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I had the opportunity to attend The Great Ideas Conference this past weekend. It was a great opportunity to connect with old friends and meet some new ones – not to mention getting to watch ASAE & The Center staff along with Marriott staff adeptly handle a fire emergency that would have left many a professional weak-in-the-knees.

While I thought all of the programming was outstanding, timely, and relevant, I was particularly struck by the opening session speaker, Dan Heath. As others have posted on this blog, Mr. Heath walked us through what in his mind are the Six Principles of making ideas “stick.” That is, what makes some ideas, programs, products, and services stand-out in people’s minds versus others that, well, simply do not? What struck me during the presentation, and afterward, was that while there were 600 association professionals and industry partners present (which was outstanding), I couldn’t help but wonder why so many others were “stuck” back at work and unable to take advantage of the great programming.

I know, I know… time, budgets, and meeting conflicts. I realize that. I am more referring to the associations among ours that simply do not invest in continuing education and professional development for their staff – especially mid-level staff. I realize that not every association has the means to send one or more people out of their city or state for a meeting. But do they even do that? I think as association professionals and industry partners that we have an obligation to speak out and to politely confront those association leaders who attend programming but leave behind key staff. We need to convince them to expose as many of their staff as they can – be it 1 or 10+ - to the community that we call association management, or we risk losing the future of this profession to other professions. In my fifteen year career I have seen very good people move on to other professions in part because they were never aware of all that the association management profession has to offer. I have usually been fortunate to have my participation supported today but that was not true in the early days of my career.

Thoughts?