Community Bankers of Iowa Monthly Banker Update February 2014 | Page 4

From the Top

Written By: Bill Loving, Chairman of ICBA

Teaching Ourselves
Consider this number: 38,000.
That’s the number of community bankers
throughout the country who last year took
advantage of ICBA’s educational conferences
seminars, workshops, online courses and
networking events. By any account, that’s an
impressive number of people.
Today, change in our industry is coming from
all directions, and we all have a string of
questions. We’re increasingly pressed not only
to do more but to know more. Nobody has all
the answers, and often one answer leads us to
more questions. But that’s a blessing as well
as a challenge.
We live in increasingly interesting times, where
lifelong learning is a necessity for everyone—
our employees and directors, our business
partners, our customers and ourselves.

“Whenever community bankers get
together, we always learn as much
from each other as we do from any
structured educational program.”

Fortunately, that’s why we also have each
other. Many answers actually lie within our
fellow community bankers who are willing and
ready to share them. That’s one important
reason why there’s an ICBA, and that
reason has never been more important. One
intangible but primary benefit of ICBA’s annual
conventions, trade shows and conferences—

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CBI Banker Update | FEBRUARY 2014

and of its many classroom seminars and
certification courses during the year too—is
that we all get to gather and learn from each
other.
Just think about ICBA Community Banking
Live 2014 taking place in Hawaii next month:
Where else can you meet thousands of
community bankers and industry experts
in one place to exchange ideas and find
solutions to practical real-world problems?
The smartest and most informed consultants,
regulators, vendors and service providers
always attend. Not to mention, the event
also features ICBA’s premier trade show,
Expo, where most all of our industry’s service
company representatives are not just willing
but eager to teach you and me about the
industry’s latest products and services.
Amazing!
But invariably, whenever community bankers
get together, we always learn as much from
each other as we do from any structured
educational program. Often the best part of
these educational gatherings is that we get
a chance to learn from community bankers
we’ve never met before, not just those we’ve
known for years. That’s also often how we
discover what we didn’t know we needed to
know.
Industry publications, audio conferences
and online courses are staple resources in
keeping ourselves and our staff informed. But
for any community bank executive, director
or senior manager, overlooking the learning
that networking with other community bankers
provides is a missed opportunity—a huge one.
A lot of community bankers are attending at
these events. Come join us. I can’t wait to
meet you and your colleagues next month in
Hawaii, or maybe on the road at another ICBA
conference or seminar soon.