AZA 2009 - Day 3 reflections

Just back in Anchorage after a long day at the conference and then flying back home on the last plane out of Portland.  Day 3 of AZA was a great chance to engage substantively in sessions - I attended an excellent session on "Connecting Visitors to the Ocean Through Partnerships with Ocean Protected Areas" that featured the great work being done under the NOAA National Marine Sancturaries program.  These 14 'flagship' MPAs cover 150,0000 square miles (larger than the US National Park Estate) and have a major emphasis on working with others to promote ocean literacy.  They have begun some fascinating partnerships with aquariums and others on education activities as diverse as a ride simulator to explore undersea areas to a really neat "Sanctuary Sam" video program in CA - I have a swag of ideas to follow up on from that session.  Interestingly, there are no National Marine Sanctuaries in Alaska, although there are certainly significant areas and features that would qualify.

The next session I joined was focused on one of my pet subjects - evaluation. Titled 'Ready... Shoot... Score", this session featured great work being done in Cleveland and San Diego to better understand the visitor experience.  I picked up some great new tools including a much simpler survey form and some ideas for using new cell phone polling software - beware visitor services team!

During morning and lunch plenaries, we had the chance to hear about the diverse work being done under the AZA grants programs and to recognize some true champions in the national zoo and aquarium community.  My personal favorite was the replay of the best zoo and aquarium advertising videos for 2008-09!  Check out the hilarious Columbus Zoo No More #2 advert featuring Jack Hanna available on You Tube!

The final session of the day was our panel on Climate Change.  Working with the Monterey and New England Aquarius and the AZA, we bought together a  great panel to discus a "Common Framework for Climate Change Action by Zoos and Aquariums".  I moderated the panel and present a paper jointly with John Anderson from NEAq on CC training (a copy of the presentation is posted on the S drive under my folder).  The session focused on both follow up to the Aquariums and CC conference in Monterey that Ned and I joined last December and on the bigger question of how zoos and aquariums can work towards promoting greater public understanding of CC issues.  There are now proposals for new AZA working groups on this - stay tuned!

Overall - was the conference worth the time and $ invested?  I'd say a big yes for two reasons - (1) as my first AZA meeting this was an invaluable networking opportunity - the zoo and aquarium community is incredibly diverse and doing a lot of cool things that we don't hear much about otherwise - I really like the idea of expanding our horizons and learning from peers.  (2) there is a LOT of momentum in marine conservation and ocean literacy (as evidenced by the huge NOAA presence at this meeting) - being at this meeting gave me a much better sense of our current niche and possible directions. 
Bottom line... are we joining AZA?  Good question - its a complex process and would take a lot of effort - the payoff is, however, significant and so I'll be meeting with our SMT and Board to assess their appetite for this and with AZA staff when I am next in DC to further assess what is involved in the process.