Arrival in Washington

We're finally here! We arrived in Washington DC on Tuesday afternoon, and after introducing our team of volunteers to each other—yes, after countless hours of telephone conferences and e-mail conversations, for some of our members it was the first time meeting face-to-face—we spent the rest of Tuesday evening preparing for the upcoming meetings. All in all, our five teams consist of 25 volunteers and Automation Federation staff members. Our volunteers come from across the country and this Congressional Fly In would not be possible without the support and input of our volunteers and their companies–thank you! Many of our volunteers have previous experience with congressional visits, and they obviously have the field expertise needed in preparing our messages—to read more about the messages we will be delivering, read our Public Policy Synopses Summary available on our website. While fine-tuning our meeting agendas over dinner and covering everything from logistics (how to smoothly get from one meeting to the next), to talking points and where to squeeze in lunch, we finally called it a night around midnight.