First off I would like to thank the Association for giving me the opportunity to attend the 2008 IAAO conference in Reno, NV.

Russ, his wife Lee, my husband J.B. and I met up in Las Vegas and traveled by car to Reno. It was about a six hour drive, but it went quickly with the four of us visiting the entire trip.

 Once in Reno, the conference was everything I had heard – “Overwhelming” and very interesting!  There were around 1200 attendees, which is just a “shade” larger than anything I have ever attended. The people working the conference were terrific and the welcome they had for the new attendees was awesome! We turned our chairs around to face the row behind us and had one minute to introduce ourselves and find out about our counterparts. We did this until we had talked with at least ten people. I don’t remember all their names, but Phyllis and Eugene from Washington, DC were two that I met and visited with a number of times throughout the conference.

 The sessions I attended were informative, but visiting with assessors from the other states was the highlight of the trip. We also had a chance to visit with Ken, Dept. of Revnue -Wyoming, who has attended numerous IAAO conferences, so his stories of past conferences kept us entertained. He also related some of the problems they are dealing with in Wyoming. I know we have expressed our concerns about always having our schools and conferences in three or four towns across the state due to our size and money restrictions, but in Wyoming they are even more restricted due to the high price of motel rooms because of the energy boom. Ken is Harvey’s counterpart in Wyoming and gave us an open invitation to attend their IAAO schools or workshops if we need one for certification. He said they would be happy to play host!

 The hotel – The Grand Sierra, was very nice, (although I didn’t get bumped up to a suite like Russ & Lee!) Since we spent very little time in our room, it didn’t really matter.

 The vendors were also fantastic! We work hard to get seven or eight vendors at our conference, but there must have been at least forty or fifty vendors, all with handouts. (My suitcase weighed at least five pounds more coming home!) I saw some new technology that I am currently checking out and passed on some business cards to the City of Deadwood on pictometry.

All in All, it was a great conference! Next year should be a really big one, as it is their 75^th Anniversary conference. One of the live auction items will be an all expense paid trip to Alaska to stay with an assessor and his family, who will take you on different tours that the average tourist never gets to see. If you are interested, I suggest that you save up at least $5,000, as we were informed that is what the last trip they hosted went for.

Click on a thumbnail to enlarge the pictures of Russ & Darlene's IAAO Conference trip to Reno!