Registration opens this week for the ICF Annual Conference, and for the second year running we're building it to work on a laptop at your kitchen table as well as it would in a hotel ballroom. We know that's not everyone's first choice. It's the one we can promise will actually happen.
We heard the feedback from last year's virtual conference loud and clear: the sessions were good, the hallway conversation was not. So this year's format tries to fix that second part without pretending we can fully replace it. Breakout rooms are capped at fifteen people and organized by what you make, not what track you clicked. A washed-rind producer from a coastal town and one from three states inland will end up in the same room, because that conversation has always been more useful than a panel.
What's actually different this year
The program itself keeps the shape members told us worked: a cheesemaking track, a business-and-retail track, and a policy track that runs the advocacy sessions members have been asking for since the shipment rule hearings started. New this year is a set of short "ask the judge" sessions, recorded and available on demand for two weeks afterward, where members can bring a wheel's worth of questions to someone who has sat on a competition panel.
We're also running the trade-show floor as a set of scheduled video tables rather than a single sprawling virtual hall. A handful of regional producers, distributors, and suppliers will each host a 30-minute window; you show up, you talk, you move on. It's a smaller version of a trade show, but it's one people actually finish.
Registration is open now through the events page, and early registration pricing runs for two weeks. If you registered for last year's virtual conference, your account already has the discount code applied — check the confirmation email before you assume it isn't there.
If you're on the fence
A few members have told us they're holding out for something fully in person. We understand that, and we'd rather you wait for a format that works for your business than register for one that doesn't. What we can tell you is that the sessions recorded from this format last year are still the most-watched item in the resource library, months later. Whatever changes about how we gather, the content doesn't stop being useful once the room empties out.
If your schedule is the obstacle rather than the format, most sessions will be available on demand for 30 days after the live date, so a conflicting shift or a kid's recital doesn't mean missing the whole thing. Questions about the program go to the Events Committee; questions about your registration go to the membership desk.
We've watched other trade groups in food and beverage run the same calculation this spring, and most of the ones we've talked to landed where we did: keep the virtual option even as some travel resumes, because it reaches members a hotel conference room never could. A dairy operation running a skeleton crew through calving season, or a retailer who can't leave the counter uncovered for three days, gets the same program either way. That's not a consolation prize for people who can't travel. For a lot of our membership, it's the format that actually fits their year.
It also changes who shows up. Last year's virtual conference pulled in members who had never registered for an in-person event in a decade of membership — mostly smaller operations where a multi-day trip was never realistic once you added lodging and lost production days to the ticket price. We don't have a clean way to measure how much of that turnout sticks once in-person options fully return, but we'd rather build a program that keeps reaching them than assume they'll show up once travel gets easier.
None of this means the in-person version is gone for good. It means that for at least one more year, the conference meets members where their calendars and their coolers actually are, and we'd rather get that balance right than rush back to a format that only worked for part of the room.
A last practical note: if you're new to the platform we're using this year, a short walkthrough video is posted on the registration page. Watch it before the first session — last year's biggest complaint wasn't the content, it was members losing their first ten minutes to login trouble they could have solved in advance.
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.