By Chris Cochran
I recently returned from the first in-person conference I’ve attended since April 2019. At both that time and last month, it was the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) annual conference, which was canceled in 2020 and was virtual in 2021 and 2022. The 2023 edition was a hybrid conference – an in-person component spanning four days in Milwaukee combined with virtual events held over the last two weeks of April. In some cases, live events from our in-person component were simultaneously broadcast on Zoom.
AIIP is my primary professional association, so I committed to attending the in-person portion earlier this year because I wanted to connect and re-connect with colleagues the good old-fashioned way — in the same physical space — and because I’m dedicated to the mission of the organization: to help infopreneurs succeed. Because of several factors, including Covid and the economy, it was no small feat to get a cohort of colleagues to travel to Milwaukee. The value of networking opportunities that occur IRL was brought home not only during conference learning sessions, but also during other opportunities to be social together: pre-meeting breakfasts each morning to get the day started, dine-arounds in the evenings, and a lively field trip to a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game on a Friday night. When in Rome!
I think many of us got our fill of meat, sausage, cheese, and local beer, mainstays (or so it seems) of the Milwaukee diet. But there was nothing perfunctory about any of those menu choices. Everything was good (even food options at the baseball game were enticing).
My colleagues in AIIP have interesting stories to share about their businesses, their work, and their lives, and I’m grateful to them for that knowledge and their willingness to share. Here are some key points I learned from our presenters:
- Embrace lifelong learning; it’s important. Set aside 10% of your work time for learning.
- Prioritize your client needs and relationships. Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t going to change relationships.
- Storytelling needs to be part of the modern information professional’s arsenal of tools. Facts tell, stories sell.
- What’s “in”? – Flexibility, hybrid work, AI integration.
- What’s “out”? – Traditional work, acceptance of the status quo.
- We need to remember we live in a VUCA world: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity.
The hotel where we met played host to a couple of overlapping conferences while we were there. In the social areas of the hotel lounges you could hear folks sharing stories, reconnecting, and talking about their work. In a chilly Milwaukee that was a good sign of the “thaw” from the deep freeze of the past three years.
An Inquiring Mind 