Following his exchanges in Texas, Kaipara District Council's Jason Marris who is General Manager for Engagement and Transformation, and current interim Chief Executive, attended the International City/County Management Association or ICMA Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Photo: ICMA Conference opening ceremony
Once the exchange was over (see my posts on Texas City and on Pearland), I flew to Columbus, Ohio to join some other groovy Kiwis for a few days at the ICMA conference – the equivalent of our Taituarā annual conference.
When I say conference, I mean conference! They had over 4,000 people attend and there were at least five sessions in each time slot to choose from. Every topic was covered and they had some great keynote speakers as well.
I was quite taken with the out of the ordinariness of some of the content though, with the session shown by the photo at right really interesting, but also quite scary that they have to plan for these.
It was amazing attending such a massive conference and it was also great fun spending time with the other Kiwis who were there: Karen Thomas (Taituarā Chief Executive), Sanchia Jacobs (Taituarā President), Shyamal Ram and Tash Stubbing (Emerging Leader Award recipients) and Cameron McIntosh (CE Southland District). We all learnt a great deal and really enjoyed the opportunity.