February President's Message
Dear IAF Members and Industry Friends,It is a great honor to put pen to paper and write this note. For those of you that do not know a lot about me, I grew up in this business, crawling in attacks, installing foil on windows, and even learned how to record tapes for dialers, that latter of which really dates me!
I have been involved with our beloved association since the early days of my career, attending monthly dinners at the Olive Garden on Flagler Street, looking on at the old timers talking about the ups and downs of our industry. Every few years we seemed to be dealing with some sort of crisis that threatened us, the RBOC issue, 10-digit dialing, and of course, false alarms. We seemed to always weather these storms.
As I embark on this 12-month journey, I must first start by thanking the Board of Directors and members that have entrusted me with the stewardship of the IAF. I have to mention Marvin Smith, whose kindness and love for IAF will be hard to match. I must also state that I will only be able to succeed with the support of the IAF team, led by our Executive Director Shannon Few.
I have a strong belief that every leader must leave an organization in a better state than he found it in. To that end, I have two simple goals, and they both revolve around having the IAF better serve the sales and technical staffs of our members.
First, we will expand our Annual Convention to offer education for technicians and sales teams. The convention has traditionally been an event centered around license holder CEU training. We just launched the Technician Training Track at our 2025 Convention a couple of weeks ago and it was a tremendous success! You can expect more in 2026 and beyond.
Second, I want to continue to aggressively update and grow our educational offerings. In my lifetime I have witnessed our industry grow, expand from “Burg and Fire” to video surveillance, access control, lighting control, networking, etc. In order to better serve our members, we must offer educational tracks that reflect the various and diverse channels within our industry. I'm pleased to announce that Alarm Academy is now offering a dramatically expanded Course Catalog that goes far beyond BASA/FASA training and this is just the beginning of what we have in store!
I look forward to the next 12 months, and hope that I put so much effort into this year, that I will be exhausted and happy to turn over the reins next year.
Raising the Bar - One Achievement at a Time,
Diego R. del Pino
IAF President