I’ve just returned from Scottsdale and the WorldatWork Group Partnership Network leadership meeting. Here’s a picture from the lobby of the Westin in Scottsdale. It is a beautiful resort as you can see.

What is WorldatWork? What is the Group Partnership Network? WorldatWork is a global compensation, benefits, and work life professional association. WorldatWork partners with local organizations to provide training and other professional resources. You can find out more at www.worldatwork.org and click on About Us and Local Groups.

One of the announcements during the conference concerned the name GPN. I think WorldatWork is going to come up with a more self-explanatory name, which is a good thing.

This was my last GPN leadership meeting for a while (at least I think… read on). I’ve been going for six years, with three years as a Board member. I coordinated the local groups in the Northwest and for a few years California and Hawaii. I never did figure out how to get a trip to Hawaii out of the deal though. NextComp even sponsored the meeting for a couple of years. Not this year though. Too many meetings to attend and I wanted to be there for the networking. The whole reason for the meeting is to create networks or communities as they’ve become known over the last year. Communities of practice. Which is why I may be going back next year. Susan Marty, the Manager of Group Partnership suggested I come back as the “volunteer technology consultant” to help implement new ways to build community among the over 80 GPNs in the US and Canada. Cool! I like the idea. We would be working on things like blogging, podcasts, MySpace type community building and who knows what else we can come up with over this next year.

I’ll write more about the GPNs and some of the very interesting topics covered during the conference in a later post.