General membership meetings normally are held at 7:00 pm on the first Tuesday of each month from April to October in the conference room at the Sandia Ranger Station in Tijeras. (No meetings are held November through March.) Meetings include brief reports from the FOSM President, Projects Chair, and Treasurer followed by an informative presentation by an invited speaker on a subject pertinent to our mission and of general interest.
Year-round monthly meetings were attempted for several years, but repeated weather cancellations eventually convinced FOSM’s board of directors to restrict meetings to April-October beginning in 2015.
All meetings were canceled in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, and all meetings in 2021 and 2022 were virtual using Zoom. Hybrid (in-person plus Zoom) meetings were attempted in 2023⏤a challenging and perhaps worthy experiment; however, they required a lot of extra work, were fraught with technical problems, and created a distraction for in-person participants⏤all for a small on-line audience. In-person-only meetings resumed in 2024.
The FOSM Vice-President is responsible for arranging speakers for these meetings. We strive for a mix of informative, educational, and entertaining topics each year including talks focused on enhancing our knowledge of like-minded organizations to help accomplish our mission of supporting the Forest Service. The FOSM board of directors compiled a list of such organizations in January 2022, and each member choose four organizations she or he wanted to hear about at future membership meetings. Results from this weighted-choice poll have been used in choosing outside speakers since then.
Summaries of prior meetings are available via the dropdown menu above or by clicking on a link at the bottom of this page. Records of meeting speakers go back to 2003 thanks to annual newsletters. The breadth of topics and quality of speakers over the years are truly impressive. Copies of most presentations are available for meetings since April 2021 (pdf format).
Arrangements are underway for 2025 meetings. Speakers and topics for the first three meetings are as follows:
- April 1 – Ken Born, Sandia Ranger District update
- May 6 – Jen Medina-Gray, Canyon Young, and Julie Padilla, Trail construction
- June 3 – Jamey Browning, Trail mapping