Pittsburgh thus far and an answer to the “Only Three Fellows?!?” question
Hello from the rainy but glorious city of Pittsburgh! As expected, the past few days have been a whirlwind of meetings, concerts, and faces blended into one semi-coherent but enlightening introduction to the field. Most notably, I was glad to see key members of the industry leading discussions on challenging issues facing orchestral music today (as opposed to just ignoring them). As Jim Collins says in his bestseller Good to Great, any institution striving for lasting greatness MUST have the courage to “confront the brutal facts.” Of course, I seriously doubt that anyone will walk away from the weekend with answers to any or all of these questions but at least it is a start.
In addition to including numerous sessions on every facet of the business, Conference is also a major time of networking and, as we all know, a major tool of networking is the business card. Fortunately, the League provided us with two overflowing boxes of totally sweet folding cards that list our contact info as well as the locations and dates of our assignments. Business card frenzy, at times, is so overwhelming that I feel like I am back in middle school trading Magic or baseball cards again (“hey man, I’ll trade you my sandwich for that Henry Fogel rookie card”).
One of the coolest things about networking is meeting the huge family of Fellowship alumni. Including the graduating class of ’04, there are 151 grads of the program and so far, I have probably met somewhere around 50. Speaking of numbers, this brings me to the topic of this year’s “three and only three” Fellows subject.
The Fellowship program was started be the League way back in 1981. Looking back through the records, there have historically been anywhere between 4-8 Fellows each year. In recent years, as you can see from their bio postings, the numbers have tended to drift toward 5 Fellows per year. This year, however, there are only three of us. Observing the trend, it would be easy to conclude that perhaps the League is whittling the numbers down in an attempt to downsize expenses or do away with the program altogether. Well…this easy conclusion would be very wrong. In fact, during finals weekend in NY early March, we were told that once again, five would be chosen just the same as recent history had dictated. We were also told that the selected Fellows would be notified within two days and announced by the end of the week. True to form, by the time I got back to Indiana on Monday morning, I had already received word of my selection. The collective announcement of all the Fellows, however, was not received for quite some time (well over two weeks). In the end, it turns out that for personal and professional reasons, two potential Fellows and one alternate declined the offer, the League decided not to follow up on more alternates, and we are left with a trio for the class of ‘05.
So there you have it. Hope this blog answered some questions. Check back soon for my reflections from Conference.
In addition to including numerous sessions on every facet of the business, Conference is also a major time of networking and, as we all know, a major tool of networking is the business card. Fortunately, the League provided us with two overflowing boxes of totally sweet folding cards that list our contact info as well as the locations and dates of our assignments. Business card frenzy, at times, is so overwhelming that I feel like I am back in middle school trading Magic or baseball cards again (“hey man, I’ll trade you my sandwich for that Henry Fogel rookie card”).
One of the coolest things about networking is meeting the huge family of Fellowship alumni. Including the graduating class of ’04, there are 151 grads of the program and so far, I have probably met somewhere around 50. Speaking of numbers, this brings me to the topic of this year’s “three and only three” Fellows subject.
The Fellowship program was started be the League way back in 1981. Looking back through the records, there have historically been anywhere between 4-8 Fellows each year. In recent years, as you can see from their bio postings, the numbers have tended to drift toward 5 Fellows per year. This year, however, there are only three of us. Observing the trend, it would be easy to conclude that perhaps the League is whittling the numbers down in an attempt to downsize expenses or do away with the program altogether. Well…this easy conclusion would be very wrong. In fact, during finals weekend in NY early March, we were told that once again, five would be chosen just the same as recent history had dictated. We were also told that the selected Fellows would be notified within two days and announced by the end of the week. True to form, by the time I got back to Indiana on Monday morning, I had already received word of my selection. The collective announcement of all the Fellows, however, was not received for quite some time (well over two weeks). In the end, it turns out that for personal and professional reasons, two potential Fellows and one alternate declined the offer, the League decided not to follow up on more alternates, and we are left with a trio for the class of ‘05.
So there you have it. Hope this blog answered some questions. Check back soon for my reflections from Conference.
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