Today is the shortest day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere. Here in Texas, the sun appears on the southeastern horizon, soars across the sky low in the south and, after a mere 9 hours and 55 minutes, dips out of view in the southwest.

Your experience varies, of course, depending on your location on the globe, but it seems to me this is as good a date as any to begin my work as chair by reflecting on our organization, our discipline(s), and the work that stands before us.

And my view from 33.582° N, 101.79° W, is that while time is short in many respects, there is also an incredible and expansive range of possible futures for us. The following is a list (in no particular order or comprehensiveness) of topics that are both challenges and opportunities for the C’s.

• Inclusiveness. The C’s has worked diligently for decades to create a welcoming and inclusive organization. From the creation of the Scholars for the Dream Award (1993) to the Luiz Antonio Marcuschi Travel Awards (2012), the C’s has been reaching out to underrepresented groups to join, participate, and help guide our organization. Challenge: this task is never complete, and we must continue to work to maintain an equitable and representative organization. Opportunity: new ways of engagement, more transparency of operations to encourage more participation, reach out to new and continually underrepresented populations (international teachers/researchers, contingent faculty, graduate students and retired members, to brainstorm a few)
• Definition. What exactly do we do and how should we do it? What about the line between spoken and written language? What about multicultural and multilingual approaches to composition? How does technology, social media, non-verbal communication impact our definitions? Challenge: harder and harder to promulgate a single vision of what it means to be literate, what good writing is, and how to adapt to changing expectations. Opportunity: create an organization and a culture that embraces all types of communication, representing new modalities in our governance, our scholarship, and our convention. 
• Organizational Actions. What should we be doing? Just meeting? Advocating? Publishing? Making the whole world a better place, or just focusing on the writing classroom? The mission statement gives us broad concepts, but no guidance as to how to be (conservative or progressive, growing or contracting, canonical or expansive). Challenge: organizational fragmentation with smaller and more specialized constituencies who want more focused action and direction—it’s harder and harder for such a big organization to maintain one coherent vision in that setting. Opportunity: while it’s not possible to do everything, we need to have a deep and honest discussion about what we can do and how we want to be, and then make the space and the exigency for those multiple voices and visions. It may mean inventing/experimenting with a completely different organizational structure or culture, but the mission should drive the organizational structure, not the other way around. 
• Playground issues. More learned societies out there, more competition for travel money and mindshare. But that means more opportunities for partnerships and coalitions. Can we work and play well with others? Challenge: we need to work harder to make the case that the C’s is worth joining and attending. Opportunity: more perspectives, cross-disciplinary opportunities, more diversity of background and opinion.
• Vertical Disintegration. Dual Credit and Advanced Placement is already eroding FYC, and will probably succeed in moving all first-year writing instruction out of higher education within the next 10 years. Do we fight to retain this market, or do we pivot to others, such as writing in the disciplines, advanced writing, writing in the workplace, etc? Challenge: we may be losing a key component of our long-held identity. Opportunity: composing and communicating happens everywhere, and not just in FYC classrooms.
• Location, location, location. Does the convention always have to be a big affair that has inherent financial burden on travelers? Is there room for virtual meetings or smaller, more localized meetings? Challenge: we’ve always done conventions this way. Opportunity: the world is filled with good models of participation that make use of alternative structures.
• Audience Awareness. With social media filled with hyperbole, lists of things (#10 blew my mind!), and light-speed refresh/update, how do we disseminate our carefully- (and slowly-) crafted position statements and other collective thoughts better and faster? Challenge: we’re not set up to do that. Opportunity: we can learn how to be more influential, more relevant.

What have I missed? What would you add to the list?