Roger Nishi won’t soon forget his first address as chairman to members of OPASTCO in Anchorage this week. Nor is his own son likely to ever let him.

Nishi entered the conference hall dressed as Nanook of the North, with two sled dogs leading the way. Unfortunately, the sled caught on the carpet and on the chair leg of the young man sitting at the edge of the center aisle. It knocked him over, causing a moment of panic before the boy got up from the floor smiling. It was Nishi’s son.

Once back in his business suit, Nishi spoke of his first six months as chairman. He urged members to maintain and grow the relevance and significance of OPASTCO by engaging the challenges the organization and its members face, namely: fighting the absurdity of the demands on the Universal Service Fund.

“What would we do if we all lost 45% of our revenue?” he said, quoting organization president John Rose.

The answer, incidentally, came an hour or so later when motivational speaker and six-time Iron Man champion, Mark Allen, spoke about dealing with persevering despite the loss of a similar amount of resources. “Give 100% of what you have left to give,” Allen said.

Nishi said OPASTCO remains a solid organization that has been significant in promoting the concerns of rural telcos in Washington, but that, “We can’t just look at that like a trophy. We need to continue to forge a new frontier.”

He said that in the organization’s planning session at March, board members identified several areas of concentration besides lobbying Congress and the FCC on USF reform. These areas included the video market, partnerships with other organizations (citing the organizations recent efforts with the IMS Forum) and becoming a central point for the collection of market data. “There is a vast load of information out there in the world, but it is all piecemeal. We want to put it in a common place people can use,” he said.

Nishi also said it was important for rural telcos not to forget what makes them different: their relationship with customers. “Others make claims that they are part of their communities, but that’s all lip service.” Nishi said. He added that other companies were out there telling their customer to go away because they called the call center too often (referring to Sprint’s announcement last week it would terminate the contract of a thousand customers).