The ICF Annual Conference opened in Asheville on Tuesday, and if you weren't able to make it this year, here's the shorthand: the hallways were fuller than they've been since before the pandemic, and it showed in how people talked to each other. Badge lines ran long at nine in the morning, which we haven't seen since 2019, and the general session room needed extra chairs pulled in from the hallway before the opening remarks even started.
That matters beyond the logistics. Trade associations across a lot of industries spent the last two years figuring out whether virtual programming could really substitute for a room full of people who make things with their hands. Our own answer, based on member surveys after 2020 and 2021, was "partly" — the webinars and virtual credentialing kept people connected and, for some smaller creameries, kept them in the association at all. But a hallway conversation between a cheesemaker three years into the trade and one thirty years in still does something a chat window can't. This year's turnout suggests our members feel the same way.
What stood out on day one
The Awards & Competition Committee's early tasting sessions ran long — in a good way. Entries this year skewed toward washed-rind and mixed-milk styles, and more than one judge mentioned that the technical quality across smaller, newer entrants had jumped noticeably compared to pre-pandemic years. That tracks with what we've been hearing all spring: a wave of smaller, younger creameries have used the last two years to refine a single flagship cheese rather than chase a wide catalog, and it's paying off on the judging table.
The Education Committee's afternoon sessions on affinage and cave management were standing-room only, which won't surprise anyone who's been trying to get a seat in that track for the last three conferences running. If you missed it, the good news is the underlying material overlaps heavily with our Affinage Fundamentals coursework, so you haven't lost the chance to catch up.
We also want to flag something less visible from the outside: the return of in-person attendance has been uneven across our membership. Members running larger operations with dedicated travel budgets came back first and in full force. Smaller, owner-operated creameries — the ones for whom a conference trip means closing the shop for four days — have been slower to return, even with virtual options still available for some sessions. If that's your situation, we want to hear about it directly, because the Events Committee is actively deciding what next year's format should look like and your attendance pattern is exactly the data point that shapes that decision.
Wednesday and Thursday bring the Standards Committee's open forum and the closing competition results, and we'll have a fuller wrap-up for you next week once the ribbons are handed out. For now: if you're here in Asheville, find us at the registration table and tell us what session you didn't want to end. If you're not, the recorded sessions will be posted to the member portal within a couple of weeks, and early registration for next year's conference typically opens not long after that — worth watching for if this week has you already thinking about next July.
It's been a genuinely good couple of days so far. After two years of screens, that's not something we take for granted.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.