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The Balance Wheel: Spring 2003

Federal & State Agencies Work Together Making 2002 ACI Conference a Huge Success!

By: Craig Rieben, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service & Hoy Murphy, West Virginia DNR

It seemed like a natural. The national association for information professionals from state natural resource agencies and like-minded folks should gather at the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) located in Shepherdstown, West Virginia for one of their annual conferences. The facility was established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be a focal point for all types of conservation education, not only for Fish & Wildlife Service training. From the start, it was envisioned the facility would serve other natural resource agencies and organizations as a place to meet, exchange ideas, and further enhance the country’s conservation efforts.

A special live satellite tour of the new facility highlighted the 1999 ACI conference in Texas. According to Hoy Murphy, information officer for West Virginia DNR, “The first time I heard ACI might be coming to West Virginia was when Mike Smith showed the new National Conservation Training Center at the ACI Conference in Austin. The next time I heard about it was when Bob Wines of Wonderful West Virginia magazine returned from the Reno meeting in 2000 to say it was going to happen in 2002 and that West Virginia DNR had been asked to be a co-sponsor.” Yikes!

Murphy adds, “West Virginia had never hosted ACI before, so this was a daunting challenge, especially since WV-DNR was also co-hosting the Outdoor Writers Association of America annual conference just a few weeks earlier that year. Frankly, some folks were not interested in doing much with ACI until Bob and I explained that the Service had requested our participation. The fact that WV-DNR was undergoing a routine but Service-mandated Federal audit at the time didn’t hurt our argument that we should try to keep “The Feds” happy!

Bob Wines, Steve Hillebrand of NCTC, and a couple of other Service employees put their heads together in Reno to start the planning. All agreed the unprecedented co-hosting of the event offered some excellent opportunities to do things a good bit differently. It was decided a special effort would be made to expand awareness of ACI as an organization, select conference format and content based on a series of interest surveys, and seek to produce a kind of “conference planning cookbook” for use by future host states to take some of the slope out of the steep learning curve associated with hosting the conference.

West Virginia put together a great group of people who had some experience in handling conferences and the Service did the same. Then it was time for that first awkward meeting.

Steve Hillebrand handed each in attendance a nearly empty three-ring binder and offered the obligatory welcome. In retrospect he says, “At that point I had no idea of how much cooperative work and effort was going to be involved and how fat those binders would be by the time the actual conference rolled around.”

Hoy recalls, “We all met for a get-acquainted session at NCTC, and those of us from WV-DNR fell in love with the place. The lodging, meeting rooms, and especially the cafeteria were all top-notch. But what we found even more gratifying was that the Service team was also top-notch, down-to-earth, and willing to put in the work to make the conference a success.

It took many meetings to plan the conference, with most held at NCTC. Much of the effort was directed at some of the projects not technically part of the actual conference. A great marketing firm, Vitalink, was retained by ACI to assist with the conference, design a new logo, produce a general ACI brochure and membership form, and conduct surveys and research concerning ACI. So in reality, it became a three-way partnership effort.

According to Hoy, “We didn’t tell our bosses in Charleston, but despite the five-hour drive to Shepherdstown, we all dearly loved going there and meeting with our new friends, “The Feds.” It took every bit of the two years allotted us to plan the conference, but we worked hard and had some fun at the same time. We also learned a lot about each other and our agencies. For example, many of the staff at NCTC live in the Washington, D.C. area and knew little about the state in which they work, so this was a great opportunity for them to learn about good ol’ West “By God” Virginia.

Of course, the conference finally came and was a big success. We hope those in attendance learned a lot in a classroom environment, met some new friends and caught up on old ones, and had a lot of fun for a week in the wilds of West Virginia. Hillebrand says, “NCTC was extremely pleased to have hosted the group and hopes exposure to the Training Center and its activities will go a long way toward enhancing cooperative education and interpretation endeavors with the various states. I was especially impressed with the attendance in light of tight budgets, travel restrictions, and the like.”

Murphy adds, “Tears and hugs were the rule between our two groups when we finally declared the conference over. We genuinely enjoyed each other’s company and wished we could continue to work together on something. We still keep in touch and use each other as resources when needed for work-related stuff. Yes, it’s unusual for a federal and a state agency to be able to work together so well on a project, I’m told, but we found that we’re all just regular people, no matter who signs our paychecks. And when you get good people using their special skills to do good work and who like each other, everyone comes out ahead.”

And the effort is paying returns. Conference chair Judy Hosafros of Wyoming says she is finding the information and planning documents used for the West Virginia conference invaluable. So we’re hoping everyone is setting his or her compass for Cody, Wyoming, next July!