It ‘s NAPO conference time again! …and my second year attending. Last year, 700+ organizers gathered in Orlando, FL for the annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers. This year, we’ll be in Columbus, Ohio, and as I write this today (Tuesday), I’m sitting in a very comfy Southwest Airlines seat alongside my colleague, Kim Oser.

What’s so special about NAPO conference (a.k.a. NAPOCon)?  It’s the only place where so many pro organizers get together all in one place at the same time, and we often get to see new organizing products (and some old favorites, like Rubbermaid).  There will also be a few TweetUps and I’m sure a some attendees will live tweet from the sessions they’ll be attending.

I’m particularly impressed with the way the conference organizers distributed this year’s program book.  It was all digital. Each attendee received a special code to open the digital notebook, and we had the option to print all pages or just the ones we were interested in.  I might suggest that they make it a little less circuitous to get session information.  None the less, it was easy to use and a green way to distribute the info we need. Somewhere out there, a family of trees is breathing a sigh of relief. =)

Kim took a different approach by going “high tech” with paper, well, as high tech as one can get with paper.  She created an 8.5×11 Circa notebook filled with the pages she printed.  She also copied/pasted the agenda on annotated pages, added labeled tabs, and used the blue Circa disks to match the blue NAPO logo color!  Only an organizer would be this detailed (read:  anal) and only another organizer would be jealous that she didn’t do the same (read:  moi).  Between the trip to the Levenger store in Tysons Corner (she already knew what she was going to buy before going), printing, and putting the book together, Kim estimates that it took her a total of 2 hours from start to finish.  Not bad, especially since it will be a tremendous help to her and her roomie (me) over the next four days.

Another plus…though the conference bag was blue, it was also green…

Stay tuned for more updates from NAPOCon 2010. There’ll be lots more to share.  Ciao!