Utah Society of Certified Public Managers®

By Happi Hansen, CPM
happihansen@utah.gov

The Utah Society of Certified Public Managers® held a national conference kickoff event during the March educational program meeting. Former AACPM Secretary and President-Elect Julie Felice, former AACPM President and Henning Award recipient Craig Odekirk, Utah CPM Program Director J. J. Acker and some past AACPM Board members spoke about their positive experiences, both with AACPM and with its annual professional development conferences. Chairs for all of the conference committees were named, with several groups and their newly appointed chairs meeting after the luncheon.

The Conference Site and Logistics Committee moved forward by chartering a group in the Spring CPM Course 3 Program to conduct a national survey of AACPM members regarding site selection for the main conference, as well as related activities. This group will present the results of the survey in June as their final Course 3 project, and the Venue Committee will be ready to present a contract with a venue for the conference to the AACPM Board, hopefully before the Columbus conference in September. The Program Planning and Speaker Selection Committee will then prepare the speaker bids, and our Public Relations Committee has already prepared a logo for approval by the AACPM Conference Committee. The conference will soon start feeling like a reality to us all.

We have been reminded by Julie Felice to use this conference to celebrate our successes. Some of the things we will celebrate during the 2011 conference are AACPM’s 22nd Annual Professional Development Conference, USCPM’s 20th year as a state society and Utah’s second time as a sponsor of the national conference (the first held in Snowbird, Utah in 1997).

This year, we celebrated the first CPM class to graduate outside the Wasatch Front as USCPM Board Members and CPM Consortium members traveled south to Cedar City to welcome 20 new CPM graduates. Finally, we celebrated the open house of a brand-new, state-of-the-art training facility dedicated to CPM that is housed in the newly remodeled state capitol building. We can’t wait until all our national counterparts come to Utah to help us celebrate the growth and direction of CPM activities in our state.

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