APA NPC21 – Anticipate and Adapt (The Recap)

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Well, it’s over. This year’s APA National Conference (NPC21) is over. Except for some occasional technical difficulties, the overall conference ran well. It was run on a pretty good, pretty interactive platform that allowed for multiple tracks at once and plenty of interaction.

It was rather frustrating for me though. The amount of sessions that were truly applicable to suburban communities in the Midwest was limited. To find tidbits that was applicable to smaller rural communities was even tougher. Many of the sessions were very politically charged. Which, if you looked at the geography of the last election, may explain some of the lack of respect for rural areas.

Making that statement may keep me out of the running for any seat on an APA division or board. But it needed to be said.

Then again, I may be a little grumpy as I’m growing tired of video conferences. With my medical issues my family went into lockdown when COVID-19 hit. I worked for months from home. My kids have spent the last semester learning from home (exponentially hard with a kindergartener). I have both shots of the vaccine now and I want to get out. I’m an introvert, but I want to get out and talk to people. I want to attend a session and not have an Outlook notification pop up to let my job distract me from what is going on.

Overall, NPC21 was a good conference. There was plenty of great learning opportunities and as I spend more time reflecting on it, I think I’ll find some really good aspects to apply to my own work. I’m just a grumpy old man.