Four days of learning and making connections at a professional development event that’s unrivalled anywhere else.

If you’re an IABC member in Europe thinking about going but can’t budget the costs, the IABC Europe Middle East Region has some great news for you.

From an email I received this evening:

The IABC Europe Middle East Region is offering a scholarship, consisting of a conference fee and an EUR 500 travel stipend to a member who would not otherwise be able to attend the upcoming IABC Conference in New York in June.

[…] Applications will be taken until 6 PM GMT, 9 April 2008.

If you think you qualify, drop me a note or Twitter DM for a link to the online scholarship application form. But hurry - you’ve got only 48 hours until the deadline.

Let me disclose that I’m an IABC member (and a past director of this Region) so I’m hardly neutral in posting about this.

It’s a great opportunity for one member from this Region to participate in what I think is the best professional development event for communicators, anywhere.

I hope to be at the conference myself, so look forward to meeting you, scholarship winner!

(Cross-posted from my main blog.)

I started this blog two weeks ago, just after discovering the IABC Exchange (or eXchange, but it’s awkward to type that; I wonder who thought up the spelling).

Wondering how many IABC members have created a presence on the Exchange. Hard to find any. Actually, I don’t know where to look. I don’t see anywhere in the blog dashboard, the admin area when you log in. Neither at the main IABC website.

I’d say that’s one thing that needs doing - making discovery of other IABC members with Exchange blogs as easy as possible, thus making it very easy to connect with them.

Mark Ragan just connected to me here, which is really what prompted a visit today and a stimulus to write this post.

I’m writing this post offline using Windows Live Writer. It really is an excellent blog post editor which I’ve been using since the early betas a year or more ago.

It’s especially easy to use with a WordPress blog, which all mine are. This Exchange blog is also WordPress but the multi-user version known as WordPress MU. I wondered if there’d be any issue with connecting WLW to this flavour of WP, but there were none. As easy as setting up with a normal WP blog.

Anyway, discovery is the key word for this post. I’d like to find other IABC members here on eXchange (there, I typed it correctly).

Anyone out there?

So I’ve set up this place. Occasional posts that will be, as the tag line says, a point of view.

I’ll return soon. Meanwhile, back to my main blog.