Today I'm a Meeting Planner. Of Sorts.

For my entire career, I've been a reporter and editor, which means I've spent my professional life writing about things that other people do. But this morning, with the start of the 2010 Association Media & Publishing (AM&P) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., I'm a practitioner in my own right. And not just any practitioner -- for the next three days, I'm an honest-to-goodness meeting planner. Of sorts.

I'm a member of the AM&P Board of Directors, in which capacity I'm co-chair of the 2010 Annual Meeting Planning Committee. So for the last year or so, I've helped put together a conference for association publishing professionals that includes a half-day pre-conference workshop, an awards dinner, two general sessions, an exhibit hall, roundtables, nearly two dozen education sessions, and lots of networking events. And it's been instructive and just plain fun to, in some very small way, do what the professionals for whom I write in Convene do every single day.

I'm planning on writing an article about my experiences planning the AM&P Annual Meeting in a near-future issue of Convene. But, meanwhile, if you have a spare moment between now and Wednesday, direct some positive energy toward Washington, where one of your editors will be trying like heck to practice what he preaches.