The following post is by Diane Fox (ATD Detroit President Elect), sent live from the ATD International Conference and Expo (ICE) in Atlanta, Georgia.

The ATD International Conference and Expo has begun with 10,000 professionals descending on Atlanta!  Where else can you find people more dedicated than to give their time a weekend to learn and grow?

Five board members (Diane, Laura, Kristy, Valerie, and Tarnisha) started their morning with Chapter Leader Day meetings, where sharing best practices gave our leaders awesome ideas to bring back to the chapter. We also learned about the strategic side of things by thinking about ways we can run the chapter more like a business, and how to make strategic business decisions for the best outcomes for the chapter and its members. We rounded out the morning with a ton of networking and celebrating our fellow chapters with awards.

CPLPs had a CPLP breakfast this morning where we were the first to learn of a new framework that ATD and ATD-CI have developed to give L&D professionals a clear and progressive learning path for themselves. It will also help professionals better understand their own career development paths. This path could start with taking an ATD education program and might end all the way with earning the CPLP credentials.  More to come soon on this as ATD works with chapters and employers to roll this out.

Last but not least, the concurrent sessions have started.  With hundreds of options each day it's hard to chose a session, but ATD has a great app that keeps our sessions planned.  Pro tips for future conference attendees: talk to others to find out whothe "can't miss" speakers are, and divide and conquer among your team. You can always listen to sessions you miss after the conference ends through the ATD website.

There's a loud buzz in the air for participants that will last for the next fun filled days to come!