This year I have been fortunate to live a Summer of CASE™, with my Council for the Advancement and Support of Education experiences spanning three very different conference types with professionals at three different points in their careers. I started my travels at the Annual Conference on Marketing and Branding in Chicago, spent a week in Madison at the Summer Institute for Communications and Marketing (SICM), and closed out the summer at the CASE Summit for Leaders in Advancement in New York City.
With these three conferences I met, presented to and learned from colleagues at various stages of their higher education and communications and marketing careers. As you would expect, there was a thread of common content among the three, but each scaled the details in different ways and levels.
I was honored to be asked to serve on the faculty of SICM, present a keynote at the Marketing and Branding conference, and moderate a panel at Summit. All three included very different investments of time and levels of vulnerability. The one commonality is that they stretched me to present new content or old content in new ways. To be honest, it was refreshing to think through what I wanted attendees to take away from these new sessions and how I hoped to inspire others to be interested in and learn more about the topics for which I am passionate.
And I allowed—or rather prioritized—having these same learning experiences and explorations at all three conferences, too.
For years I’ve had limited ability to attend sessions at CASE conferences beyond my own, but this year I made a concerted effort to attend as many as possible across the three events. I learned from my colleagues’ presentations, questions from audience members piqued my own curiosity on a variety of topics, and the experiences influenced how I do my work and partner with colleagues. I engaged with the content and my colleagues much like the Summer Institutes attendees, many of whom are newer to their careers or to our industry. I quickly realized this approach necessitates having energy and passion for our industry and it reminded me to reprioritize networking and community.
Of course, each of these takeaways are aligned with the goals for all CASE attendees and should be the goal for the presenters and faculty, too. Yet at the conferences for more senior professionals, I realized that many of my senior colleagues couldn’t fully engage with the content and opportunities, a reality I’ve often faced while at conferences. Everyone was busy attending Zoom meetings in hallways, or sending emails during the keynote presentations, or attempting to mitigate issues their offices were facing while afar. Most importantly, their energy and passion were waning because of the weight of their roles and responsibilities.
My hope for my colleagues and myself moving forward is that our calendars allow us the time and space to be curious, share our curiosity with others, and think. And with a month of summer left, I hope that if you haven’t had the time to take a true vacation, learn something new, or implement a new idea, that you prioritize unplugging, sitting in on a webinar, reading an article that stretches your brain, or scheduling a call with a colleague to brainstorm and plan. After all, many of our networks were formed earlier in our careers for a reason. And now is the right time to reconnect and reengage if only to renew your passion for our work.
And if you are curious about my adventures, I archived the highlights on LinkedIn:
- Chicago’s Annual Conference on Marketing and Branding
- Madison’s Summer Institute for Communications and Marketing
- New York’s Summit for Leaders in Advancement