As this magazine begins its 52nd year of publication, I’d like to share with you some of the results from the recent reader survey in which many of you participated. (Thank you, by the way, to all of you who did; your answers gave us tremendous insight into your readership experience, as you’ll see.)

I’m exceptionally pleased to report that 99 percent of those who completed the survey rated OFFICIAL as being from moderately to very interesting. This tells us we are still accomplishing our primary goal and this magazine’s stated mission from Volume One, Number One: to be “informative and interesting.” You’ve told us, however, there are still some things we could do better and subjects about which you’d like to read more in future issues of the magazine. We are taking these suggestions to heart.

One thing that came through loud and clear is that while a majority of you enjoy the online edition, you absolutely still want to receive every issue in hardcopy in your mailbox. So, in 2010 and beyond, you shall. You support IAPMO’s efforts to reduce our environmental footprint wholeheartedly — just not at the expense of holding your copy of OFFICIAL in your hands.

The development of the online edition has still proven to be extraordinarily worthwhile, however. More people are reading OFFICIAL now than ever before in the magazine’s five decades of publication. By opening up the online edition to members and nonmembers alike, we are expanding IAPMO’s reach and sharing the results of your hard work with our entire industry.

Speaking of that work, your survey answers tell us you’re most interested in our articles and features related to best practices and code development — and you’d like to see even more. To that end, in upcoming issues we’ll devote more pages to previewing the proposed code amendments to be addressed at the Technical Committee Meetings in April and Assembly Consideration Sessions at conference in September. We’re also working on some other features to satisfy your hunger for more code development news.

And on best practices, the response to Rex Crawford’s “Tales from the Field” article (“Water Heater Highlights Importance of Inspections,” Third Quarter 2009) was overwhelmingly positive. We would love to share more of these “lessons learned” with the readers of OFFICIAL, but can’t do so without your help. If you’ve got an enlightening experience of knowledge gained during an inspection, please inform the editors or myself and we’ll publish it so everybody can benefit from your unique expertise.

In the survey, you also suggested a lot of great story ideas we are already pursuing or intend to pursue in 2010, from emerging technologies and evolving codes to one tongue-in-cheek suggestion for an article examining member hair loss through the years. (I wonder at whom that might have been directed?)

Though that last one was surely made in jest, it does raise an interesting and very real concern. Our membership is getting older and we need to keep discovering new ways to recruit new, younger people to join our association and keep reshaping the Uniform Codes for future generations. That was another reason for the development of e-OFFICIAL, as well as that of IAPMOnline (www.iapmonline.com) and our presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and Linkedin.

We’re not going to be around forever, but the need for Uniform Codes that protect the public’s health and safety will never go away.

It’s up to all of us to make sure the next generation continues in earnest the work we continued on behalf of those who came before us.

On that note, I’ll simply say I’m looking forward to a strong 2010 for IAPMO and our industry, and hope that OFFICIAL magazine will continue to be your premier source of plumbing and mechanical news. We are certainly working hard to ensure it does and thanks to your feedback, I believe it will.