Guest guest Posted June 4, 2008 Report Share Posted June 4, 2008 The economics of organizing and attending conferences are a constant concern, & have been for as long as an organized humane movement has existed. One of the perennial basic issues is how to hold them. The two basic modus operandis are to accept donated or low-priced conference space from a hotel conference center, which then expects to pack the house with attendees, & to hold conferences in less expensive settings, e.g. at university campuses, with limited accommodations & a daily commute for anyone staying off campus. The former is usually the preferred mode for conferences that hope to facilitate a lot of interchange by having everyone staying at the same place. The latter works for student conferences, but does not work very well when people have to be coming & going from airports, are not comfortable in dorms, attend as couples, etc. Another perennial basic issue is why to go. Asking that question is essentially asking, " Why get an education? " Every occupation has various forms of in-service training, & in every occupation the most capable people are those who take best advantage of the opportunities. Some folks believe that education should justify itself in terms of material return. This is the mindset that evaluates conference participation in terms of strict cost/benefit, & expects a tangible outcome from going. This outlook tends to think of a conference as a fundraising activity. To an extent, like pursuing a university education, attending conferences tends to improve the longterm economic prospects of an organization; but also as in pursuing a university education, the effect tends to be indirect. The most significant value of conferencing is evident from hisory. The original intent of the International Humane Association, formed in 1877, was to facilitate annual gatherings of representatives of humane societies, to confer about collective strategy, share knowledge, and share ideas & inspiration. Transportation expense obliged the IHA to retrench the following year & become the American Humane Association, holding a national conference annually but with little international participation. A generation passed before regular international humane conferences were held, but others were finally convened in 1900, annually 1908-1911, and again in 1928 and 1932. The period 1908-1911 was a boom time for the formation of humane societies all around the world, including in Asia and Africa, brought to an end by wars culminating in World War I. The momentum continued in the U.S. largely at the youth level. The largest humane conference ever held was conducted as a tent meeting in Kansas City in 1914, attracting 10,000 adult humane educators and 15,000 students, sponsored by the American Humane Education Society, a project of the Massachusetts SPCA. Strong circumstantial evidence places the then-adolescent Walt Disney at the scene. He lived & attended a school just a few blocks away, whose students were photographed marching to the conference en masse in white shirts & dresses. From " Bambi " & " Dumbo " in his early career to his defense of coyotes in late career, Disney throughout his life dramatized & popularized the themes that were on the conference agenda. Unfortunately, World War I, economic recession, huge debts incurred in building Angell Memorial Hospital, and the turn of the U.S. humane movement to doing animal control instead of humane education all contributed to undoing the growth of the cause. The humane movement did not begin to grow again, relative to U.S. society, until a then-young fellow named Alex Hershaft began organizing low-budget animal rights conferences in 1980. Among the then-unaffiliated attendees at the first one were the people who founded PETA, Trans-Species Unlimited, Mobilization for Animals, and the Animals' Agenda magazine within the next year. The philosophical and tactical origins of the modern animal rights movement really trace mostly to the work of Henry Spira, beginning about five years earlier, but the creation of the infrastructure that built the cause really began with Hershaft, who is still organizing major annual conferences. The history of animal-related conferencing illustrates that conferences are very successful at cause-building when they focus on the core goals articulated by the IHA: strategic discussion among participants, sharing know-how, and sharing ideas and inspiration. Conferencing fails when it drifts into competitive lobbying for resources, where people go to gain money rather than wisdom, and when it drifts the other way, toward attempting to become influential mass protest. Efforts to turn animal rights conferences into a " March for the Animals " failed catastrophically in 1990 and 1996, and each time were followed by the implosion and collapse of dozens of animal rights groups which had heavily supported the marches. However, at the very same time, the no-kill sheltering movement was gaining momentum. People like Richard Avanzino of the San Francisco SPCA and Michael Mountain of Best Friends, and of course the North Shore Animal League, provided the early examples of success, as Henry Spira had for animal rights; but the no-kill cause really took off like a rocket only after Linda Foro put together the first No Kill Conference in 1995. It attracted 60 people. Within five years it was 10 times larger, the second-largest sheltering conference in the world, & had spun off the Best Friends " No More Homeless Pets " conference series, which was held twice a year in different regions, & itself became as large as any of the national sheltering conferences had been 10 years earlier. The No Kill Conference became the CHAMP conference, & along with the " No More Homeless Pets " conferences, died as result of the huge drain of resources occasioned by the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort in 2005. Yet by then most of the core ideas & many of the key speakers had become central to mainstream sheltering conferences, such as the AHA conference and HSUS Expo. The latter now attracts nearly 1,000 participants per year. What does this history mean to Asia for Animals? First, we have seen explosive growth in animal advocacy efforts in Asia since 1997, when the Animal Welfare Board hosted an ancestor of Asia for Animals in Delhi. Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath showed up with nothing but his charter and a return ticket home, but made the contacts who started the VSPCA toward becoming one of the flagship humane societies in all of Asia. Wildlife SOS cofounders Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani came with nothing more than the dream of starting a bear sanctuary. They now operate three, in addition to all of their other successful projects. Maneka Gandhi fulminated about the alleged uselessness of conferences, but spent every minute networking, mostly quite successfully, & was the belle of the ball, whether she admits it or not. She also personally made an incredible number of introductions of people she had often just met to each other--as did we. Though in India for the first time, we of ANIMAL PEOPLE spent a great deal of time introducing Indians to Indians, who had never before had the chance to meet. The first Asia for Animals conference in Manila was another landmark for the Indian animal welfare movement because, for the first time, the Indian leaders realized how much they had to teach. I sat among the Indians--Nath, Chinny Krishna, Rahul Sehgal, Sandeep Jain, & others--and kept urging them to stand up & say something. On the third day they finally did, one after another, & what I witnessed was the empowerment & maturation of the cause. These folks & the others realized what they had to share, & many people from other parts of Asia realized that they had colleagues & role models in their own part of the world, who understood that not everyone lives in the U.S. & Europe, & know which end of a buffalo pulls the plow, who had started their organizations a little bit earlier & had gained much needed experience that others could borrow. The second Asia for Animals conference, in Hong Kong, brought in the beginnings of the now booming Chinese animal advocacy movement. By the look of it, every Chinese person who attended returned home to inspire 100 or 1,000 more. As the cause and the conference have grown, those of us who became involved early have evolved into a something of a leadership elite--because we know each other now, & know what each can do & bring to the table. But most of us are also still close enough to our origins to know the challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls that others must move through. This includes ANIMAL PEOPLE. As recently as 1992 we had less than nothing, just Kim's maxed-out personal credit & some relevant know-how. I attended two major humane gatherings before our first two editions were published, & two more within the first year, all vital to our growth. Cost is still an issue. We cannot afford to attend every conference either. But we pick those that offer the best opportunities to learn & teach, & make a point of getting there, collecting frequent flyer miles all year through use of airline credit cards & so forth in order to be able to go. It is understood that the costs of attending conferences even in very inexpensive venues, such as India and Indonesia, are proportionately much higher for people in less affluent nations, with younger & smaller organizations. Yet so is the cost of obtaining any kind of education, & I really don't see many people who value or appreciate education more than the bright young folks in the developing world, who are increasingly the nucleus of the Asian animal protection cause. What really needs to be looked at is the cost of NOT attending conferences. The folks who avoid conferencing tend to be those whose organizations and imaginations stagnate, fail to thrive, and prematurely wither. How useful will attending any given conference be? Certainly some are much more useful than others. But if a session is not useful for a participant, go out to the hall & meet someone. If you feel bashful about introducing yourself, bear in mind that everyone else who doesn't know anyone tends to feel the same way. Introducing yourself is a test of leadership. Step up & do it. I have attended conferences that were very valuable even though I never even got into a conference session, & spent the whole time meeting people in the lobby. Ultimately, the value of a conference is in the conversation. The sessions are conversation-starters. The deepest education comes in the one-to-one discussion, seeking the meaning & value in what is heard, relative to what people are doing. -- Merritt Clifton Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE P.O. Box 960 Clinton, WA 98236 Telephone: 360-579-2505 Fax: 360-579-2575 E-mail: anmlpepl Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year; for free sample, send address.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2008 Report Share Posted June 5, 2008 That¹s a really good historical accounting Merritt! But if it¹s really true that ³Ultimately, the value of a conference is in the conversation² then some sorta online version would be worth a lot if one judges the amount (but perhaps not quality) of the ³conversations² that goe on in places like Facebook, where millions of pet eggs, hugs, and pics are being traded back and forth everyday. Second Life (http://secondlife.com/showcase/feature.php) looks interesting; imagine AFA buying a plot of land there and building a virtual world were animals are treated right and even allowed to participate in the social and political decisions. Well, that¹s just a Second Thought on conferences and conversations... Jigs Merritt Clifton <anmlpepl Wed, 4 Jun 2008 14:24:51 -0700 <aapn > Air fares & conferences The economics of organizing and attending conferences are a constant concern, & have been for as long as an organized humane movement has existed. One of the perennial basic issues is how to hold them. The two basic modus operandis are to accept donated or low-priced conference space from a hotel conference center, which then expects to pack the house with attendees, & to hold conferences in less expensive settings, e.g. at university campuses, with limited accommodations & a daily commute for anyone staying off campus. The former is usually the preferred mode for conferences that hope to facilitate a lot of interchange by having everyone staying at the same place. The latter works for student conferences, but does not work very well when people have to be coming & going from airports, are not comfortable in dorms, attend as couples, etc. Another perennial basic issue is why to go. Asking that question is essentially asking, " Why get an education? " Every occupation has various forms of in-service training, & in every occupation the most capable people are those who take best advantage of the opportunities. Some folks believe that education should justify itself in terms of material return. This is the mindset that evaluates conference participation in terms of strict cost/benefit, & expects a tangible outcome from going. This outlook tends to think of a conference as a fundraising activity. To an extent, like pursuing a university education, attending conferences tends to improve the longterm economic prospects of an organization; but also as in pursuing a university education, the effect tends to be indirect. The most significant value of conferencing is evident from hisory. The original intent of the International Humane Association, formed in 1877, was to facilitate annual gatherings of representatives of humane societies, to confer about collective strategy, share knowledge, and share ideas & inspiration. Transportation expense obliged the IHA to retrench the following year & become the American Humane Association, holding a national conference annually but with little international participation. A generation passed before regular international humane conferences were held, but others were finally convened in 1900, annually 1908-1911, and again in 1928 and 1932. The period 1908-1911 was a boom time for the formation of humane societies all around the world, including in Asia and Africa, brought to an end by wars culminating in World War I. The momentum continued in the U.S. largely at the youth level. The largest humane conference ever held was conducted as a tent meeting in Kansas City in 1914, attracting 10,000 adult humane educators and 15,000 students, sponsored by the American Humane Education Society, a project of the Massachusetts SPCA. Strong circumstantial evidence places the then-adolescent Walt Disney at the scene. He lived & attended a school just a few blocks away, whose students were photographed marching to the conference en masse in white shirts & dresses. From " Bambi " & " Dumbo " in his early career to his defense of coyotes in late career, Disney throughout his life dramatized & popularized the themes that were on the conference agenda. Unfortunately, World War I, economic recession, huge debts incurred in building Angell Memorial Hospital, and the turn of the U.S. humane movement to doing animal control instead of humane education all contributed to undoing the growth of the cause. The humane movement did not begin to grow again, relative to U.S. society, until a then-young fellow named Alex Hershaft began organizing low-budget animal rights conferences in 1980. Among the then-unaffiliated attendees at the first one were the people who founded PETA, Trans-Species Unlimited, Mobilization for Animals, and the Animals' Agenda magazine within the next year. The philosophical and tactical origins of the modern animal rights movement really trace mostly to the work of Henry Spira, beginning about five years earlier, but the creation of the infrastructure that built the cause really began with Hershaft, who is still organizing major annual conferences. The history of animal-related conferencing illustrates that conferences are very successful at cause-building when they focus on the core goals articulated by the IHA: strategic discussion among participants, sharing know-how, and sharing ideas and inspiration. Conferencing fails when it drifts into competitive lobbying for resources, where people go to gain money rather than wisdom, and when it drifts the other way, toward attempting to become influential mass protest. Efforts to turn animal rights conferences into a " March for the Animals " failed catastrophically in 1990 and 1996, and each time were followed by the implosion and collapse of dozens of animal rights groups which had heavily supported the marches. However, at the very same time, the no-kill sheltering movement was gaining momentum. People like Richard Avanzino of the San Francisco SPCA and Michael Mountain of Best Friends, and of course the North Shore Animal League, provided the early examples of success, as Henry Spira had for animal rights; but the no-kill cause really took off like a rocket only after Linda Foro put together the first No Kill Conference in 1995. It attracted 60 people. Within five years it was 10 times larger, the second-largest sheltering conference in the world, & had spun off the Best Friends " No More Homeless Pets " conference series, which was held twice a year in different regions, & itself became as large as any of the national sheltering conferences had been 10 years earlier. The No Kill Conference became the CHAMP conference, & along with the " No More Homeless Pets " conferences, died as result of the huge drain of resources occasioned by the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort in 2005. Yet by then most of the core ideas & many of the key speakers had become central to mainstream sheltering conferences, such as the AHA conference and HSUS Expo. The latter now attracts nearly 1,000 participants per year. What does this history mean to Asia for Animals? First, we have seen explosive growth in animal advocacy efforts in Asia since 1997, when the Animal Welfare Board hosted an ancestor of Asia for Animals in Delhi. Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath showed up with nothing but his charter and a return ticket home, but made the contacts who started the VSPCA toward becoming one of the flagship humane societies in all of Asia. Wildlife SOS cofounders Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani came with nothing more than the dream of starting a bear sanctuary. They now operate three, in addition to all of their other successful projects. Maneka Gandhi fulminated about the alleged uselessness of conferences, but spent every minute networking, mostly quite successfully, & was the belle of the ball, whether she admits it or not. She also personally made an incredible number of introductions of people she had often just met to each other--as did we. Though in India for the first time, we of ANIMAL PEOPLE spent a great deal of time introducing Indians to Indians, who had never before had the chance to meet. The first Asia for Animals conference in Manila was another landmark for the Indian animal welfare movement because, for the first time, the Indian leaders realized how much they had to teach. I sat among the Indians--Nath, Chinny Krishna, Rahul Sehgal, Sandeep Jain, & others--and kept urging them to stand up & say something. On the third day they finally did, one after another, & what I witnessed was the empowerment & maturation of the cause. These folks & the others realized what they had to share, & many people from other parts of Asia realized that they had colleagues & role models in their own part of the world, who understood that not everyone lives in the U.S. & Europe, & know which end of a buffalo pulls the plow, who had started their organizations a little bit earlier & had gained much needed experience that others could borrow. The second Asia for Animals conference, in Hong Kong, brought in the beginnings of the now booming Chinese animal advocacy movement. By the look of it, every Chinese person who attended returned home to inspire 100 or 1,000 more. As the cause and the conference have grown, those of us who became involved early have evolved into a something of a leadership elite--because we know each other now, & know what each can do & bring to the table. But most of us are also still close enough to our origins to know the challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls that others must move through. This includes ANIMAL PEOPLE. As recently as 1992 we had less than nothing, just Kim's maxed-out personal credit & some relevant know-how. I attended two major humane gatherings before our first two editions were published, & two more within the first year, all vital to our growth. Cost is still an issue. We cannot afford to attend every conference either. But we pick those that offer the best opportunities to learn & teach, & make a point of getting there, collecting frequent flyer miles all year through use of airline credit cards & so forth in order to be able to go. It is understood that the costs of attending conferences even in very inexpensive venues, such as India and Indonesia, are proportionately much higher for people in less affluent nations, with younger & smaller organizations. Yet so is the cost of obtaining any kind of education, & I really don't see many people who value or appreciate education more than the bright young folks in the developing world, who are increasingly the nucleus of the Asian animal protection cause. What really needs to be looked at is the cost of NOT attending conferences. The folks who avoid conferencing tend to be those whose organizations and imaginations stagnate, fail to thrive, and prematurely wither. How useful will attending any given conference be? Certainly some are much more useful than others. But if a session is not useful for a participant, go out to the hall & meet someone. If you feel bashful about introducing yourself, bear in mind that everyone else who doesn't know anyone tends to feel the same way. Introducing yourself is a test of leadership. Step up & do it. I have attended conferences that were very valuable even though I never even got into a conference session, & spent the whole time meeting people in the lobby. Ultimately, the value of a conference is in the conversation. The sessions are conversation-starters. The deepest education comes in the one-to-one discussion, seeking the meaning & value in what is heard, relative to what people are doing. -- Merritt Clifton Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE P.O. Box 960 Clinton, WA 98236 Telephone: 360-579-2505 Fax: 360-579-2575 E-mail: anmlpepl <anmlpepl%40whidbey.com> Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year; for free sample, send address.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2008 Report Share Posted June 5, 2008 Dear Merritt, I had already written in past mail about usefulness of conference such as 'Asia for Animals'. I one again repeats we built some great contacts; spread the word about the cause that we had taken-up also raised much needed funds. I really wish to attend at-least AFA 2008, but the airfare is an issue. Your point about frequent flyer is also nice but I have Indian frequent flyers points with me which is not much useful in international airlines that fly to Bali. As far as education is concern, for developing counties it is - 'MUST', whether it is done on grassroots level like schools, collages or by attending conferences or by Peace March. We @ PAWS have separate volunteers to spread the awareness & to do humane education. When I attended AFA 2007 with my co-trustees Anuradha & Sunish, mine and sunish's attendance were sponsored & for anuradha - we paid full conf. fees. Secondly we arrived in Chennai @ our costs and stayed with our friends in Chennai & not in the accommodation provided by AFA. This not only helped in reducing their costs but also reducing stress for organizing things to them. My approach was always 'Help others & get help from others'. Dr. Krishna took lot efforts to gather Indian animal welfare under one umbrella of AFA. There is no question arrives of 'usefulness' of such conferences. I feel this is only conf. where you can build great contacts in Asia. According to you, 'The Leaders' must have attended the conf. but the small & active NGO's like us should afford it. The point remains about the 'costs of attending' & not the 'usefulness'! Regards, Nilesh Bhanage Tel : 0251 - 2625059 Cell : 09820161114 Merritt Clifton [anmlpepl] Thursday, June 05, 2008 2:55 AM aapn Air fares & conferences The economics of organizing and attending conferences are a constant concern, & have been for as long as an organized humane movement has existed. One of the perennial basic issues is how to hold them. The two basic modus operandis are to accept donated or low-priced conference space from a hotel conference center, which then expects to pack the house with attendees, & to hold conferences in less expensive settings, e.g. at university campuses, with limited accommodations & a daily commute for anyone staying off campus. The former is usually the preferred mode for conferences that hope to facilitate a lot of interchange by having everyone staying at the same place. The latter works for student conferences, but does not work very well when people have to be coming & going from airports, are not comfortable in dorms, attend as couples, etc. Another perennial basic issue is why to go. Asking that question is essentially asking, " Why get an education? " Every occupation has various forms of in-service training, & in every occupation the most capable people are those who take best advantage of the opportunities. Some folks believe that education should justify itself in terms of material return. This is the mindset that evaluates conference participation in terms of strict cost/benefit, & expects a tangible outcome from going. This outlook tends to think of a conference as a fundraising activity. To an extent, like pursuing a university education, attending conferences tends to improve the longterm economic prospects of an organization; but also as in pursuing a university education, the effect tends to be indirect. The most significant value of conferencing is evident from hisory. The original intent of the International Humane Association, formed in 1877, was to facilitate annual gatherings of representatives of humane societies, to confer about collective strategy, share knowledge, and share ideas & inspiration. Transportation expense obliged the IHA to retrench the following year & become the American Humane Association, holding a national conference annually but with little international participation. A generation passed before regular international humane conferences were held, but others were finally convened in 1900, annually 1908-1911, and again in 1928 and 1932. The period 1908-1911 was a boom time for the formation of humane societies all around the world, including in Asia and Africa, brought to an end by wars culminating in World War I. The momentum continued in the U.S. largely at the youth level. The largest humane conference ever held was conducted as a tent meeting in Kansas City in 1914, attracting 10,000 adult humane educators and 15,000 students, sponsored by the American Humane Education Society, a project of the Massachusetts SPCA. Strong circumstantial evidence places the then-adolescent Walt Disney at the scene. He lived & attended a school just a few blocks away, whose students were photographed marching to the conference en masse in white shirts & dresses. From " Bambi " & " Dumbo " in his early career to his defense of coyotes in late career, Disney throughout his life dramatized & popularized the themes that were on the conference agenda. Unfortunately, World War I, economic recession, huge debts incurred in building Angell Memorial Hospital, and the turn of the U.S. humane movement to doing animal control instead of humane education all contributed to undoing the growth of the cause. The humane movement did not begin to grow again, relative to U.S. society, until a then-young fellow named Alex Hershaft began organizing low-budget animal rights conferences in 1980. Among the then-unaffiliated attendees at the first one were the people who founded PETA, Trans-Species Unlimited, Mobilization for Animals, and the Animals' Agenda magazine within the next year. The philosophical and tactical origins of the modern animal rights movement really trace mostly to the work of Henry Spira, beginning about five years earlier, but the creation of the infrastructure that built the cause really began with Hershaft, who is still organizing major annual conferences. The history of animal-related conferencing illustrates that conferences are very successful at cause-building when they focus on the core goals articulated by the IHA: strategic discussion among participants, sharing know-how, and sharing ideas and inspiration. Conferencing fails when it drifts into competitive lobbying for resources, where people go to gain money rather than wisdom, and when it drifts the other way, toward attempting to become influential mass protest. Efforts to turn animal rights conferences into a " March for the Animals " failed catastrophically in 1990 and 1996, and each time were followed by the implosion and collapse of dozens of animal rights groups which had heavily supported the marches. However, at the very same time, the no-kill sheltering movement was gaining momentum. People like Richard Avanzino of the San Francisco SPCA and Michael Mountain of Best Friends, and of course the North Shore Animal League, provided the early examples of success, as Henry Spira had for animal rights; but the no-kill cause really took off like a rocket only after Linda Foro put together the first No Kill Conference in 1995. It attracted 60 people. Within five years it was 10 times larger, the second-largest sheltering conference in the world, & had spun off the Best Friends " No More Homeless Pets " conference series, which was held twice a year in different regions, & itself became as large as any of the national sheltering conferences had been 10 years earlier. The No Kill Conference became the CHAMP conference, & along with the " No More Homeless Pets " conferences, died as result of the huge drain of resources occasioned by the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort in 2005. Yet by then most of the core ideas & many of the key speakers had become central to mainstream sheltering conferences, such as the AHA conference and HSUS Expo. The latter now attracts nearly 1,000 participants per year. What does this history mean to Asia for Animals? First, we have seen explosive growth in animal advocacy efforts in Asia since 1997, when the Animal Welfare Board hosted an ancestor of Asia for Animals in Delhi. Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath showed up with nothing but his charter and a return ticket home, but made the contacts who started the VSPCA toward becoming one of the flagship humane societies in all of Asia. Wildlife SOS cofounders Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani came with nothing more than the dream of starting a bear sanctuary. They now operate three, in addition to all of their other successful projects. Maneka Gandhi fulminated about the alleged uselessness of conferences, but spent every minute networking, mostly quite successfully, & was the belle of the ball, whether she admits it or not. She also personally made an incredible number of introductions of people she had often just met to each other--as did we. Though in India for the first time, we of ANIMAL PEOPLE spent a great deal of time introducing Indians to Indians, who had never before had the chance to meet. The first Asia for Animals conference in Manila was another landmark for the Indian animal welfare movement because, for the first time, the Indian leaders realized how much they had to teach. I sat among the Indians--Nath, Chinny Krishna, Rahul Sehgal, Sandeep Jain, & others--and kept urging them to stand up & say something. On the third day they finally did, one after another, & what I witnessed was the empowerment & maturation of the cause. These folks & the others realized what they had to share, & many people from other parts of Asia realized that they had colleagues & role models in their own part of the world, who understood that not everyone lives in the U.S. & Europe, & know which end of a buffalo pulls the plow, who had started their organizations a little bit earlier & had gained much needed experience that others could borrow. The second Asia for Animals conference, in Hong Kong, brought in the beginnings of the now booming Chinese animal advocacy movement. By the look of it, every Chinese person who attended returned home to inspire 100 or 1,000 more. As the cause and the conference have grown, those of us who became involved early have evolved into a something of a leadership elite--because we know each other now, & know what each can do & bring to the table. But most of us are also still close enough to our origins to know the challenges, opportunities, and pitfalls that others must move through. This includes ANIMAL PEOPLE. As recently as 1992 we had less than nothing, just Kim's maxed-out personal credit & some relevant know-how. I attended two major humane gatherings before our first two editions were published, & two more within the first year, all vital to our growth. Cost is still an issue. We cannot afford to attend every conference either. But we pick those that offer the best opportunities to learn & teach, & make a point of getting there, collecting frequent flyer miles all year through use of airline credit cards & so forth in order to be able to go. It is understood that the costs of attending conferences even in very inexpensive venues, such as India and Indonesia, are proportionately much higher for people in less affluent nations, with younger & smaller organizations. Yet so is the cost of obtaining any kind of education, & I really don't see many people who value or appreciate education more than the bright young folks in the developing world, who are increasingly the nucleus of the Asian animal protection cause. What really needs to be looked at is the cost of NOT attending conferences. The folks who avoid conferencing tend to be those whose organizations and imaginations stagnate, fail to thrive, and prematurely wither. How useful will attending any given conference be? Certainly some are much more useful than others. But if a session is not useful for a participant, go out to the hall & meet someone. If you feel bashful about introducing yourself, bear in mind that everyone else who doesn't know anyone tends to feel the same way. Introducing yourself is a test of leadership. Step up & do it. I have attended conferences that were very valuable even though I never even got into a conference session, & spent the whole time meeting people in the lobby. Ultimately, the value of a conference is in the conversation. The sessions are conversation-starters. The deepest education comes in the one-to-one discussion, seeking the meaning & value in what is heard, relative to what people are doing. -- Merritt Clifton Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE P.O. Box 960 Clinton, WA 98236 Telephone: 360-579-2505 Fax: 360-579-2575 E-mail: anmlpepl <anmlpepl%40whidbey.com> Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year; for free sample, send address.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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