Archive for March, 2005

It’s a delicate balancing act. See this piece in today’s Washington Post (registration required).

There’s a very interesting (and, for the blogosphere, very cordial) conversation going on in comments over at Ben Martin’s blog on the CAE designation, its value, whether or not its too "basic", etc. Lots of interesting thoughts from CAE holders and non-holders alike.

I’m not a CAE and don’t plan on becoming one — by saying that, I mean no disrespect to those who have received the credential, I think they are to be commended, but I also don’t think the CAE as it currently stands is a "necessary" requirement and the choice to get it or not is a personal one. Ben has done a good job throughout his blog, on preparing for and passing the CAE exam, in laying out what he sees as the personal benefits.

In talking about association credentialing and advanced learning, I think there’s an interesting question that should be considered: Is association management a profession, or are associations an industry?

Since the dawn of time (so to speak) the field of association management has been treated as the former; but if we take some time and view what we do through the prism of the latter, some very interesting distinctions emerge. What do you think?

David Gammel has an excellent roundup of association-related blogs over at High Context (and thanks for the nice words and link, David). He also was kind enough to link to our organization’s conference weblog.

Our conference last week was a true success — with high attendance, happy attendees, and huge accolades all around. I’m privileged to work with many colleagues that really know how to pull out all the stops in providing customer service and put on a first-class show. We really have tremendous talent and capability at the ACCA national office.

Like many association folks, I’m left drained, but exhilarated, by our annual meeting. It’s our signature event and we’re one of the lucky groups who have seen our conference and expo grow exponentially over the last few years, partly because we never rest on our laurels. We’re already figuring out ways to change for the 2006 show and try new things. We don’t want our attendees to get bored (and we don’t want to get bored, either). There’s an old line that says that success is merely proof that you’re pretty good at what worked yesterday.

Now, of course, it’s back to the many projects piling up that get put on hiatus each year during the show after taking a few days off to recharge batteries. Hopefully, I’ll also have time to post some more thoughts here, as well.

At our conference this week we’re using our special conference blog to keep attendees (and more importantly, non-attendees) up to date on what’s happening here in Austin.