Hey, everybody, I'm Adam Compton. I'm with a North Carolina State University. We've got quite a few people joining us from across the country. We'll give them a few seconds to join. But as folks are joining. Why doesn't everybody just quickly throw in the chat. What institution, your name and what institution, you're joining from or what educational partner you're with Just so we can get a good flavor of where people are and if you know what district you're in as well. But we'll get started here in just one second. Cool. All right, let's go ahead and dive in. So, chat's open today. As always, feel free to ask questions. We really are excited about this opportunity. This is a partnership between district 2, 3, 4, and 6. We all are coming together to do a session on presenting your best presentation for a district conference, or maybe even one of the case conferences that are focused on a specific area. And really, how do you put that session together? What does a good session look like? Those type of things. And for those of you that are not familiar, CASE is divided into districts here in America and Canada. And across those districts, there's a council in each one of those districts, and they have educational chairs. And we try to put on some programming for our CASE members, and this is part of that programming to try and drive. And so, really hope that you take together a few things together over this next 30 to 45 minutes. And so, again, we'll start with our panelists today. We've got a great group, so you don't have to hear me talk the entire time. I'm just here to ask the questions. And so, Taylor, you want to kick us off with a quick introduction? Sure. Yes, thank you. Thank you all for joining us today. It's really exciting to get so many districts together and to see so many people who want to present at future CASE conferences. So, hopefully, we can impart a little bit of wisdom, or at least what we've learned through our time. So, I'm Taylor Phelps. I'm the Chief Development Officer for the Clessey College of Engineering and Integrated Design at the University of Texas at San Antonio. So, I do engineering fundraising at one of the UT system institutions. We've been fortunate that the last two years, our district conference was in San Antonio, so I didn't have to go far. But I've presented at those two conferences, as well as six CASE presentations since 2023. So, when you start volunteering, they put you to work really quickly, so be prepared. I've been in District 4 for eight years. I was at Texas A&M University Commerce before this, so A&M System School. And then I was at the University of Missouri in southern Illinois, Edwardsville. I worked in college athletics before I moved over to fundraising in the academic center full-time. And I've presented at a few other conferences, too, outside of CASE. So, really excited to be with you all today and have this conversation. Thanks, Taylor. I'll go next. I am Lindsay Topping with Emory University in Atlanta. I am the Senior Managing Director of Alumni Engagement for our business school. This year, I am the co-chair for the D3 conference, along with Kelly Travis from Rollins College, and had the pleasure of co-chairing with Adam last year. I've been in D3 for close to seven years now. And it's great to see you all today. Look forward to our discussion. Pass it over to Christy. Hi, I'm Christy Cates. I'm the Associate Vice Chancellor for Advancement Operations at the University of Denver. We are part of District 6, and I've been in District 6 for about three years. Prior to that, I was in District 7, working both at Caltech and at the University of California, Irvine. I've been in Advancement for 24 years now, and I've been very deeply involved with CASE for about 20 years, having the pleasure of presenting at multiple district conferences and national conferences, as well as chairing the Strategic Talent Management Conference and multiple times chairing the Leadership and Development, and having the opportunity to work on district conferences with District 6 and District 7. And about two weeks ago, I joined the District 6 Cabinet. So glad to be here, and I just can't say enough of what volunteering with CASE does. It opens up your professional network. It also creates a lot of great friendships and great professional opportunities. And I am Crystal Ngaka. I am a Director in the Office of Alumni Relations at Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore, Maryland. I have been in higher ed and advancement specifically for 12 years. It'll be 12 years in January, and all 12 have been here at Hopkins, so I've been lucky for that opportunity. My very first, within my first month of joining Hopkins, the first thing they sent me to was a CASE conference. So as I like to tell many people, I drank the Kool-Aid way fast and got sucked in immediately, similar to what Christy, Lindsay, and Taylor have been sharing. You know, the CASE network that I've been able to build during my time is really what's helped me in my career. And knowing that I have a group of colleagues like this room here in particular is always amazing. I've had the opportunity to also present at many conferences, to lead some of the conference for District 2 as well, and also am now a member of the District 2 Cabinet, where I am the Membership and Volunteer Engagement Liaison Chair. So with that, I will pass it back over to Adam to get us started. Thanks. As you can see, we've got an amazing panel here. And so the first question I wanted to dive in with is, why would somebody want to present at a CASE conference? Lindsay, why don't you, or yeah, whoever wants to go first, go ahead. I'm happy to jump in. From my perspective, there's a lot of reasons you want to do that. I mean, I think it is fantastic for your career and it elevates you professionally. It's an opportunity to demonstrate and share your expertise. From our perspective at DU, one of the reasons we encourage our team members to present at CASE conferences is, it's important that our institutions are out in front of our community. It's a great way for people to understand what it would be like to work at that organization and helps with recruiting new staff members. I would just add, I think you get out a lot from the, especially if you tailor your presentation to ask questions of the audience, you can gather a lot of what people are doing at different places. And so, you know, in addition to sharing your own knowledge or what you've learned over the course of your career, or questions you have that you want to dive a little bit deeper on and share that with others, you do get a lot yourself back. And I also know just professionally, when I started presenting, I think it actually, at a CASE conference, made me a little more approachable for other people. They had seen me speak. They maybe said something to me afterwards. And I think professionally, it's elevated me too. So those are just a couple additional things I would add. I think I'd also note on there is that with today's day and age, with a lot of our organizations, I know professional development is often hitting the chopping block for a lot of your organizations and areas. Taking that time to honestly consider presenting at one of these conferences or opportunities is a great way to show return investment to your leadership and to let them know that, you know, even though there are some cuts in some spaces, this is a good way to still put your name and your institution out there to show the great work that you're doing and to kind of validate that membership within CASE itself. Yeah, I mean, as I tell my team all the time, it's about, you know, furthering the brand of the university, recruiting people and learning something. And if you can do all three of those things, then I think presenting is definitely one of those. You know, Crystal, how do you know if you've got a good idea about something you want to present? That's a great question. I would also I would actually use a lot of my peers and colleagues to kind of temp check, right? I think that's a good way if you have a network like this or a different one. With my time here in CASE, I've built up a really great network. And my last session that I was able to present on was literally built around a roundtable that we were just sitting at at the end of a CASE conference. You know, we were sitting there. We had a lot of feelings and emotions about what we had just experienced. And as the group started talking, it was almost a joke that we would present. And then as we kind of fleshed out the idea a little bit more, we came to find that there were a lot of people who would benefit from hearing this conversation. So that was kind of what jumpstarted it for us in sense of knowing that, A, I already had a cohort of people that I knew would be interested. But once we started reaching out to more of our contacts within our district and with other institutions, we just definitely knew that there was something there that we could leverage a little bit better. So that was my own personal experience with being able to find a good topic. Others thoughts on how do you know you've got a good idea? I always like just the similar similar to what Crystal said, just approaching others in your network to, hey, is this something that people would want to know about? But is that something you you see missing from a case conference? Right. I think we all go to these. We all have different roles. There's all questions we walk away with that we go, I wish I would have known more about this. I think that's a good way to to see if it's a good idea or not. And sometimes the the cabinets and the conference committees will will put out specific topics they're looking for, you know, trying to tailor to that. And then does it have a you know, this I think this gets into a little bit more of getting accepted. But does it have a catchy title, something that people would actually want to attend and learn from? I think those are ways you can engage the idea. You know, when I was just going to add in, you know, think outside the box as well. And don't always assume the obvious in terms of not just sharing our successes and key wins, but also lessons learned, opportunities. So we are currently doing submissions for our district and love it when people want to share kind of failures, essentially, or, you know, not always kind of the best in class, but ways to kind of learn from each other. So Lindsay, while you're off mute, so you've got to you've got this idea. How do presenters take advantage of what case has offer? What have you seen that, you know, kind of helps them take that next step? Great question, Adam. Thank you. For us, we're in D3, one of the larger districts. So last year we had 150 proposal submissions for 60 electives. So we had a great problem of a lot of people raising their hand wanting to present. So, you know, we are. Always encouraging of our members to reach out to case to find out who is on the conference committee, who are the track chairs. I've been having conversations already with a lot of people who have submissions in the works to also kind of bounce things off of us. In addition to your peers to see what topics have been really popular in the past to see how you could make your presentation stand out, such as a training, you know, attending webinars like these today. So definitely encourage folks, even vendors and corporate partners to reach out to the case team to find out who's on your district's planning committee. Just to kind of do a little pulse check and make sure that, you know, you're not submitting something that 10 or 20 other people are submitting a topic on. And so we can help you all figure out what might be a good gap, a good fit, something we don't currently have. So definitely encourage folks to take advantage of all the resources available. Others thoughts on that one? Anything they should take advantage of resources-wise? The other thing I'll say is the case library also is a great starting point to find resources, find, you know, data or other things. Look at the resources that are already available from case and try to find partner institutions that are larger than you, smaller than you, you know, that are different, you know, type of institution that could really be a good partner to where you could showcase an idea as well. Can I just reinforce that, Adam? Because I do think that that's super helpful. If you've got a topic that you know another institution is working on that same topic or that same idea, it's a really great way to be able to show different scale of how large or small that program can be. It also can show how you can approach that same program in a little bit of a different way. I know some of the feedback that I've gotten from my sessions when I've worked with somebody from a different institution, even a different district, to be able to look at if it's a problem or what you're trying to achieve in multiple ways, it becomes very powerful to the audience. So here's a good question from the chat from Krista. Do you give out a list of prompts or topics each year that are of interest? How do they, you know, kind of source that idea a little bit? So District 6 has the opposite problem of what Lindsay's district is experiencing. She has the luxury of a wealth of presentations. My colleague Muriel Hughes, who runs our development shop, is the chair of the program committee for the District 6 conference. And she is like, okay, we've got to start sourcing some topics. And a really good place to think about those topics and potential presenters, if you have won an award, like a case award, a district award, national circle of excellence award, that's likely going to be a really great conference presentation. And if you go through the awards and you say, hey, I'm doing something similar to this, again, that's a topic that's going to be of interest to folks. So you've kind of got your idea. You're working the session. What makes a standout proposal that you submit? I'm going to jump in. Off of what Taylor said earlier, a catchy title. I think that's honestly one of the best ways to get started. If you can build something around, you know, a statement or a phrase that's really going to just attract people from the start, I think that's going to make the review, reviewing committee excited to read through the proposal. Kind of to what Christy just said as well recently is having partnerships, right? If you're able to kind of tap into different areas, whether it's other institution sizes or types, other vendors or anything along those lines, I think that's always appealing just because that brings in a broader audience and allows more people to kind of find their placement within that presentation itself. Go ahead, Lindsay. I echo everything you said, Crystal. And as someone who is going into her fourth year reading proposal submissions for our district, I kind of equate it to reading resumes. You're going to want to get our attention fairly fast. In our district, we have usually two to three sets of eyes on each proposal. And the track chairs are focused just on their tracks. However, folks like the co-chairs, the program lead, we're reviewing all of them. So 150 in a condensed period. So a catchy title, very clear and concise. We should know very quickly what your objectives are, the key takeaways, be able to understand the topic. We have a rubric that case provides, which is essentially, you know, yes, maybe no. And so the easier you make it for us with a complete submission. It sounds trivial, but if you have a complete submission that helps kind of move you along versus us having to take the time to go back, especially if there's corporate partners or vendors and we need to check to see if there's a partner institution to present along with it. And I would say, I would echo what Crystal said, you know, I'm looking to see what will have the biggest reach. Are there multiple presenters, multiple institutions, potentially a vendor or corporate partner? And, you know, just trying to determine what will be of most interest to the most people. Can you scale it up? Can you scale it down? That's a big point of feedback we heard from last year, especially with the big privates. How can you make your content relatable to the smaller institutions who have smaller budgets? So sometimes there's a little back and forth, but because our district has so many submissions, we're not always able to take the time to reach out to everyone to ask for tweaks. So I would just say is, you know, reach out early before the deadline if you want to bounce anything off the folks. So my perspective from D3. I've never been on the side of the selection committee for who presents at the conference, but as an attendee, I'm always interested in the presentations from non-fundraisers as well. So if you can partner with a dean, academic leader, a coach or an athletics director or a donor, I love hearing the dialogue between those in the profession and those who we either serve or work with. I think that leads to some really interesting dialogue. And then again, you know, as everyone mentioned, coalition building around multiple institutions or people from different perspectives. It's not that some of the presentations that come from one individual from an institution aren't great. Some of the best I've attended, but I think when I'm initially scanning, just like for the catchy title, I'm looking at who's presenting too. And if I can say, okay, this seems really interesting just based off of the presenters, I think that strengthens your case for selection, but also for attending when you're at the conference. So, go ahead, Kristen. Just one other thing I want to add, because I think this is important and it's feedback that I've gotten, is that your sessions are going to be looked at very heavily. If you've got some metrics and data that shows what you did had outcome and ROI. So I think if anytime you can put that into the submission with some demonstrated outcomes, I think you're going to get a lot of really good attention. So we've got metrics ROI, we've got who you're presenting with, we've got scalability, we've got a catchy title. Anything else? I feel like I'm missing one of the things that was discussed. The other thing I think is that you want to likely have it be somewhat interactive, so it's not just always a presentation. Sometimes that makes sense, but I know that interactive and there's a lot of opportunity for sharing thoughts can be really powerful in the submission. Cool. So, getting into that kind of what makes a good session so, you know, interactive, what do you what really makes that that good session. You know, once that's that proposal has been accepted or goes into that proposal kind of describing what that interactive is going to look like. Just from my own experience when I first started presenting I think I did a lot of talking at the audience. And they went over fine and people were very polite and kind and I think people got things from that but I left feeling like it didn't really hit like I would have wanted it to. And then so I tried pairing up with other people and I think that worked but I really took some time to engage the audience during the presentation so I think a lot of people default to we need to break up for small groups and sometimes I've done presentations like that to where hey, chat with someone around your area. But I think just informal polling of the audience throughout I gathered that from another colleague when I presented with him, and he started doing that we hadn't even really talked about it and I was like wow that's really helpful because people are engaging they feel like they get to answer questions. He does things like who's from Texas or who's, you know, from Oklahoma in our district and and people felt like they were engaged or who's experienced this type of thing and maybe calling on one or two who self select and get them to tell their story And that was really engaging and really difference making within the presentation itself because people felt like they weren't just scrolling on their phone or they were much more attentive and had some type of engagement. Similar to what Christy said I think the more of that you can include the better your presentations going to go because even though your data could be great. You could have spent so much time on slides or you could have some great presenters. It really does help to engage the audience, even if you have a panel, you know, and you're focused on asking them questions, but the ability to allow the audience to ask questions throughout or to engage in some way, certainly elevates the presentation. I think I'd add to that, there's a balance to it right I think I shared with this group and we are prepping for this conversation that I've been in sessions where we gave the audience too much breakout time, and they kind of came back to us and they're like well what was the purpose of you all speaking to us if there wasn't, you know, something to take out of it and so that's definitely something that I've kept in mind as well because there is a good balance of, again, wanting to engage with your peers who are sitting with you in the room and learning from them just as much as you're learning from the presenters, but really ensuring that what the presenters are bringing are kind of the main sticking point of wanting to join that session and attended. So just being mindful of that but I strongly encourage the engagement part I think when you have a room of 5060 of us it's a shame to not have everyone being able to speak. And so I think that's a definitely something to your advantage, as you're prepping some of these presentation ideas. Great insights Taylor and crystal and I would just add for the presenters to also be flexible with whatever your engagement is, depending on your conference your district you have no idea what breakout room you will be in. If it will be in a theater style roundtable so that's what I always encourage our presenters just to plan for different scenarios. Hopefully you will know kind of your location at least the week of, but also planning kind of intentional engagement throughout the presentation and to me it kind of all starts with a strong outline and to make sure you're able to work those kind of touch points in. I think it's a really good point crystal about like there's a lot of people in the audience and you know they may have some really good expertise or good points that they can add, or an experience that they can add that will make that session, even better and so how do you engage the audience and and get those different shared experiences to only drive that educational opportunity even deeper. I think that's a really good point. Thinking about like slides presentation decks, those kind of things that kind of come with it what what what do you all when you try you know when you're looking at when you've seen really good presentations materials what what really stood out to you. You don't want to put too many words on your slides. And if everything that you're presenting is written out on the slide, they can just read it. So you definitely want to have some of that material to support especially again, and and Kevin I don't want to dismiss your question about metrics, but if you've some good data that goes on the slide, but visuals and pictures and imagery goes a long way to engaging. And, and just your question in the chat about metrics, especially if you're putting a proposal in six to eight months ahead of time. Like, what does that metric, what do those metrics look like, you might want to put in the proposal the metrics or the ROI that you've But then when you're building out the presentation to continue to update that even though it might look a little bit different when you're actually doing the proposal. And when I did a session, a number of years ago on employee engagement and I was able to talk about how we improved year over year our engagement scores. And I got feedback directly from the conference chair that said, this was the best proposal because we actually saw what the outcome of the work that you were doing. So even if it's a little old, you'll just continue to update it as you go. How do you think about those those lessons learned that you know you really want people to take away when you're doing a session. You know, a lot of the session actual when you submit your proposal, they'll ask, you know, what are the three lessons learned that you want people to take away. How are you ensuring that people really take this away. How do you drive them home and that session. What are you all seeing and doing as well. I think the key case is kind of a safe space for that, Adam. And for me to Christie's earlier point, I love a good visual and making sure that the attendees in my session know Kind of what the key takeaways are. And so also encouraging others to share if you've had an issue or failure. It's very, very likely that others have to and making it kind of normal to be able to share that with each other. That's what I'd say. I've also seen some great presentations where people will actually set that tone right from the start right like that this is what we expect or hope that you walk away from or walk away with from this session. And it kind of holds the presenters accountable to to be able to ensure that they're having that conversation or dialogue with the attendees to say, did we accomplish this right like at the very end did we actually hit our goal. Do you feel equipped to do X, Y, and Z as you move forward. And I think that's a great way to kind of just make it level set from the start and really give everyone that open space to to know what they're going to kind of walk into and hopefully walk out of it with No, and I just, I think the lessons learned are really critical. They're good for us too because when we can authentically say this was really good. I do this a little bit differently. You know, it shows to Lindsay's point it's safe, it shows vulnerability. We're all going to have missteps along the way, especially if it's a new program, and to be able to say for our organization. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was about best practices. It's great to know best practices, but those don't always work at your institution, so you understand the best practice and then you figure out how you make it work for your organization. And so, to talk about some of those mistakes along the way, really deepens the fact that you have knowledge of what's going on. I know we addressed partnering up with people is a good practice for getting accepted and for having a good session, but it also is a great practice if you're just stepping into presenting in front of a group of people because you have really good intentions, you know, six to eight months out, and then you get closer and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm busy or I'm super nervous or whatever that may be. And it's a lot easier to kind of take the heat off of yourself and not feel so much pressure if you can co-present with someone. So, I think that's also just a good, you know, there's certainly those of you out there who are ultra confident, present in front of your peers all the time. I'm not saying that's a bad thing to present solo on a first or second attempt, but I know from my own experience, it was really, I presented even with some others and then did it on my own and it's a whole different experience. And I did one virtual like this where it was like, I'm just speaking to a camera. I can't see anyone for a long time. So, I think that's just one lesson learned as well as make sure, you know, there's going to be two, maybe two points that people take away. It's a long conference. They're going to a lot of sessions. So, if you can leave them with one or two things, I think that's all really anyone's looking for is what can I take back to my institution and say, I learned this from this person or this skill was reinforced or I feel more confident about this. Any of those things I think are really valuable. So, we've got quite a few educational partners on the call or Zoom today as well. What makes, and Christy, I think you're equipped best to answer this, to start answering this question for the group here. What makes a good presentation when we partner with one of our educational partners or vendors? You know, I think it can go a lot of different ways. I mean, I have done a lot of presenting with our educational partners and usually I find it, the ones that I've actually worked with, but sometimes one of the educational partners is doing something very similar to what you're doing. And so, how do you blend that together? And you want to make sure that it's balanced and nothing against our educational partners, but we don't want this to become a selling of your product, but letting people know what does your product do? How do organizations work with it? So that it's a really great way to talk about your personal experience and as well as what your organization does, but ensuring that important balance. Well, I'm going to throw it to the chat one more time. And, you know, I hope there might be a few burning questions here at the end as we try to take the mystery out of submitting a session proposal. We know that across these districts, there's a ton of great ideas that are really powerful. I know here in District 3, our deadline is a week from today, right, Lindsay, for session proposals? So, and other deadlines will be coming up soon across the districts and hope that people will continue to submit and reach out, search that case library, find a partner to submit an idea. You know, it doesn't hurt to submit an idea and, you know, ask for feedback on that idea, those type of things. How do you deal with stage fright? That's a great question. For those of you that have presented multiple times, how do you deal with stage fright? Kristen, one thing in our district, we offer to have run throughs or walkthroughs with any of our presenters. So that has helped with some of our earlier career presenters or even seasoned folks. Just to do a full walkthrough. So I would encourage you to get with your district to see if that is an option or also bouncing it off of your team at your institution. I also struggle with this and can empathize. So it's something we want to make sure we're offering to our presenters in D3. I think if you can get to know who's in the audience a little bit, that always helps me. Like I introduced myself, but then trying to get an idea of like, who's in the audience? What's their expertise? Is it development? Is it alumni relations? Is it advancement services? How many years have they been in the industry? To ask some of those questions as you're getting started. That really does calm me down because then I know who I'm talking to and I feel like we've got a little bit of a relationship. I just think don't put so much pressure on yourself. I think most people there are excited to be a case, engage with colleagues. They've come because they're interested in the topic you've presented or the title you have or the people you have presenting with you. I've wrapped up presentations and felt like they didn't go that well. Then I get my feedback from the surveys. Maybe there's one or two in there that didn't think things were great, but overwhelmingly, the feedback is very positive. Honestly, people are just thankful that they realize you took the time to put together something to help them learn. They were excited to meet you and all those kinds of things. Don't think that if you stumble, if you miss a key part of your presentation, that it's the end of the world. The conference is bigger than any one presentation or any one person. Don't build it up. That's easier said than done. I get that. I'm sure there's tons of techniques you can use and search on chat to figure out how I should not have stage fright. Realizing that when I walk in the room calms me a little bit. Having co-presenters also calms me to know that if I stumble, they can pick me up and I've got a partner in it. Also, as Christy said, engage in the audience. I think it's helpful to bring down the tension maybe. I'll just add, I personally like to use humor to help with stage fright because I think that always breaks the ice and opens it up for everyone. Cracking a joke at the very start makes it a little bit less intimidating, to Taylor and Christy's point. I also think that for some sessions, if you know that you are really anxious or a little nervous, have some of your colleagues that you do trust and are comfortable with sit in the audience, too. I think that's helpful if you know or see a familiar face and have someone there that you can say, okay, it's kind of my North Star to know if I'm getting a little too wordy or going too fast that I can kind of calm it down or bring it back a notch. But I think that's a great way to help set yourself up to success, to succeed in that, too. Well, as we wrap up today, I'm going to throw one more question at our amazing panel. If you could give one piece of advice for submitting an all-star proposal and one piece of advice for a really good session, what would it be? Whoever wants to go first can jump in. I'll jump in. Sorry, Lindsay. I said it earlier, but I think if you can get someone outside of Advancement to present with you, and not a vendor, but a dean, a faculty member, a donor, get someone in that space. As a fundraiser, I know I love hearing from those people because it reminds me of how they look at our profession or how they can add value to what we do. And so I think that does two things. It certainly sets you apart in pitching your idea, but it also attracts eyeballs at the conference and usually leads to a good presentation. And a lot of those are done in kind of an interview format, and I think that can be a good takeaway. Kind of stole my answer, Taylor, thinking along those same lines. I would say just don't be afraid to be bold, to go for it, be brave. CASE is here to support you along the journey, so if you're selected, you were selected for a reason, so also believe in yourself. And just also, I totally agree with Taylor, thinking outside the box a little bit, thinking to some of the more memorable sessions I've seen. Some institutions have brought in current donors to sit on their panel, or deans, faculty, just to, you know, we're so inundated with a lot of material throughout the year. You know, don't be afraid to propose something new and different. I really want to dovetail off of that, because I think the new and different is what is, and just that thinking differently. Some of the sessions that I've done that have been best received, it's not in my, I'm not presenting to individuals that have the same background as me. Like, I am an advancement services person with most of my background is in professional development and strategic planning. But when I go to conferences, I have presented at the Donor Relations and Stewardship Conference about how you build your career and you look at your career a little bit differently. In campaign conferences, I've talked about how do you build the team? You know, so you kind of can bring what your professional expertise is, but start presenting to individuals that do something different than you do. And that really becomes very powerful. And you can partner with, if you're thinking about it from a alumni relations perspective, if you're not an alumni relations professional, but you think I've got something really important to share with individuals in alumni relations, you might want to choose a partner that has that expertise. And you're talking about something that's really unique and different that these individuals can learn from. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think looking at your audience is a huge step in that process, right? Because I think if you're looking at the district conference, it's a pretty broad reach and you want to be able to engage with as many people as you can at that level. Everyone's going to kind of pick and choose what they want to go to with that. But if for something like what Christy was just saying with a specified topic, I think that's a little bit different when you're tailoring and creating that proposal to help you assess which one would be better suited for you. You know, when I think about presenting, I always look at what I would be interested in attending, just because I think Taylor made this point earlier, there's so much content, especially at the district level. And so you have to be mindful that, you know, someone could have a day that's going all across advancement and they're just kind of picking and choosing and playing, you know, Goldilocks to see what's going to fit best for them that day. And I think that's appealing to a lot of people to have that broader reach and opportunity to do it that way versus being so in the weeds with a certain topic. Well, to the panelists, I want to say thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining me today. We pulled this together in basically a week and just really appreciate you all kind of hopping on and joining us. Hopefully for everybody that joined us today, we helped to take some of the mystery out of submitting a session. Hopefully you'll log on right now and start to develop your session proposal and think about what you'll submit and build a really awesome to drive those really great contents. Thanks everybody for joining us and hope, look forward to seeing your session proposals. Have a great rest of your Monday.

Adam Compton

North Carolina State University

district conferences

engaging presentations

interactive sessions

visuals in presentations

partnering with stakeholders

boldness and creativity