Innovation & Experimentation 

If you’re a Disney fan, you’ve no doubt been following the recent soft opening of the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland.  Perhaps you’ve been fortunate enough to visit this 14-acre all-new land already, or maybe you have plans to do so in the near future?  From what I’ve been reading, the folks at Disney continue to tinker with the crowd management plan in order to minimize the wait times and maximize the guest experience for visitors.

As we prepare for the CSMFO 2020 Annual Conference at the Disneyland Hotel, we too are fine tuning, so to speak, and our annual conference host and program committees are working diligently to provide an outstanding conference experience for our 2020 conference attendees.

A call for presentations for the upcoming conference was issued last month, and the deadline for submission of proposals for conference breakout sessions was June 4.   It’s my understanding that the response to our request for session proposals was outstanding, and our program committee will be quite busy over the coming months, diligently evaluating these submissions.  I’m sure they’ll have a tough time finalizing the breakout session topics from all of the worthy proposals submitted.  The program committee is planning for 40 to 45 concurrent breakout sessions in five or six educational tracks, with a goal to finalize the selection of proposals before November 1.  Having submitted multiple conference session proposals to CSMFO over the years myself, I can appreciate the thoughtful time and effort that goes into such a submission, so I’d like to extend my gratitude to all who have done so for next year’s CSMFO conference.

Adventures Through California

In case you’ve missed my previous communications regarding our traditional Thursday evening marque social event at the conference, Disney has informed us that a Thursday night event in one of the California parks will not be possible in 2020.  However, I’m also pleased to announce that Disney has now confirmed approval of a Wednesday night late evening event for our group at Disney California Adventure.  Time and specific details still yet to be finalized, but conference attendees should plan on joining us for a private party at DCA on the evening of conference Wednesday.  In the meantime, we’re getting close to finalizing our keynote conference speakers and should have additional information to share on this topic and on other conference details in the near future.

CSMFO at GFOA

In the meantime, I’d like to give a special shout-out to Melissa Dixon and David Garrison from Smith Moore & Associates, CSMFO’s association management company, for organizing and staffing the CSMFO booth at the GFOA Conference in Los Angeles last month.  Our CSMFO booth at GFOA last month was a great way to promote our 2020 conference, so a special thank you to Melissa and David for making this happen.

To quote Walt Disney,

“Disneyland will never be complete.  It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

A pretty timely statement, given the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.   By now your calendar should already be marked for CSMFO’s 60^th Annual Conference – Yesterday, Tomorrow and Finance – taking place January 28-31, 2020 at the Disneyland Hotel.  Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Steve Heide is the Finance Director, Chino Valley Fire District, Chino Hills, California.

Over 30 years of professional finance experience, having worked in government and private industry in a variety of finance positions with progressive levels of responsibility. Previous positions in public accounting, healthcare and non-profit/government.