Museum-L'ers,
With all the recent postings about professionalism, compensation,
mentorship, information exchange, and job searching, I want to emphasize the
importance of getting involved in local, state, regional and, yes, national
professional associations for museums.

As an employee of the national association of museums in the U.S., I would
be remissed not to stress how much information is available through these
groups.  Their many professional education seminars, workshops, annual
meetings, ecetera provide a plethora of opportunities to learn and develop
leadership skills for the field.  At AAM we find that participants in our
seminars, workshops, and annual meetings find the chance to network with
others from around the country one of the most important experiences in
their professional development. I work hard in my job to fundraise to enable
more people from diverse backgrounds to attend our seminars and annual
meeting and find it frustrating when opportunities are missed simply because
people are unaware of the work that associations do.

Please join an association if you are not already a member.  Visit all the
Web sites you can until you find one you like; one that has a good
information relevant to your interest.  Look at AAM's Web site link
http://www.aam-us.org/related.htm for an enormous list (scroll down!) of
organizations of interest. The list is very complete, I believe.  Like AAM,
most associations depend upon their members to develop the content of
programs, so you are sure to learn the latest in museum work through their
offerings.

No more diatribe about associations, but please stand by for relevant
postings!  And...thank you for listening!

John Suau
Manager, Meetings, Professional Education, and Diversity
American Association of Museums
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