Show Me Sustainability Conference 2010

Conference Debrief

Posted on April 17, 2010. Filed under: 2010 Conference |

2010 Conference Debrief

Show Me Sustainability Conference

Connect Learn Lead

What worked—what didn’t work—what you liked—what you didn’t like—suggestions

• Spring semester vs fall semester- benefit earlier in spring semester or even in the fall semester so that students can be empowered and have time to start up projects/get people involved in their campuses
  • Fall- later in the fall so you can encourage freshmen to come
    • Inform and encourage freshmen during orientation week
• Spring- awakening time with better weather and high hopes J
• Contact res life and community colleges when advertising
  • Contact student success centers and career centers
  • Tell everyone you know- have a page on the website for people to put orgs at their schools to contact
  • Truman- res life
  • Promote at other student conferences
  • Have MSEC contact people from each school to promote the conference on their campus
  • Nice to have high school students to get their perspective and let them see what’s up in college
    • Parent’s may not want them to go
    • Under 18- travel across the state to stay with college students…hmmm
    • Start out encouraging Columbia high school kids
    • Look at other youth conferences and see what they do
      • Have an advisor take them to the conference to introduce them to this
• Scholarship to bring top environmental students to the conference
• Keynote- good that he was out of school for a while and had a different perspective
• Presentations- all students that can relate to each other and have common goals
• Send out a list of things to bring via website and e-mail and facebook, etc.

1. Theme of the conference for next year
   1. Keep the conference presentations and panels under one broad sustainability aspect so it stays open to as many people as possible who’d like to share their ideas/experiences
   2. Presentations
      1. Have an hour for people to come up and talk for 5/10 minutes instead of them having to talk for 45 minutes
      2. Have several themes and have panels talk about these throughout the weekend
         1. i.     Failures
2. Have a balance of panels and presentations
   1. i.     Presentations would focus on more specific “how-to’s” and details
      1. Recruiting new members
      2. Getting access to financial resources
      3. Leadership development
      4. Managing crisis
      5. Poster sessions for people to present their research
   2. ii.     Panels would focus on general sustainability ideas
      1. Crisis panel!- fight, someone tries to take over the org, everyone in the org are seniors, when’s it time to let the org die?
   3. iii.     Trainings
   4. Food
      1. Good variety, local, thumbs up
      2. Compostable vs reused plates and silverware and cups
         1. i.     Next year- everyone bring your own things to eat off of and eat with
         2. ii.     Increase cost of conference by $5 or so and we’ll provide their plates and forks and at end of conference we’ll give them their $5 back if they return their plates.
         3. Schedule
            1. Good with bulk of presentations on Saturday and still have some Sunday to keep people around
            2. Social activities
               1. Baking activity- nice to meet people in small groups and make your own food
               2. Learn to bake
               3. Would be nice to have a chill hang out time for people to relax and talk w/o structure
               4. Networking opportunities
                  1. Provide a resource booklet for all of the attendees with
                     1. i.     Contact info for all attendees
                     2. ii.     Graduation dates, interests, “I’m interested in learning more about___”
                     3. iii.     Need and give list for each attendee
                     4. iv.     What environmental orgs are at the different universities that they can contact
3. OR send people to MSEC website for info
4. Activity- time for people to split up and talk about one of six topics to discuss.
5. Quality of shared ideas overall
6. Diversity of attendees- number of schools represented
   1. Focus on universities, community colleges, etc.
   2. Tabling
      1. Good to inform students to bring a table
      2. Lower the price so it’s much more affordable for students to share
         1. i.     Give a presentation and their fee will be reduced
         2. ii.     Students could give a campus showcase and have shifts for people to be at the table- shares ideas with other students
7. Different prices for businesses, non-profits, youth orgs and student orgs
8. It’d be nice to have an opportunity to share success and failure stories
   1. i.     Panel w/ a rep from each campus (or rep from each project) to discuss these issues and ideas
   2. ii.     Rather than having workshops focus on these
9. Nice to have a chance to talk to people who have recently entered the “real” world
   1. i.     Talk about non-profits, environmental businesses and non-profits

10.  Post Conference

1. Provide overviews of ALL of the presentations
   1. i.     Have presenters write a 100 word abstract about their talk

11.  Accommodation

1. Provide info for students to couch surf, stay at hotels, friends, etc.
2. Encourage relationships and community growth

12.  Space

1. Seating at tables for eating
2. Nice to have big tables for people to sit around

What’d you learn?!

You’re not alone!

Get charged up again to act

Enjoyed different perspectives of situations

Do you have any more suggestions, comments, ideas, concerns?  Let us know by commenting on this post!

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