserve, and Lasergraphics.

Awards and the Membership Meeting: December 18^th online!

Please join us on December 18^th for our annual membership meeting which we are holding online so more of our members can attend. And so that all of this year’s awardees can be present. To note, our annual prestigious awards were announced at Archival Screening Night however, the final presentation and acceptances will be held during our online membership meeting. Please join us to celebrate the recipients of the Silver Light Award, the William O’Farrell Award, the Alan Stark Award and the Ray Edmondson Advocacy Award on December 18^th online!

Rachael Stoeltje 
President, Association of Moving Image Archivists; amiapresident@amianet.org
Director, Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive; rstoeltj@indiana.edu