Ten thousand lakes... ten thousand reasons... to join NRPA in Minneapolis.

Of the ten thousand reasons to visit it the land of ten thousand lakes this October, the NRPA National Congress for Recreation and Parks is the best. Over 4,000 recreation, park and leisure professionals, and citizen advocates will gather in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a four-day extravaganza.

Minneapolis and its surrounding metropolitan area hit the world's travel map like a meteor in 1986, when international travel authority Arthur Frommer owned it one of the world's top 10 vacation spots. Since then, Minneapolis has been considered one of America's hottest up and coming cities. A unique combination of historic preservation and progressive thinking, metropolitan culture and natural beauty, Minneapolis has much to offer its visitors.

And NRPA has more Congress bang for the buck to offer our delegates. Education and training will be the main focus of the Congress with more than 300 concurrent education sessions, more than a dozen on-site institutes and more than 200 NRPA leadership and governance meetings. And this training conference offers the opportunity to earn over 200 continuing education units (CEUs) for certification. In all, delegates can take advantage of six hours daily (average) of education sessions designed for every level of experience and topics related to the recreation and leisure field.

Beyond classroom and on-site instruction, the NRPA Congress provides attendees with a forum to exchange ideas, make new contacts, and learn about the latest political issues on the national scene. The NRPA Exposition will be filled with more than 420 park and recreation suppliers and services. Representatives with be on band to talk about their services and give delegates hands-on experience with their supplies.

NRPA invites all of our Congress delegates and their families to enjoy their Twin Cities experience to its fullest. We worked closely with our friends in the local area to design a variety of pre- and post-Congress tours, spouse and guest tours, and children and youth activities to help our guests get a taste of the local flavor.

Local Flavor

Some of our tours will take you to places like Red Wing, famous for its shoes and pottery; the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge, habitat to over 300 wildlife species; or a world class resort, where you can enjoy championship fishing, golf and "Las Vegas Style" gambling. Spouses and guests can catch a glimpse of the past in historic Stillwater, Minnesota's oldest city; walk the scenic "Mississippi Mile," Minneapolis' historic riverfront; or recapture the thrill of a cruise on a sternwheeler. Balancing out all of the history is the Mall of America, featuring four major anchor stores, hundreds of specialty shops, Knott's Camp Snoopy Amusement Park, LEGO Imagination Center, and much more.

Back by popular demand this year are the NRPA Pre-Congress Institutes, an opportunity for thorough, intensive study with top professionals in specialized topic areas. Five Pre-Congress Institutes have been planned for this year on a variety of topics.

Leading with Style: An Institute for Women Managers: Tuesday, October 11

"Leading With Style: An Institute for Women Managers" will be a uniquely experiential workshop designed to address the needs of female managers in parks, recreation, and leisure services. A series of activities will allow participants to learn about themselves and a variety of strategies and techniques for conflict resolution, communication, risk taking, understanding diversity, address management styles.

National Playground Safety Institute: Tuesday, October 11-Wednesday, October 12

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, almost 200,000 children were treated for playground accidents in 1988. Of these, 70%, or 140,000, occurred at public parks or schoolyards. With these statistics on the rise, it is more important than ever for park and recreation agencies to reduce the risks of injury on playgrounds. NRPA's fourth National Playground Safety Institute will provide the most comprehensive program on playground safety ever offered. Learn how you and your agency can develop training programs for inspection, hazard identification, audits, retrofit techniques, and maintenance that will make your playgrounds safer for all children who play there.

NRPA Golf Institute. Tuesday, October 11-Saturday, October 15

Kick off the four-day Golf Institute by playing in the NRPA Golf Tournament at Edinburgh, USA, chosen by Golf Digest as one of the top 50 public golf courses in America. After avoiding 70 bunkers and 12 acres of water on the course, day two's workshop, "Driving for the Green", will take you through the Minneapolis metropolitan area to visit a variety of courses and discuss promotion techniques, environmental issues, ADA impacts, and major tour events. The Institute concludes with two days of classroom sessions. Days three and four will cover successful golf course operation, development and financing; golf and the environment; managing municipal golf courses; the viability of municipal golf financing; and managing golf courses for water resource protection.

Cultural Diversity. Putting People First... On the Road to a Multicultural Organization: Tuesday, October 11

Americans increasingly are becoming aware of our own cultural diversity and the importance of recognizing different backgrounds in our people and culture. This new sensitivity has implications for all of us, including administrators and departmental managers. The NRPA Cultural Diversity Institute will teach park and recreation professionals how to put people first and become a multicultural organization. Learn the challenges and benefits of a diversified work place and the critical links between customers and employees who better represent the ethnic diversity of their communities.

Survival Strategies for Parks, Recreation, and Human Services. Tuesday, October 11

A complex convergence of social, political, and economic forces are threatening the fabric of our cities. The survival of a park and recreation agency under these conditions depends on a number of factors. Are the services segmented? Does the agency have political support? Are the proper resources available? Is the community stable? This survival strategies institute especially is designed for employees in an urban setting. Participants will be introduced to solutions based on moral leadership, equity, diversity, strategic thinking, healthy cities concepts, and community mobilization.

Focusing on Local Knowledge

To give delegates an unequaled education opportunity NRPA is utilizing Minnesota experts by developing five Special Focus Seminars scheduled for Wednesday, October 12.

Managementoring--An Enrichment Program for the Experienced Manager

Managementoring is an enrichment program designed to help you maintain quality performance at all levels and successfully achieve the organization's goals in a dynamic environment. The program examines a variety of areas relating to today's employees and individual management styles. Topics range from assessing management effectiveness to leadership skills, the art of delegation, the discomfort of discipline, and special management skills needed during times of change.

The seminar is designed to provide increased understanding and the creative skills necessary to help make the management process more successful and rewarding for everyone.

Dealing with the Unethical Behavior of Others

The competing pressures of cost reductions, improving customer service, responding to special interest groups, and political intrusion often produce mixed messages regarding what really is important in an organization. At the same time, almost everyone wants to do their best and also do the right thing. Given this environment, this seminar has been designed to help you improve the way in which you can identify, understand, and resolve ethical issues when they arise in the course of your daily activity.

You will have the hands-on opportunity to work in small groups around actual case problems and will practice new ethical and decision-making tools as you sort through difficult management and program dilemmas.

Quality Customer Service

Because it's more expensive to find new customers than to maintain the ones you already have, the key to building any business is in long-term customer relationships. This philosophy especially is true in the parks and recreation industry, which has so many customers to serve with such limited resources.

What your customers are saying about you will make or break your agency during these lean times. Customer service can be your answer to maintaining and/or acquiring additional resources.

Grant Writing in Recreation, Park and Leisure Services

Each year millions of dollars in grant money goes unclaimed. This session is designed specially to teach you to identify, develop, and procure financial assistance for recreation and park programs. Go through the many steps involved in obtaining funds, from introduction to grant writing and fundraising to types of proposals for sources of information, preparing and submitting the proposal, managing the project, and agency review and evaluation. Explore skills and strategies required to prepare a competitive proposal and seek grant support from public agencies and private foundations.

Leadership and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Identifying Your Personal Growing Edges

This seminar will employ theories of personality type as assessed by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) while actively engaging participants in an experiential process. Learn more about where you anchor yourself as a leader and where and how you might look to expand your leadership capabilities.

The MBTI provides individuals and organizations with a way to understand their most important resource--people. It is a non-judgmental tool that can help you examine work habits, communication styles, energy use, differences in perception and judgments, and potential areas of conflict.

Close-up and On-Site

In addition to the specialized training offered by our classroom education sessions, NRPA offers 18 on-site institutes in a close-up, case-study format. Understand the challenges and successes of some local parks and recreation agencies and attractions and learn how you can translate this knowledge for your own agency.

Some of this year's institutes will go to a number of outdoor recreation areas. Discover Urban P.L.A.C.E. and Project City Camp, some of the area's best environmental programs; Minneapolis' famed Grand Round, a series of paths, parkways, and parks passing along and around lakes, rivers and streams; the expansive regional parks and open space systems of the seven-county area; and classic historical parks. Learn the ins and outs of golf course management; natural resource acquisition and management; running a gold-medal park system; and the benefits of indoor multi-use parks. See examples of flourishing public-private partnerships in the arts, riverfront restoration, and developing amateur sport facility attractions.

Got on Track

Of course, NRPA will offer the professional training and education sessions that have made the Congress for Recreation and Parks a valuable tool for recreation professionals and advocates for almost 30 years. Our Congress Program Committee has worked during the past year to develop a tracking system that will allow delegates to attend several sessions in the same subject area. CEU tracking requires a minimum of .3 CEUs in one topic area but allows the delegate to choose from several .1 CEU sessions within that track. The .3 CEU sessions in the traditional three-hour format still are available as well. This way delegates can choose between three shorter, related sessions and one longer, intensive session.

A long-time goal of the Program Committee, CEU tracking was devised after NRPA performed a thorough job analysis and identified four major professional areas of importance. Each was deemed a vital area in which parks and recreation professionals should be knowledgeable. With help from expert representatives, each area was developed into a CEU track with an individualized plan of study. Delegates easily can identify the tracks using a coding system: Park and Recreation Services Management (MGMT), Recreation Program Delivery (RPD), Natural Resources and Facilities Management (NRFM), and Therapeutic Recreation (TR).

Words of Wisdom

Beyond the hours of education sessions, delegates will have the opportunity to hear the thoughts of two of America's best known authorities at the All Congress General Sessions.

Vice President Al Gore has been invited to speak at the First All Congress General Session on Wednesday, October 12. An authority on the environment, stewardship, and environmental policy, the Vice President would speak on parks and recreation's role in conservation and environmental protection.

Former Representative and Senator from Tennessee, Vice President Gore has an environmental record that is unparalleled. He is the author of the national best-seller, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, which outlines an international plan of action to confront the global environmental crisis. While in Congress, he introduced and advocated a broad range of environmental proposals, often issues never before examined there, such as global warming.

Dr. Bob Arnot, Health Correspondent for the CBS Evening News, will discuss "Parks and Recreation: Helping America to be Its Personal Best" at the Second All Congress General Session on Saturday, October 15.

Dr. Arnot is one of the most recognized names in the medical and health profession. He served as a medical reporter for CBS from 1982 to 1984 and as CBS News Medical Correspondent from 1985 to 1993. He has been reporting on a wide spectrum of health and medical issues for CBS This Morning since the program's debut in 1987.

Dr. Arnot will discuss the important role recreation and parks plays in providing for a healthy America and recognize the profession for its contribution. Most importantly, he will advise delegates on how the profession can position itself to be more visible in the health, fitness, and wellness arenas.

Be Sociable

No NRPA Congress would be complete without sensational social events at which delegates can meet and mingle with other professionals and citizen advocates. join your friends and fellow recreators at the Mall of America following the First All-congress General Session on Wednesday, October 12. The Mall is America's number-one tourist attraction with four major anchor stores and hundreds of specialty shops. The Minnesota Recreation and Park Association and the Minnesota Recreation and Park Foundation have arranged an exclusive VIP party at Knott's Camp Snoopy, the largest indoor theme entertainment park in America. Enjoy unlimited rides, live music and entertainment, and a variety of hors d'oeuvres.

Enjoy Minneapolis' international sights, sounds, and flavors on Friday, October 14. The APRS branch will sponsor a gala event held at Minneapolis' Market Square International. This beautifully renovated building, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is now the Upper Midwest's premier interior design center. Enjoy dueling pianos, gameroom, live music, and karaoke in the spectacular Atrium. Come get a taste of Minneapolis, international-style.

After the pressures of the week-long Congress, relax and enjoy a sentimental journey up and down the Mississippi ... via escalators and elevators ... at the infamous Dayton's department store on the Mall. The NRPA All Congress Social, held on Saturday, October 15, will be the perfect cap to the Congress events. Begin the journey in New Orleans with cajun-style shrimp and disembark in Minneapolis with pork and wild rice. Along the way shop for family and friends with no clothing tax. See cooking demonstrations of riverboat fare, live jazz, big band sounds, country line dancing, and more.

With all the educational sessions, institutes, activities, and local flavor, there really are ten thousand reasons to make this the best NRPA Congress ever!