What Do You Want?

What do you want to get out of your attendance at the ICF conference in San Jose? Both Sylva Leduc and Andrea Lee and others have been giving some good tips for professionals to think about and prepare for and during the conference.

This will be my 5th or 6th ICF conference. It's true: you get what you plan for. If you don't think about what you want, you probably won't get it.

Here's what I want:

1. Meet face-to-face some of the people I communicate with by email and blog posts.
2. Share some laughs with some of the professionals in the coaching community that I've known for a while but only see at this conference.
3. Spread the word about writing good coach newsletters and blogs, and maybe get some new subscribers. (Oh, okay, I'd REALLY like some new business, I'll admit to it!)
4. Spread the blog gospel according to the Blog Squad, so that more coaches start blogging and realize the potential of this powerful marketing tool.
5. Build a couple of partnership/joint venture projects by putting heads together with some of the excellent entrepreneurial talent at this conference (Linda, can you hear me?)
6. Keep my energy steady throughout the conference day, without any back pain.

So, dear readers, if you could rub the tummy of Buddha, or a magic wand, or Aladdin's lamp, what do you want from the conference this year? Go ahead, make a wish, or two or three.

Just hit the comment link below, and post away. Or, as The Blog Squad is prone to say, "BLOG ON!"

Comments

[David Stocum]

It's my first ICF Conference and I just don't want to get lost :)

Seriously, I'm looking forward to meeting people I have only known virtually in person. I'm also looking to be inspired and energized to take my coaching business to the next level.

I just hope I can come down from the high and relax during the extra few days my partner and I will be spending in San Francisco.

This must be what it feels like to be so excited you nearly burst. I'm a five year old at Christmas.

[Molly Gordon]

Good question (you must be a coach!), and I appreciate it all the more because, as a coach, I can become blind to the very questions I ask others.

Here's what I want from this year's ICF conference:
1. To renew friendships and put a face on those that have grown through email and phone contact.
2. To ask hard questions about what coaching is and is not, how we train coaches, what training organizations promise (implicitly and explicitly) about the economic potential of a private coaching practice, the theoretical framework for coaching.
3. To locate myself within the context of coaching ICF-style for the sake of further refining my vision and purpose as a coach.
4. To have a grand old time.