S6E11: Summer Recap and Awards

In this podcast I discuss all the things I have done this summer - to include programs, trainings, events, lawsuits, grants, and other things that I think you will find of value!  I also share about some awards the podcast and I have won over the summer, COVID, super spreader events, and most importantly....sticky walls!

Things mentioned in the podcast:  ToP Facilitation Training, IMEX Frankfurt, ICHRIE Meetings and Events Special Interest Group, ICHRIE Annual Conference, USDA Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge, Sticky Walls

We would love to hear from you!  Please stay in touch with us through one of our many platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Website, and Email! 

Transcript

Hello, hello my friends this is the third time I'm starting this podcast because it's been 2 months, 3 months since I’ve recorded and apparently I forgot how to do it. Who knew that standing in front of a microphone could be so hard? I'm so used to talking to myself anyway. What have I been up to this summer? That is a great question, thanks for asking. I am so excited to fill you in on what has been going on in the world and why you haven't heard from me. Before I jump into my crazy summer I want to give a great shout-out to all of you for helping make this podcast what it is I was incredibly honored to read that Excel Events actually listed this podcast as one of the “must listen to podcasts” for the event industry. I thought maybe it's a gimmick or a scam maybe. There's only 5 or 10 event related podcasts to listen to and I listen to a bunch of them and some of my friends run some podcasts. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my name up there with industry giants industry household names and I didn't see some of the podcasts I listen to so I'm not sure exactly how I ended up on that list but I know that it's because of all of you and support from all over the world. Who knew that me standing in front of a microphone in my office in Nebraska, United States (can you point out on a map) in Nebraska would reach all 6 continents in so many countries and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cities we’re over 500 cities over 70 countries on 6 continents. Crazy, thank you all so much for your support of the podcast. 

So in preparation for this podcast I pulled out my outlook calendar and went week by week. Why have you not heard from me? What has been going on? It has been crazy, so since the end of the semester of course people think that we only work during the academic year from August till May but I am on a 12 month appointment. That means I work every single day of the entire year except maybe an occasional weekend here or there. In May, I was part of a small group who was accepted into doing facilitator training. I've been trained in several different facilitation methods and this one was pretty cool. They used a sticky wall and if you have never heard of a sticky wall or seen a stick you all I highly encourage you to look it up. It's a piece of fabric, a speciall type of fabric that you hang up on the wall with painters tape or 3M strips and then it's covered in the adjustable spray adhesive. And so you have it up on the wall and then you can put regular pieces of paper up and you can take them down and put it back up and I am so in love I am doing pretty much all of my facilitation workshops in a type of similar format to that. I bought a sticky wall and I'm custom creating a sticky wall. I am so in love with that sticky wall. So I highly recommend you look it up, super cool, it totally elevates the game. Second, of course I was honored to be co chair of the IMEX Europe and Asia IMEX Frankfurt faculty engagement program. And so we ran that program, super successful, great keynotes, and very engaging. And that was an incredible experience. I've also been hard at work at the university developing first impressions programming which means it's an 80 to 100 page observational document that people can use to go into a town or a village or a small city and gather first impressions data that can be used to help develop tourism plans or place making plans. And I created that, I adapted from several other models and then enhanced and changed a lot. I've been piloting it and I've been implementing it in several towns around Nebraska and so that’s been really fun and I've been doing that throughout the summer.

I have also submitted a USDA innovation grant for rural placemaking, $250,000, so please please cross your fingers and I get a positive notification on that. I worked really really hard on that grant. And it's exciting it's off my plate it's being evaluated and assessed so cross your fingers for me please. I was invited to lead as the chair at the special interest groups for meetings and events for one of our educator associations. I had been co-chair for the last year two or vice chair for the last year or two. I love taking that over and got to do some cool things with that at our annual conference this year. My gosh, I'm so tired just reading from the list, it makes me tired just thinking about all the things that we did. I also started this incredible project around competencies, but I'm not allowed to talk about it because I talk about a lot of things on the podcast and in my videos this organization was like ‘you have to sign an NDA, a non disclosure agreement, because we don't want people to know about this until we give you permission.’ So I am now under 2 NDA projects. One that was existing and one that is new. 

Super random, I was in Las Vegas actually for a lawsuit, talk about crazy and bizarre, just an interesting situation from 10 years ago. As my lawyer put it you can now say that you have been subject to an absolutely trivial lawsuit and you’ve won. That's kind of fun. I wouldn't say it's trivial but it is exciting that our side won. It was a trial jury so that was kind of cool so if you're comparing everything online and your actual real world experience it all worked out and it was a great experience to say that I've done it. I've done it once, don't want to do it again but it was interesting to go through that process and to see our American legal system at work.

I did go to several events probably the most notable was what we call ICHRIE, which is the hospitality, restaurants, events, tourism, it's the educators association in DC. And that is one that will be subject to a future episode because we're gonna talk about Covid protocols because there was a Covid outbreak there and I think it's an interesting case study to compare against several other events so stay tuned for that one. 

And I have been very hard at work rebranding what this podcast and my offerings will be to include a new name, a logo, a portfolio of offerings, and you will be seeing that very very shortly. I've also decided that instead of having this crazy running list of hundreds of podcast episodes, probably makes more sense since I don't record in the summer, to split it up into a semester based system. So will be going into seasons and numbers there so if you see in the future new logo, new numbering system, same old fantastic great podcast. I'm so excited to be rolling some of these things out this semester. I have some incredible people that I'm working with that are really helping to launch some things. I've also decided that I'm gonna start an event and that is under way that will be held next summer, so I am just super super pumped about that. I have a great team of people who I'm working with, it's already just crazy. I mean, imagine how crazy I am and how futuristic and I like to think innovative, all of that's gonna be rolled up into this event it's gonna be super fun. 

I have got in seven requests via email or text or phone call for topics and those will be my next seven episodes. So thank you to all the listeners who have sent in a request, I'm sorry that I haven't gotten to it yet because I took the summer - I'm putting air quotes on “off”, but you can't see it because I'm not a video, but air quotes on “off”. And then I was incredibly incredibly honored to win 2 awards, one was a regional award for my support to the Midwest region for higher education and one of my regional associations and the other was an international, a global teaching and training excellence award. Just incredibly honored to have been nominated and to receive that. So it's been a crazy summer. I am so sorry that I have not been recording on the podcast. I thought last year I obviously took the summer off and I said this year I really want to keep up with it, but it just seems like summers are a lot of travel and a lot of project work. We're gonna split kind of our seasons. Which helps to support the mission of incorporating students. Students edit the podcast, students help to come up with ideas when we don't have topics that are suggested by our lovely listeners. It's really a co-created effort and that's really important to me so I want to stay true to that. 

How are we at 11 minutes already? This is crazy. So some short term things that you can see coming up in the future: we've got the rebranding, we are going to have those fantastic topics - I remember one off the top of my head from Taylor who was talking about kind of committee involvement, volunteer committees, working and getting people motivated - so I’ll go back and look at the specifics of that. That will be coming out and then - my mind totally went blank - there's so many really cool things coming up. I am excited to be back on the podcast, I'm excited for what this season holds. And please please please do not hesitate to reach out, connect with me on socials or send me an email, all of it is in the show notes just click right through to it. I'm also COMMITTED to doing tik tok this semester. I had started it one semester with a student and then it kind of fell away and then it was my goal last semester and I am 1000% committed to it. It'll look a little bit different than what my vision for in the past has been, but it really goes into kind of this rebrand of this variety of offerings. Because the goal is always to improve the quality of education to make education transformational and that is so integral in advance in experience design and education in general. I never take your time for granted. I thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for listening, for tuning in and for making the time to take the time I'll talk with you soon.