Conference justification: some tips: still having a hard time getting authorization to spend your company's money on attending Credit Congress? Time's running out! Here are a few suggestions that might help towards making the case.(front page)

You are an asset to your company. Art assets require maintenance and enhancements. If instead of being a person, you were a piece of machinery, part of the corporate budget would go towards maintaining and upgrading you. Your company should be investing the same percentage of budget towards maintaining and upgrading your skirts, as they do for the rest of the corporate assets.

Recruiting. One of the reasons to send people to conferences is to recruit for open positions. If your team has had trouble fitting Credit Department or related jobs--or knows that new openings are coming up for your group--you can offer to do recruiting work while you're there.

Professional development. If you have career discussions with your manager, tie your career goals and future development to specific kinds of training opportunities that you need, or knowledge you need to obtain, which is available at Credit Congress.

Trip report. Arguably one form of teaching others, the trip report is a write-up of the sessions you attended, written for other people in your department. The best trip reports trigger people to come ask you questions. There is rarely much value in 10-page trip report documents; no one reads them. Instead, a 2 or 3 page summary, with URLs and pointers for specific questions get much more mileage. Another ...