Coming together

Excerpt

This time of year at headquarters we are submerged in the details of our annual conference. Room assignments, audio visual requirements, organizing papers into concurrent sessions and deciding who is speaking when, where, and with whom take up our time and attention. It is easy to get lost in the details, to miss what is coming together as each individual detail is resolved.

What is coming together is our profession and our community. A colleague told me on the phone a couple weeks ago that the SWCS annual conference is the most important technical forum for working land conservationists in North America. Just this morning, another colleague told me the shelves in his office are lined with materials picked up at the SWCS annual conferences he has attended over the years. More important, he told me, was that his working life as a professional is more interesting and effective because of what he has learned at the annual conference and the professional relationships forged there each year. …