Hi,

Well, I spent last week at the IAF North America Conference in Chicago. It was a very busy week, but met a lot of people and accomplished a lot. It was also great to see people who I don’t get to see very often.

We had our board meeting on Monday and Saturday. It was a lot of work, but we managed to make some significant progress in transforming the association to position it for the future. I’ll add more as we make the information public.

I also had the opportunity to watch, participate, and facilitate in three “Fishbowl” sessions. This was a new concept this year – live action, real client, observed workshops.

Jo Nelson facilitated the Logan Square Neighborhood Association – 8 women from Logan Square in Chicago. They developed internal guidelines about how to conduct their meetings more effectively. It was interesting watching Jo – she has been facilitating for quite a number of years.

Gary Austin facilitated an “IAF Flipchart on the Future” – a workshop with 14 past and present board members developing ideas about how to make the association more relevant to organization who hire Facilitators. What made this special is that Gary was stuck in London because of the Iceland Volcano. He had to facilitate via Skype with Nadine Bell being his “avatar” in Chicago with Bernie Fredette and Tammy Adams being the mechanical parts to move the laptop so Gary could see and to hang flip charts. It went remarkably well – both the workshop and the last minute use of technology. It will become a pattern for future conferences. The ideas from the workshop were brought to the board and will be incorporated into our planning.

Then I facilitated the IIBA chapters from Wisconsin in developing a plan for their 2010 Business Analyst Development Day (WI BADD) in October. I had 15 participants (all business analysts) define the purpose, audience, expectations, tracks, and potential topics for the event. All this in 2 1/2 hours! It was quite a session and all enjoyed it. It was also the first time that my parents were able to watch me work. I also had Sean document and Alvaro and Millie watched with my parents – just a bit of pressure! I wouldn’t have missed it.

Well, off to continue working. By the way, if you have any old pictures you wish to share, please email them to me and I’ll post them on the blog .

Gary facilitating a Fishbowl Session

Gary's Family