Ufo Shake Up

Good news! You can still register to attend the Mutual UFO Network's 2013 Symposium!What's that you say? The MUFON 2013 Symposium was held two weeks ago? Well, yes it was, if you want to split hairs, and that's one of the reasons for my intense love/hate relationship with MUFON. Huge news -- "HUGE "-- came out of the Symposium two weeks ago, and not only is it not posted at www.mufon.com two weeks after the fact, you can literally still register to attend the Symposium that already happened... two weeks ago.Fortunately, this doesn't surprise me at all. I expect this from my MUFON colleagues, so instead of waiting for news of the 2013 Symposium to show up on the MUFON website, I did what I always do: I went out looking for it. And what I quickly found out was that there was BIG news at the Symposium!The big news is... MUFON has a new Executive Director!Dave "The Captain" McDonald is stepping down after 18 months and his big old shoes will be filled by a guy named Jan Harzan, about whom I know nothing. Turns out The Captain only signed up for an 18 month gig, and his time is up. Now, back when The Captain first took the reins 18 months ago, I questioned why the entire organizational headquarters -- the files, the desks, the paperclips, the Post-Its -- had to be moved from Denver to Cincinnati, so now I wonder where they will be moved next and if I will be asked to help with the move...While I wait to hear about that, here's what I know about Mr. Not The Captain Jan Harzan: He is not a Captain; He wants to beef up MUFON's presence in social media; He wants the general public (that's you!) to have better access to MUFON's case files; He wants to promote the most serious, most remarkable UFO sightings; and he wants to work more closely with the French UFO organization GEIPAN ("Groupe d'Etudes et d'Informations sur les Ph'enom`enes A'erospatiaux non Identifi'es"). UFOs? "Oui!" The question of the hour: Who is Jan Harzan? Somebody better find out fast.That's all great, and I am happy to say that I have already taken care of the social media thing with my blog, so Mr. Not The Captain can X that off his list right away. I can help with his desire to play up the most serious, important cases by making sure that every case I investigate is one of the most serious, important cases of all time. Number three is tricky, as I don't live anywhere near France, but I will be working on this.So, that's all good, right? Well yeah, it all sounds good, and I want nothing more than to rally behind my new leader and bring MUFON.But how can the guy talk about doing better with social media and publicizing serious cases when the news that he became president of the organization isn't even on the organization's website? I think this guy has his work cut out for him...