Wow! What a conference!!  Portland's Mid-Winter Conference was jam packed with amazing content, speakers and attendees.  This was my first time meeting a lot of the Oregonian FPA members.  You guys are a great group and I'm honored to take part. We learned about Modern Money Theory from Pavlina Tcherneva.  I hadn't met her before but Stephanie Kelton is a super star and a great influence.  She's begun working with Washington and had to bow out of speaking for contractual reasons.  I can't think of a better place for her to influence and loved Pavlina's speech.  We need these powerful women and their way of thinking in the administration.  Their way of thinking about the debt ceiling could provide congress with some much needed insight. Brad Klontz rocked it out of the park as well.  Brad is a fellow multi-generational FPA member and I love his work.  He's a great inspiration to me and a bridge between the CFP® Practitioners and the academics.  My background is in psychology and monetary theory, so his work is right up my alley.  If you haven't seen the wall street journal post for him, you can find it here. We also learned about incorporating the nature of the asset that we each are as humans into a portfolio, which brought in the nature of how solutions change as you incorporate a deeper depth to your data analysis and an update on innovations in our understandings of risk and loss tolerance.  There was an update on the economy of the North West, which was all new for me and great information to hear. All in all it was an incredible conference.  This is a great community and I'm glad to join it. So eager in fact that I've taken a step which has me both excited and apprehensive.  I've volunteered to be the chair for the Mid-Winter Conference Committee and plan next year's conference.  This is a big commitment but also the degree of involvement I want with the local FPA community.  I appreciate everyone's words of encouragement, tips from previous experiences and the support of the whole group.  This is going to be a great year!