I have just returned from a couple of weeks of conferences.  I attended the Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium in Asheville, NC, a pre-conference to the AORE conference.  I then attended the AEE conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.  All in all I had a great conference season, but I am continually struck by the overlap of conferences and professional associations.  I dream of outdoor programs having a large and powerful voice in the public deliberation on education, but instead I feel as though professional association is looked through the model of fast food restaurants rather than developing a unified voice for outdoor education.  To explain, McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's have an individual mission--to make money.  Professional associations have a mission in bringing as many people together with similar interests to advocate for promotion, and sometimes change.  I truly believe we work against the field when we continue to split into smaller, more specialized, more homogeneous groups of people.  When goals are based upon the specific mission of the particular association (increase membership, increase services, increase program quality, increase products better than the 'other' associations) we move toward acting like McDonalds. The mission of the association should be first and foremost to advocate for the whole. We should look to unify, not compete.  Just think of the power if all burger joints joined together, the world would take notice.  I hope we can organize ourselves so the world takes notice.  I hope we figure out a way to bridge the differences in organizations for the good of the field of education and outdoor recreation. 

 My own secret dream was for AORE and AEE to come together.  Below I have outlined some of the benefits each group could probably learn from the other.  I believe that when we work to get an organization to bridge to another group, important learning occurs which will hopefully strengthen outdoor education.  When we split into smaller and smaller groups, we only make it more comfortable for people to exist with their assumptions and attitudes (it is anti-educational and anti-diversity).  For example, my grandmother lived in a farming community in Northern MN of just over 2,000 people.  In here town there were 10 Lutheran churches, all with about 200 members.  Each church had its committees to respond to funerals, child care, fundraising, etc.  This system seems built for people unable to work out their differences, and these differences have to be small relative to the other religious traditions.  I mean they are all Lutheran.  Instead of working together, the community split itself into ten smaller organizations.

 
I would love to see some creative solution to bringing a larger voice to oudoor education through the professional associations.  I fear if we continue to operate like a small burger joint and compete with the other associations, we all lose.  Outdoor Education, Experiential Education, Outdoor Recreation all lose.  The world of recreation and education will go on without our voice, but at the cost of many people we know work too long and too hard trying to make a difference.

Here are some thoughts on the two conferences, which I think could add positive benefits to each organization:

I was struck working with AORE on how well organized they were with all communications from the conference committee. The conference contacts were professional, well organized, and treated the Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium folks with a lot of respect and professionalism.

The vendors attracted to the conference were fantastic and really seemed engaged in being at the conference.  AORE put all of the vendors in the main tent where the meals were served, so when you went to a meal you also passed the vendors.  It was a great integration.

I really appreciated the work AORE was doing with the Access Committee.  Getting the folks from Washington to attend AORE was great.  Having someone working proactive on these issues is important.  Unfortunately this has not been a focus of AEE.

A mixed review of AORE for me was the presence of students.  I was really happy to see so many college students, but was dismayed at the party atmosphere.  I cringed in my room in the wee hours of the morning as noisy, drunken groups would wake up a wing of the hotel with disrespectful behavior.  I do not know if the hotel had another roving band of non-conference folks who were causing the hotel damage, but I suspect the conference attendees had some really poor LNT habits.  Here is a great research question, "Does disrespect in a hotel correlate with poor LNT habits in the woods?"  

At AEE I found some other things of note.  I thought the conference workshops were of very high quality.  This was the best group of workshops I have ever seen.  I kept bumping into people raving about the workshop they just attended.  I also was enthused to see how well SEER (Symposium on Experiential Education Research) is doing.  Fifteen research presentations were presented which were chosen from 32 submissions.  It was great to see the types of research folks were doing and it was a great way for me to collect many ideas.  I also went to a really fun workshop on Foucault, which is not something you often hear, 'fun and Foucault' in the same sentence.  It was great to be thinking deeply about facilitating experience and the power of structures. 

For much of evenings at AEE I huddled in my room working on some papers, but I was able to catch some of the Karl Rohke show, lots of games and activities that had a great dual purpose--fun for the conference attendees and useful in expanding your own bag of tricks.  

I also saw the keynote by Jasper Hunt who did a great job of laying out the argument of the different philosophical roots of educators that value different types of experience (primary experience or secondary experience).  This was a well articulated argument that I wish every outdoor educator heard.  I always enjoy hearing Jasper's thoughts.  

In all, both conferences had a lot to offer.  

So I will go back to my own work and research, but I can not help but murmur, we are not McDonald's (aka. a corporation) we are members of professional associations.  I hope someday we are part of such a large association.  I figure it will be about as difficult as bringing together 10 Lutheran Churches, but it is possible and it will be an extreme adventure.  I am excited by both the challenge and the potential.  I hope you will join me in pushing for such inclusion.