Early registration for the ICF Annual Conference is open, and this year's event is fully in-person again — the first time we've said that without a footnote since before the pandemic. That's worth pausing on. For two years running, the conference lived on a screen or got scaled down to whoever could travel, and this July it's back to a full program: competition judging, committee open sessions, and the hallway conversations that a video call never quite replicates.
What to plan around
If you're deciding whether to book now or wait, here's what we'd tell you. Early registration pricing holds for a limited window, and hotel blocks near the venue tend to fill before the conference itself sells out, especially now that in-person attendance is rebounding across the industry rather than trickling back. If your creamery or shop sends more than one person, coordinate travel early — we've already heard from a few members whose usual roommate-splitting arrangement from past years needs rebooking from scratch.
It's also worth thinking about cost timing generally this year. Hotel rates nationally have been climbing faster than they have in years, and industry forecasters have been warning venues and travelers alike to expect the trend to continue through the back half of the year. That doesn't make conference travel optional, but it's a reasonable year to book a room early rather than watch the rate move against you between now and July.
If your last conference was a screen and a chat window, a few things are worth resetting your expectations around. Session capacity in the room is finite in a way a webinar link never is, so popular sessions — the Standards Committee's labeling update has filled early in past years — are worth arriving for rather than planning to wander into. Bring a notebook you're actually willing to use; the hallway conversations that happen between sessions are, for a lot of long-time members, the real value of the week, and they don't get recorded anywhere.
What's on the program
The Awards & Competition Committee's judged categories return in full this year, alongside the usual open sessions from Standards, Food Safety, and Education. If you've got a wheel you've been proud of since last fall, entry details for the competition go out separately, but the entry window opens well before the conference itself, so don't wait for the program guide to start thinking about it.
For members who've never been able to justify the travel, this is also the one week of the year our courses and certificate tracks show up in person rather than online — if you've been meaning to get hands-on feedback on a maturation plan or a sensory read, an in-person session with an instructor covers ground a recorded module can't.
Registration details and the current program outline are on the events page. If you have questions about travel logistics or want to coordinate group registration for your creamery or shop, the Events Committee is the right place to start — and if this is your first in-person conference with us, tell them that too, so someone can point you toward the sessions that tend to matter most for a first-timer.
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.