Our venue - Destin, Florida - was beautiful. The hotel offered excellent cuisine, spacious accommodations, great meeting space, and a location that can't be beat, in March: 65-70 degrees, soft warm winds, bright sunshine - truly making our location a "Destin"-ation that couldn't be beat.

This year, we nearly topped 100 persons attending (96) - and that represents great growth for this event, and for ACDM. Those of you who remember the first conference - when 20 of us stood up and briefed each other - were (or would have been, in some cases) very gratified to see how much we have grown, over the years. For those of you attending, you already know this. For those who have never had the opportunity to join with us, annually, it makes me sad. We know that budgets are tight, and travel money is scarce - which makes the investment in yourself and your professional success even more meaningful. We have heard a great deal of good responses from our attendees, over the years - but never once have I heard anyone observe that he or she felt that the investment in the ACDM conference was a wasted expense.

As many of you know, ACDM's vision has never been to structure a huge conference; but, rather, to offer a smaller event that enables networking and enables us to pay special attention to details. As CM and DM professionals, we strive hard to develop a very well-planned and executed event that allows attendees to enjoy each other and build those critical professional relationships that come in so handy when you need a mentor or a protege. ACDM does not have a "product", per se - instead, we offer an opportunity for our attendees to come to share with, and learn from, each other. Thus, a "mega-conference" has never been our goal - because the optimum size for networking is, by definition, a fairly small number of attendees.

Because of that, we have always targeted a maximum of 100 - 125 persons attending. We want to offer a first class event, with an opportunity for the top CM and DM movers and shakers in our profession to come together in the most meaningful way possible. As distant as that vision seemed in 1996, in Dallas, we are just a bit over 10 years down the road, and we are nearly "there". As we approach that goal, I can begin to see a time when we will have to declare a "first-come, first-served" top limit, so that we can preserve the integrity of our annual events.

Our keynote and speakers were excellent, and offered a very large spectrum of topics and content. The agenda was structured to address CM, SW/CM, DM, and Information Management areas. Steven Bement, the Microsoft CM manager for the XBox program, was our keynote. What a special story he told, of implementing CM in the commercial environment with a need to build return on investment instantly, for buy-in!

Our workshops yielded a morning of thinking and doing which resulted in some of the attendees leaving the conference with solutions in hand for serious challenges they are facing.

It was wonderful to see those of you who are always with us, and very special to welcome new friends to our midst, into the ACDM family. We have become a family reunion, of sorts - which only reinforces our vision of the CM and DM family that we serve, through ACDM.

On behalf of the Executive Board, thank you for your interest and your membership in ACDM. We hope that you will make that investment of your money and your time begin to pay greater dividends, by planning to be with us in 2008. If you have suggestions for topics or workshops for 2008, your EB would be delighted to have them.

Best Regards,

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