Confab is coming upon us very quickly (Oct 24-27), and for most of us that means the "annual IMC reunion" in Reno. This year's program promises to be one of the best ever – it kicks off with Alan Weiss as the Opening Keynote on Sunday at noon, and closes with a great program on ethics which I'm sure everyone will enjoy at Tuesday noon. The program feature great speakers such as Gayle Carson, Jim Rodgers, Kathie Nelson, Linda Hanson, Allen Peterson, and many others. By popular demand, the Tech Fair will be held all day on Sunday, and there is a golf outing on Saturday morning. Additionally, for those of you interested in becoming Certified, there is a CMC Certification Workshop being held on Saturday afternoon.

Confab has taken a page from the US Government and is offering its own "stimulus package which will give you a "rebate" of $100 for every first-time Confab member who mentions you as the "referring source" when they sign up for the Conference. This is a great way for someone who may be a bit short of funds to be able to have their conference paid for. For more information on this, go to the Confab website (http://www.confabusa.org/) and click on the Confab Stimulus Package link, or contact Alice Heiman at alice@aliceheiman.com.

Speaking of Alice, she is looking for a few more hosts for Confab sessions. If you're interested, please contact her at the above e-mail address.

For me, the value of Confab is the networking, and reconnecting with those I haven’t seen for at least a year. Even so, I know that there are many people out there who "refuse" to go to Confab because of the venue and location – I was the same for many years.

However, I would encourage you to give Confab another try. The Silver Legacy has done many things in the past couple of years to improve the environment, including making the hotel smoke-free (except for casinos), training staff, etc. The cost is still very reasonable (where else can you attend a 3 day conference for $595 (early bird), have all your meals included, and pay only $66 per night for your room).

So, if you haven't attended Confab for a few years, or if you’ve never attended before, I strongly suggest you come – you may be very pleasantly surprised as I was last year. Besides that, where else do you have the opportunity to reconnect with so many of our IMC family.