Calling All Colleagues

As a member of the 2011 ACE/NETC program committee, I've been thinking about what attracts people to attend a conference. And I believe we will have it all at ACE/NETC Ver 2.011.

As always, we'll exchange ideas and war stories, eat good food, have some drinks and laughs. What do we call that? Networking.

We'll get to hear what our counterparts at other places are doing, what worked and what didn't--the best and worst of their past year or so. Call that professional development.

We'll get to see some of the world's best educational and marketing products in the areas of "agriculture, natural resources, and life and human sciences." And some of them may be ours! Call that pride!

This year, in addition to the usual ways of classifying sessions, the program committee added some new categories:

• strategic positioning
  
• working differently
• collaboration
• new and interesting
  
• extension and outreach
• cross-cutting topics

We believed these might serve to prompt some ideas for sessions that would get to the heart of what we're doing more and more of these days. Call that innovation: working together in new and different ways.

Whether these topics helped to spur new ideas, we don't know. What we do know is that the sessions look outstanding. Your colleagues are offering you a treat this year. Don't miss it.

I hope to see you in Denver in a few months. Rocky Mountains, here we come!

Carol Whatley
Alabama Cooperative Extension System
Auburn University