Life Imitates Convene

As I've mentioned before, I'm a member of the board of directors for Association Media & Publishing (AM&P). On Monday, we had a board meeting in Chicago -- deliberately scheduled, like a lot of other association programming, to overlap with the Association Forum of Chicagoland's Holiday Showcase. Thanks to the terrible weather in the Midwest and Northeast this past weekend, four of our board members couldn't make the meeting and had to participate via conference call, which wasn't an ideal solution, but certainly was better than not having them present at all.

Also, much like my experience serving as the co-chair of AM&P's 2010 Conference Committee, this situation gave me a small but potent taste of what our readers do every day of their professional lives. Specifically, I was reminded of the Innovative Meetings column I wrote for our September 2010 issue, about how the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) responded to dozens of its Annual Meeting speakers getting stranded in Europe by the Icelandic volcano eruption last spring. AACR had as many of the speakers as wanted to deliver their presentations via conference call. That time it was volcanic ash. This past Monday it was snow. But the effect was the same, and so was the solution. And I'd say that my own AM&P is in pretty good company.

The photo above, by the way, is something I just couldn't resist posting. It was taken on Monday morning from the 24th floor of the Hilton Chicago, where I was staying during my trip. Did I mention there was snow...?