Best Results Organizing

This past week, Paper Doll was extra jet-lagged and suffering withdrawal symptoms from sensory overload, but I’m thrilled to start sharing my excitement over having attended NAPO 2014 Annual Conference & Organizing Expo in Phoenix-Scottsdale.

I got to the beautiful Westin-Kierland Resort and Spa a day early to participate in the Board of Certification (BCPO^®) for Professional Organizer’s board meeting. To a layman, discussing the intricacies of upholding the validity of an industry-wide certification program from 7:45 a.m. (yes, really) until dinner time might seem dry, but aside from the actual morning aspect of it, the experience was enlightening.

The BCPO^® program, for which I serve as the Director of Program Development, recognizes and raises industry standards, practices and ethics, and lets clients know that CPOs are committed and serious about the work being done. Speaking of serious, how serious am I about certification?

So serious that I was a presenter at the conference. So serious that my colleague, BCPO^® president Helene Segura and I got up and presented Why and How to Get Certified, at a similarly o’dark-thirty, on Friday morning.

If that doesn’t show commitment, I don’t know what does!

NAPO2014, and indeed every NAPO annual Conference and Expo, means different things to different people. As I try to do every year, I want to share just a few of the highlights of the conference itself, and over the next series of posts, we’ll be looking at the Expo side of things, with all the neato-keen goodies. 

EDUCATION

NAPO conference attendees get to pick from among five concurrent educational sessions in each of six session blocks, over three days. Yes, that means selecting what floats your boat (or, y’know, meets your educational objectives) from among thirty different sessions.

In addition to the opportunity to select among a variety of half-day and full-day pre-conference sessions, my colleagues and I attended courses in five educational tracks, including classes designed for infusing our professional practices with growing expertise to serve our clients:

Organizing and Productivity: “Are You Listening? Really? Key Coaching Skills for the Experienced Organizer or Productivity Expert,” “Test Your Technique,” “If Only I Could Draw,” “Going Paperless to Boost Productivity,” and “Clearing Mental Clutter Makes Organizing Easier.”

Special Needs Clients: “Finding Flow: Understanding Your Client’s Style Preferences,” “Is It Hot or Is It Just Me?: Mid-LIfe Transitions and ADHD,” “Decisions, Indecision, and Clutter in Hoarding Situations,” “Exceptional Organizing: Strategies for Special Needs Clients and Their Families,” “Distracted & Obsessed: Helping ADHD and/or OCD Clients,” “Success Under Stress,” “Creating Home and Business Inventories” and “Student Organizing Tools, Apps and More.”

Technology sessions mixed subject matter that serves our clients: “Finding Digital Sanity,” “Evernote for Work: Advanced Implementation Strategies,” and “Virtual Planning for Your Digital Afterlife” with those which help us grow our businesses: “How to Write Blog Posts That Get Results,” and “Boost Your Brand By Podcasting.”

Other sessions in Business Growth, Marketing and Running Your Business focused on topics as varied as “Marketing to Therapists and Psychiatrists,” “Staying in Business a Decade & Beyond,” “Taking Business from ‘I’ to ‘We’ with Employees,” “Niche Markets for Organizers,” “Master the Sales Process,” “6-Figure Marketing on a $2 Budget,” “Do’s and Don’t’s of Successful Book Promotion,” “LinkedIn Means Business,” “How to Create Effective Policies and Procedures,” “How to Be a Kick-Ass Boss” and “List Building: The Secret Sauce of Online Marketing,“ the latter having been taught by NAPO perennial favorite, marketing expert and Spider-Man fan, Rich Brooks:

Whew! And this doesn’t even count our opening and closing keynote speakers on leadership and getting out of your own way, two Ask the Organizer panels, and a smattering of exhibitor How-To sessions!

COMMITTEES AND SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

In addition to formal educational programs, the annual conference is an opportunity for NAPO’s many groups to meet to conduct important business. From the Education Committee, to the NAPO Ambassador program, to the philanthropic Quantum Leap program, to a wide variety of Special Interest Groups (SIGs), including those for technology, student organizing, public speaking, coaching, eco-awareness, moving and relocation, and small and multi-person businesses, the halls of the Westin-Kierland were humming.

EXPO

NAPO’s Corporate Associate Members and other exhibitors came from as near as Los Angeles and as far away as Israel to share their products and services with professionals ready to learn and evaluate. You’ll be hearing more about the Expo vendors — including the various winners of the Organizers’ Choice Awards — over the course of the next series of posts. But Paper Doll would be remiss to not include two of this blog’s longtime favorite companies and their representatives, Smead‘s Jim Riesterer

and Pendaflex/TOPS‘ Barb Schmit.

NETWORKING AND SOCIALIZING AND DINING (OH, MY!)

Is it any wonder that with all of these members, educators, exhibitors and random organizing celebrities (of whom, more later), NAPO people took time to socialize? There were formal receptions daily in the EXPO, orientations for a first-time and international attendees, a Golden Circle luncheon (for 5-year+ organizing veterans), a CPO^® celebration/reception,

and more continental breakfasts that you could shake a stick at and organize into neat columns and rows.

But be assured, informal socializing was the rule of thumb for day and night. Groups of three, four and upwards of a dozen huddled on comfy couches in the lobby, in quiet corners in the pubs, near poolside chairs and on the back expanse of patio overlooking rolling hills and a golf course.

Paper Doll with former NAPO President Stephanie Denton, current Institute for Challenging Disorganization President Valentina Sgro and Australian superstar and AAPO founding member, Lissanne Oliver. (We didn’t think about it at the time, but this photo represents just a sampling of NAPO authors, including Stephanie’s The Organized Life, my 57 Secrets for Organizing Your Small Business, Val’s whole series of Patience Oaktree books, and Lissanne’s Sorted!)

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a NAPO event without many days and nights of dining!

LeighAnn Hensel, Hazel Thornton, Miriam Ortiz Y Pino, Paper Doll, Janet Barclay and non-organizer BCPO® Public Director Sharon Fanning at Deseo

NAPO-Georgia friends Danielle Carney and Tiffany Poole at Tanzy

INTERNATIONAL ATTENDEES AND OTHER EXOTIC FOLKS

Every year, we’re lucky to have a number of international visitors to our conference from about a dozen nations as far away as Colombia, Brazil and Nigeria. Even a language barrier couldn’t stop these intrepid organizers, who had translators and moxie, speaking the common languages of clutter destruction and productivity. They marveled at their commonalities and discussed their differences, as evidenced by this picture of Canada’s Janet Barclay, Australia’s Kathryn Hennig and New York City’s Sharon Lowenheim (comparing our U.S. paper/linen money with their shinier, more plastic cash).

I never thought I’d be on anybody’s bucket list, but as Janet Barclay of Your Organizing Business writes in her post, My First NAPO Conference, I made it. And not only did I get to rub elbows with current Professional Organizers of Canada President Stephanie Deakin,

but she continued a long-standing tradition of POC members bringing me my beloved Coffee Crisp, the best candy bar in the world, from above the 49th Parallel.

And while men aren’t generally considered as exotic as international visitors, this year’s NAPO conference boasted an unusually large number of male attendees and presenters, including the aforementioned Rich Brooks, newly re-branded Scott Roewer, Evernote whiz Joshua Zerkel, tech-and-stuff organizer Deron Bos, paperless (gasp!) guru (and Canadian!) Brooks Duncan, NAPO-Connecticut President Rick Woods, and ADHD specialists Dr. Ari Tuckman and Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Roberto Olivardia.

In coming posts, we’ll be talking about new organizing “stuff” for paper and the other areas of your life. Until then, be assured that a good time was had by all. If you’re an organizing client, or plan to be one some day, I hope this has given you confidence in both the educational curriculum of professional organizers and the idea that professional organizers aren’t stuff. And if you’re a professional organizer who missed conference this year, here’s your motivation to start planning for #NAPO2015!

To that end, and to what I’m sure will be my eventual downfall, I share with you this year’s “It seemed like a good idea at the time” greeting, the boob bump.

What can I say, dear readers? It was 107° every day. Even the good judgment of organizing professionals can be melted by the Arizona heat.