This past week I had the opportunity to attend my first out of state conference for work. It was the ICMA (International City/County Managers Association) conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
Overall the conference was fantastic and it really gave me a great perspective of how there are similar people who face the same trials and issues that I do in my career. There must have been probably 4,000-5,000 people attending in total.
Most of the sessions that I attended were very well put on and the keynotes each day were great as well. I was also afforded the opportunity to go off site for a couple of excursions, one of which was to the Boeing Mesa facility where they make the Apache Helicopter.
The only "negative" from the event, if you could even call it a negative was an observation that I had with some of the other attendees. Most of the the sessions that people attend are designed to get people thinking about different ways to approach problems in communities. In most conferences and newsletters that I receive these topics tend to be mostly the same and focus generally upon either how we need to do more with less or engage citizens more. What gets me at all these is that these are recurring topics so people obviously aren't trying to apply ideas that they learn. Even more than that though is that I am surprised by how many people during question and answer sessions asking for specific answers to their problems from the presenters. More often than not I hear questions like; "What are the top three things I should do?"
I was amazed at how many seem to miss the point. The point of these sessions isn't to tell you how to do something. It is merely a process to get your own juices flowing. What worked by the presenter most likely will not work for you and to think that it will is naive.
Let's not ruin the overall experience with that point though. Overall the entire conference was great and I cannot wait to go to next year's in Boston should i be afforded the opportunity.