ICMA Annual Conference

I'm in Milwaukee for the annual International City/County Management Association conference. For those not familiar with the conference, there are three different components to a typical day. First, there are keynote speakers and conference workshops throughout the day to help train, motivate, and educate the managers and professionals who run your local city. Second, there is a large exhibition hall where many private companies promote innovative technologies or services at individual booths. You can meet a lot of different individuals wandering through those halls from varied backgrounds throughout city management and from all over the world. I've seen people from Canada, Australia, Denmark and Russia in just one day. Finally, there are impromptu networking opportunities around conference events, including meals, recreational activities (Wisconsin State Cheese Factory/Museum and Harley Davidson Museum, to name two) and organized meet and greets.

As a member of the ICMA task force on internship guidelines, I'm interviewing managers from across the country about their internship and fellowship programs. This task force will be changing the internship guidebook and promoting new materials and techniques so that professionals, universities, and students can all make the most of their internship experiences. I'll be posting the interviews over the next several weeks on the Interview page of Local Government Today. These experienced managers and deputy managers bring a wealth of expertise and insight to making the most of your career - starting now. Look for interviews from managers from the following cities or counties:
Humboldt County, California

• Centerville, Utah
• Humboldt County, California
  
• Lexington, Massachusetts
• Sedgwick County, Kansas
• Sugar Land, Texas
• Andover, Massachusetts
• Fort Collins, Colorado

If you have a comment, idea, or concern about your past internship experiences, feel free to leave me a note to this message so I can pass them along to the internship task force.

Tacoma - ICMA Local Government Management Fellowship

I received the following message from Gabriel Engeland at the City of Tacoma a few days ago.

"I am pleased to announce that the City of Tacoma will soon be accepting applications for the Management Fellowship position located in the City Manager’s Office. The Management Fellowship at the City of Tacoma is a two year position designed to assist recent graduates in developing the skills necessary to become effective local government managers.

"More detailed information, including application information, is available on our website atwww.cityoftacoma.org/managementfellow.

"The City of Tacoma will be accepting completed employment application forms from qualified candidates from Thursday, September 8, 2011 to Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 5:00 p.m."

The Management Fellow position will start around the beginning of November, so you need to have completed your MPA before then in order to be eligible. For more information about the ICMA Local Government Management Fellowship program, click here.