We Did It!

Back to the hard work of the conference. More than 150 papers were submitted for this conference and about 60 were selected (Only four from America and N.C. State had two of the four, N.C. A&T had one, and Perdue had the other) . Dale, Cathy, Angela Shaver and myself co-wrote one of the papers on the L.I.N.C. program and it was selected. That means today is the day we have been waiting for. It was time for Cathy and I to get up and present the L.I.N.C. program and talk about how it empowers agents to challenge themselves and their clients. The reaction was interesting. Everyone said we did a good job with the presentation. Some of the folks in the room wanted to know more about the mechanics of the program while others wanted to know more about the evaluation data and how it was collected. All in all we had some very good feedback.

After our presentation we listened to other papers and switched working groups so that we could also support our collegues from Perdue University as they gave a presentation on 4-H in Poland which was very interesting. After lunch it was time to reconviene and work on notes from the session and wrap up the themese shown in these works as well as the issues to see if there might be a solution or at least a common issue that the group could address in teh future. At the closing session these findings from the three workgroups were presented. Then our collegue from Finland got up and announced that the next conference in 2011 would be in Helsinki, Finland.

After a greuling day of papers and discussion we sat out front of our conference center and relaxed with our host Fabio Santuci. As always he was gracious and funny and we expressed how much we enjoyed this conference. Carolyn and the other compainions joined us shortly thereafter when they returned from their trip to the lake with really big smiles on their faces. Fabio said this lake was like Austrila, at one time people who had committed crimes had a choice between jail and living around this lake. Now it is a pristine place with plenty of activity.

At 8:30 it was time for our closing banquet. We all gathered upstairs in the reception room and enjoyed our five course closing banquet. By the time we were finished it was after 11 p.m. and we were full and exhausted.

Tomorrow Dale, Carolyn and I will head to the castle/fort on top of the mountain at Assisi (where we are now is kind of like a suburb). There is lots of history to learn and new things around every corner. Stay tuned for more .