IASA 2012: Learn Four Things in Four Days

Achieve Greatness is the theme for the 2012 IASA Educational Conference and Business Show, which gets underway Sunday night at the San Diego Convention Center. (Being from the small, but beautiful town ofBright, Indiana, I appreciate associations that hold their conferences inSouthern California.)

We all look for nice, uplifting slogans for conferences these days. Certainly achieving greatness is an outstanding goal, but really, does anyone want to achieve anything less than greatness? Has anyone ever proclaimed they were intent on achieving mediocrity?

I'm sure some college sports teams value slogans as inspirational, but a conference with attendees as divergent as IASA's—accountants and IT folks—should probably have some different expectations.

My plan for this year's conference is pretty simple: learn something. The conference runs over a period of four days, so I've set a modest goal of learning four new things over the course of the conference. It would be nice if one of the things I learned was something important—like the secret to a successful core systems implementation—but more likely it will be something more subtle, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

If we put together all the little things we learn in life they often add up to the "aha" moments we all dream about (or have nightmares over), but too rarely experience.

That's why I'm excited about some of the sessions that are scheduled—even the one where I'm moderating/speaking—and in particular the CIO/CTO Roundtable on Tuesday where all the CIOs will try and scare themselves with their visions of the future—sort of like telling ghost stories around the campfire.

I'm often educated by wandering among the booths at the business show and picking the brains of some of the vendors. When I speak with insurers, the comments I hear are often guarded, but vendors are more likely to let it all hang out when discussing an industry-related subject.

So my personal theme for IASA 2012 is Learn Four Things. I might even clarify that to include Learn More about Four Things. I'm a journalist, after all, so that means I have to know at least a little about everything.

It may seem like a modest proposal, but if each of us could learn one new bit of information every day—something that has meaning in our life—we would all be smarter people than we currently believe we are. Which is why two old axioms have been used about me for years: He's smarter than he looks; but he's not as smart as he thinks he is.

I'm not sure what to do about the first part, but hopefully I'll make a dent in the second this week at IASA.