Goals and Values for the Annual Meeting Program

The Annual Meeting should be:

• Visionary and inspiring (motivating)
• Challenging (intellectual rigor)
• Passionate (personal)
• Practical (relevant)
• Holistic (people, panels, themes)
• Provocative (controversy)
• Engaging (interactive)

The Annual Meeting should:

• Involve diversity in people, institutions, communities, and program
• Involve large and small institutions
• Involve “first person voices”
• Encourage dialog within the sessions
• Provide tangible take-aways for attendees

Content should target one of the following:

• Core curriculum, nuts and bolts, “101” sessions
• Mid/advanced best practices and issues
• Senior leadership and management issues

Additional Goals and Values for the Annual Meeting:

• Emphasis on WMA’s 90th Anniversary in 2025
• Celebrate a sense of place, location of Annual Meeting
• Acknowledge and respect cultures, nationalities, and profession
• Embrace a sense of community within the profession
• Be intellectually and financially accessible
• Compare and contrast professional practices, build understanding
• Encourage networking, cross-fertilization, sharing experiences, and learning from each other
• Facilitate lasting relationships between both museums and people
• Facilitate meaningful outcomes, as well as communications within the museum profession, with government, media, broader community, etc.
• Celebrate tradition and innovation
• Communicate professional excellence
• Communicate and experience new ways of thinking
• Encourage questioning, discussion, debate, and dialogue
• Provide alternative and new perspectives
• Build new leadership, collaboration, and teamwork