Caitlin McDiarmid

While at Conference this year,  Bethra Szumski came and found me. She had spoken with Josh’s mom that day. During the course of relaying the story to me, she was overcome with emotion.  She told me that Josh’s mom is so very grateful that we are keeping Josh’s memory alive with this award.

At Conference I asked everyone: those who knew Josh and miss him and those who didn’t know Josh, but should have—raise a glass, whether water or wine—and toast Josh, a very fine young man who left this place too early, and leaves us both richer and poorer with his departure.

The recipient of this year’s Josh A. Prentice Award is Ryan Ouellette.

Ryan is a good friend of mine.  Somewhere in my head I worried about giving him this award.  He’s more than deserving, but sometimes our community can’t see that service—and what it means to volunteer can be extremely diverse.

Ryan isn’t a traditional boots-on-the ground volunteer or an in-the-trenches volunteer.

He has, however, contributed hours and hours of work and some of the major ideas that have shaped our Conference into what it is today.

Back on December 5, 2008 I received an email from Ryan, whom I didn’t know well. He wrote that some of our most trusted Board Members had been impressed with his teaching at BMX and that they suggested he reach out and possibly teach at the APP Conference.  He wrote. “maybe I sucked, and they just felt bad.” He was a bit self-deprecating, and didn’t seem to think that we would be interested.

By February of 2009, a mere two months later, he had submitted two fully fleshed-out proposals to the Conference Committee: one was for a workshop-based class that changed up the lecture format (that all classes were being taught in at that time) and one was for the Mentor Program.

In 2009 he wasn’t an APP member and therefore wasn’t asked to take on the lead role in either of the programs. However, due to certain circumstances, he wound up taking the lead on the Mentor Program that year and playing a key role teaching some of the workshop sessions. By the following year, while he still wasn’t a member, he was lead instructor on the workshop session(s) as was Jesse Villemaire. (At that time, the APP allowed non-members to teach only if they were “experts” on a topic and they were more qualified to teach the class than an available member.)

Ryan has consistently provided ideas and thoughts on ways to improve Conference since he got involved in 2008. These two programs alone have reshaped our Conference, infused new excitement into classes, and were instrumental, I believe, in changing how our seasoned attendees treat and perceive new attendees.

How else has he volunteered? For the past three years he has participated in processing, interviewing, and choosing the Al D. scholars—which, this year, also included 26 phone interviews.

He has worked countless hours as part of the APP team for Tumblr. (The estimation of hours is  seven to ten hours per a week; that’s somewhere between 726 hours and 1040 hours over the last two years.) And we know these social media efforts have been key to the growth that our membership and our Conference has experienced recently.

He is always available for me—offering to help in any way throughout the year—and I hand him small projects where I can.

He is also the first person at Conference who took great pains to arrange for me to leave the hotel a few years back and go out to dinner with him and his friends. While it seems like a simple thing, for me this was a monumental task. By doing this, however, it became clear to me that if I put my trust in my volunteer team that everything would be ok, whether I was there or not.

Instructor, mentor, inspiration, social media mogul, and finally an APP member, Ryan became a member in 2011. I had many conversations with him before he became a member—about the Association and membership. Through his experience and service with the Association, Ryan changed his views of the APP and become one of our staunchest advocates.

Ryan is a special kind of leader. He is special kind of volunteer.

He’s provided emotional support and friendship for years, especially during Conference crunch time. I am so glad to have him as my friend, and it was a joy to present this award to him.