News

 As AGRiP wraps up Governance Conference 2023 work, we find ourselves reflecting on the experience.

Thanks to all who attended (with a special nod of appreciation to those who presented at the conference to share their ideas and insights). Ours is an inspiring community of people working together to make pools more effective, collaborative and informed.

Here’s a message from Executive Director Ann Gergen: 

Whenever I attend one of our conference events, or any sort of pool gathering for that matter, I find myself immediately struck by two things.

1. It's energizing when the pooling community is together.

   Our membership is filled with enthusiastic advocates for public entity risk management, who believe in doing the right thing for the right reasons. It's heartening to be in rooms filled with people who want to learn, and who are working to affirm or improve pool coverages, services and operations.

   At Governance Conference 2023, about 60 percent of attendees were pool governing body members — which means they are elected or appointed officials who directly serve a local government, school, special district or other local public entity. I asked almost every governing body member I met to tell me about their work outside their pool. While their roles vary, their commitment to public service is universal. It's incredibly inspiring to be among such a dedicated and engaged group, all focused on making pools (and public entities) smarter.

2. There's never enough time to connect as much as we'd like.

   I reviewed the conference attendance list this week as a way to debrief after the event. For all the people I had a chance to talk to, there are many (many!) more to whom I only waved or said a brief hello as they headed into a session or meeting. And because about 25 percent of all attendees were new to pooling, there were a lot of people I met for the first time onsite.

   I wish I had more time at the conference for one-on-one conversations and points of connection, and I think a lot of people who attended probably feel the same.

   The good news is that AGRiP is an incredibly collegial and collaborative community, and by now we're all pretty darned skilled at video meetings! It’s great that all of our presenters and members are open to questions and information sharing, and that we know them well enough to make connections for further conversation.