One of the NWCA's BEST pre-meeting programs this year was January 2006, in which a couple of our members (Kelly Cooper-Slayton and Stacey Lane) shared their experiences and take-aways from the 2005 conference, so you know it's a great event.

This year I am definitely going, so you'll know at least one other person there. And here are some other reasons for you to go to the conference this year:

1. Fresh, strong keynotes: Dan Pink, Lynne Twist and Guy Kawaski
2. Quality breakout programs (selected by a panel of your peers); many interactive and dialog based, using the World Café and Open Space approaches
3. Exciting pre-conference speakers: Nancy Kline, Ron McMillan, Dianna and Merrill Anderson, and Christina Baldwin
4. Many CEU opportunities to get or keep your certification
5. Experiential sandbox sessions on Friday afternoon for those who want even more content and value
6. Exhibitors with services and tools for coaches
7. A Bookstore offering the newest and best titles for coaches
8. A truly international conference that will celebrate and honor our past and present while promoting quantum thinking for our future
9. Plenty of networking, fun, and dancing (you read right: dancing!)
10. St. Louis: Hey, it is a GREAT town!

Even if you can't make it to the ICF conference this year, we have plenty of high-quality programming at our monthly meetings. Feroshia and Colleen (our programming co-chairs) are working on getting ICF CEUs for our meetings (yay!), so there's another reason to show up.

See you at the meeting?

Warmly,
Ronnie

Veronika Noize
NWCA 2006 President
360-882-1298
ronnie@veronikanoize.com

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Bob Renggli
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PRE-MEETING WORKSHOP DETAILS from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Finding The Right Business: One Size Doesn't Fit All

NW Coaches Association President Elect, Dave Wagers will conduct an entrepreneurial workshop on self-employment. He will share some of his knowledge and thoughts on:
1) How to find a business that fits you?
2) What do you do first?
3) Avoid the mistakes others make
4) Emotional barriers and how to overcome them
5) The Entrepreneurial Myth, what is it?

This is intended to be an open and highly interactive session so bring your questions!

NETWORKING from 6:30-7:00 p.m.
Get to know the other members, meet new people, and become known yourself!

MAIN MEETING from 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Conversation Café: What if the future could be designed in webs of human conversation?

Steve Byers, Director of Quality at the Western Institutional Review Board in Olympia, WA.
The Western IRB oversees approximately 8,000 investigators conducting research on human subjects. In his work, Steve designs and delivers classes on feedback, inquiry processes, systems thinking. At NWCA, Steve will share in the art of World Café.

The World Café is a flexible, easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing collective knowledge, and discovering new opportunities for action.

The World Café process is particularly useful in the following situations:
1) When you want to generate input, share knowledge, stimulate innovative thinking, and explore action possibilities around real life issues and questions;
2) To engage people--whether they are meeting for the first time, or are in established relationships--in authentic conversation;
3) To conduct in-depth exploration of key strategic challenges or opportunities;
4) To deepen relationships and mutual ownership of outcomes in an existing group;
5) To create meaningful interaction between a speaker and the audience;
6) To engage groups larger than 12 (we've had up to 1200) in an authentic dialogue process;

Come join us for an evening and learn how to facilitate a World Café while experiencing it's benefits as a participant!

Would you like to be a presenter at one of our meetings?

At the NWCA, we are always looking for speakers who can effectively present on topics that relate to either coaching skills or business development and management. Our goal is to present valuable and enjoyable programs that allow all participants to learn something useful about a subject or themselves. We'll know this goal has been reached when our members leave the meeting with new information, and considering themselves stronger coaches or businesspeople for attending.

Our ideal speakers are those with a professional stature in relation to our membership (for example, if the speaker is a coach, he or she has reached a high level of certification and success in relation to all coaches), and have previous speaking experience on the topic being presented.

There are two opportunities to be a presenter/speaker each month with NWCA:

Pre-meeting workshop
Our pre-meeting workshops are designed to meet the needs of our newer coaches. Appropriate topics may include: business development & management, marketing, client enrollment, information regarding new standards of practice (ICF), and topics that fellow NWCA members wish to present relevant to the coaching industry.

Main meeting presentation
Our main meetings are directed at attracting our more seasoned coaches. Perhaps you have a new modality outside of the typical coaching tool kit you wish to share? Perhaps you are on tour with a newly published book or technique? If you think that your topic is relevant and/or if you don't know - contact us below!

Programs:
Colleen Bourassa ( acbourassa@verizon.net)
Feroshia Knight (info@barakainstitute.com).

Get directions here

Warm regards,
Kristy Schnabel
Virtual Assistant to NWCA
help@nwcoaches.org.

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