Ad 2 West Michigan

July 2010 President’s Letter

You never get too old to learn, it’s the only way to stay ahead or even just keep up in our world today. What was taught just a few years ago can now be seen as nearly obso­lete by today’s stan­dards. Trends change as well as tech­nol­ogy and soci­ety as a whole always has a for­ward think­ing men­tal­ity. I’m fre­quently read­ing blogs, books and tuto­ri­als in addi­tion to hav­ing attended dif­fer­ent train­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops over the years so I can at least try to stay one step ahead or really just keep up. I even swal­lowed my pride and decided to give Frank Blossom’s Pol­ish­ing Cen­ter another go around since it’s been a few years since I did it the first time. I’ll never stop learning.

Events like the AAF National con­fer­ence are so impor­tant to one’s career and it’s atten­dees know the value of it and the edu­ca­tion that it pro­vides. Ad2 West Michi­gan just recently returned from there and we learned a few things down there that we believe will make us a much stronger club that will bet­ter serve our mem­bers, friends and com­mu­nity through pub­lic ser­vice, edu­ca­tion and events. Our very own Pub­lic Ser­vice Chair has writ­ten a very insight­ful piece on his expe­ri­ence at the con­frence. It was also his first time attend­ing it. I sug­gest you give it a read.

In con­clu­sion, learn­ing and edu­ca­tion is very impor­tant. It could be the dif­fer­ence between land­ing that job/client or “We’ve decided to look in another direc­tion”. The real­ity is we work in a very com­pet­i­tive and always advanc­ing field, good econ­omy or not, so any edge you get is always a benefit.

So are you stay­ing ahead, keep­ing up or did you get left in the dust?