One of my extracurricular activities outside of speaking and writing is serving on the National Board of Directors for the AWC (Association for Women in Communications.)
My Mom has been a member since she was an honors journalism student in the 1950’s; she credits networking within the organization for a lot of her success throughout her communications career in journalism, public radio and PR. She gave me a gift membership when I left the Navy, and it’s been a very valuable experience for me.
AWC is now open to professional communicators of all kinds, and our 2013 AWC National Conference is October 18 – 19 in Springfield, Illinois. If you’re an Abraham Lincoln or history fan, you’ll be in heaven, plus our Hilton host hotel is right in the middle of a very cool, vibrant downtown area and everything’s within easy walking distance.
This is what I’m particularly looking forward to at this year’s conference:
1) The opening keynote by Sarah Petty, photographer, marketing enthusiast and co-author of Worth Every Penny: Build a Business That Thrills Customers and Still Charge What You’re Worth. Women are notorious for not “making the ask” for a high-enough salary, and not charging enough for their business services.
2) Hearing from our AWC Matrix Foundation Award winner and Paralympic athlete Bonnie St. John. What an inspiring story!
3) The Unconference part of the event. To take advantage of having so many of our smart, creative members all in one place, we’ve set aside almost two hours with a series of open 20 minute timeslots that will be filled in by….whoever signs up to speak on whatever communications topic they want to speak about! If you’ve ever been to an Unconference like an EdCamp or PodCamp, you know that it sounds weird and anarchic at first, then the presentations/discussions turn out to be amazing (and the atmosphere is more conversational and less laden with speaker-know-it-all.)
Want to know more? Go here for the AWC National Conference schedule.
(If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup box is on the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!)