@JerryNorman CS3 is a charter member of SLA. It was originally founded to continue the professional development work started in the Sage Leadership Academy program. Those of us who participated in the first couple Academy classes who really bought into the continuous improvement process didn't want the progress to end. We wanted to find a way to continue to stoke the fires of change within our organizations.
SLA was the answer offered by Sage. It was patterned in many ways after ITA. This is because the entire Sage practice development program was founded by Taylor McDonald and the training material used was developed by Sam Allred. Both were past member of the Board at ITA and helped start the organization.
Overall, the Alumni program was greatly beneficial to my partner, Gary and I. We never missed a meeting in the first 4 years. After joining ITA, I realized that I needed to concentrate my efforts and focus on one organization. Like Wayne, I just didn't have enough bandwidth to do both. Gary and I took the divide and conquer approach. Gary stuck with SLA and I did ITA. We both did a little cross over from time to time, with Gary doing more ITA than I did SLA.
Net, net, SLA is a worthwhile program. Ed Kless and Rob Johnson were the stars of the Sage Academy programs. They have fantastic industry skills and are very good at sharing them with others. However, for me, I feel that there are a much larger number of people with skills equal to these Ed and Rob at ITA. Since ITA was always been publisher agnostic, I feel I get a much more diversified view.