ICCFA Cremation Coach Julie Burn was a speaker, and VP of Membership Nancy Lohman and Allied Industry Chairman Allen Dave manned the exhibit booth, at the Texas Funeral Directors Association Annual Convention last week in Austin.

Here are some shots from the exhibit hall:

Nancy Lohman and Allen Dave with Vickie King White of San Antonio College.

TFDA Exec Ann Singer (l) with Nancy Lohman and TFDA staff members.

A number of ICCFA representatives participated in the American Board of Funeral Service Education (ABFSE) meeting in Springfield, Illinois, this week. The meeting, which just ended a couple hours ago, was a great learning experience, providing invaluable information about how we can best develop our educational programs going forward. It was also a chance to meet a bunch of great people and reconnect with some we had not seen in a while.

I will try to get some more photos posted later in the week. These are just a couple taken by our VP of Membership, Nancy Lohman.

Allen Dave, Mark Krause, Nancy Lohman, Julie Burn, Joe Budzinski at Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield, IL

ICCFA Immediate Past President Mark Krause and NFDA Treasurer Pat Lynch at Lincoln's Tomb

Lots of news coming out from ICCFA these days. Official press releases will be forthcoming over the next week, but in my capacity as CBO - Chief Blogging Officer - I am uniquely positioned to keep our readers privy to the developments before they are even fully developed, which is about as plugged in as you can get. Actually, all of the following are pretty much 100 percent in place, so from my penthouse office on the 33rd floor of the ICCFA Towers complex in bustling Sterling, Virginia, here is the news from me straight to you:

Cremation Coaching Center now online! Literally thousands of published items related to cremation, from a period spanning from the mid-19th century to the present day, tools for administrators managing crematories and cremation providers (which includes just about everyone these days), and advice from our resident Cremation Coaches, Julie A. Burn and Poul Lemasters - there is nothing else on the Web, or anywhere else for that matter, quite like it. Visit regularly because there are lots and lots more educational and informational materials in the process of being posted. And be sure to tell everyone you know in the industry to make cremationcoach.com one of their regular surfing destinations.

Industry Events Calendar: We have for years been maintaining a list of all the association events around the world, but our new Web site software allows us to have the data reflected in calendar format and linked to the respective associations. If you are anywhere near as disorganized as I am when it comes to keeping track of upcoming appointments and such, this magical, rich, colorful repository of hundreds of events far into the future should leave you gazing slack-jawed in wonder. If you are already an organized type, you'll still probably think it's pretty cool. It is updated almost daily so if you want to keep tabs on what all the associations are doing throughout the year, this is the tool you can use to do it.

New ICCFA outreach effort: Allen Dave, Jr., ICCFA Secretary and Board Member, has just accepted the Chairmanship of the ICCFA Allied Industry Committee. Anyone who knows Allen knows he is one of the most impressive people you will ever meet in this business. As a newcomer he brought a fresh perspective to funeral service by employing approaches he learned in wedding planning. He takes his work and education about that work very seriously, so in his new role of building bridges to other groups within the industry, Allen will be the ideal person to spread the word of the value of ICCFA and its programs. We are very fortunate to have him involved.

More news on these and other initiatives will be coming soon.