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Greetings! It has been a while since I have last blogged, having focused much of the summer months on conferences. Most recently, last Friday, I returned from New Orleans, LA, where I attended the National Conference of State Legislatures Annual Summit, the official annual meeting for America’s state legislators and legislative staff. More than 6000 people participated — including legislators, business representatives, government officials, union members, foundation representatives and others interested in public policy — partaking in over 150 sessions on various topics ranging from the mortgage crisis, climate change, college costs, immigrants and healthcare.

This year, however, the Sloan Network did not sit on a panel or attend any of the diverse, targeted individual sessions. Instead, with a primary focus on outreach, the Sloan Network rented space in an Exhibitor Hall, hoping to meet and talk with state legislators and their staff about our high quality, evidence based, nonpartisan and free policy (and other) resources on work-family issues. Thus, like my fellow exhibitor counterparts, I arrived toting many organizational goodies – including numerous Sloan Network brochures, our most recent Policy Brief Series and Effective Workplace Series, pens and even umbrellas (upon which our web address was imprinted), ready to engage and inform at least some of the nation’s state legislators about our content rich resources.

I learned a lot from this experience on many levels – but most of all, I learned that while policy about “working families” is a critical, important and central issue for government officials (after all, aren’t most constituents part of a working family in some way or other?), there are many other organizations that passionately believe the same thing about their cause or mission. While logically I knew this to be true prior to attending the NCSL conference, it was hard not to be struck by the sheer number of competing interests legislators and their constituents contend with, when you stand just about anywhere in the Exhibit Hall. In my immediate exhibiting neighborhood, alone, you could get a feel for the range of interest groups, where I was positioned near the National Popular Vote, PETA/Animal Legislation, the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators, Spot Runner, the National Education Association, the Toy Industry Association and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.

Having had a chance to see the policy forest from the Sloan Network tree was invaluable. Not only do I return home with a new appreciation for matters outside my work area (e.g., the safety concerns concerning the truck transporting radioactive material on the highway, and the many ways in which animals are treated unethically, including the chaining of dogs), but also I recognize that we must be selective in how we channel resources to obtain maximum return on investment, targeting outreach in fora that will permit our message and resources to stand out within the vast and heavily populated state policy landscape.

• Policy , Uncategorized