The Challenge:
Find a new, fun, creative way to present a panel discussion for the 2018 Nursing Organizations Alliance (NOA) Fall Summit. NOA’s membership is constituted by staff and volunteer leaders of national and international nursing organizations. In addition to a focus on nursing and healthcare topics, when NOA members convene for the Fall Summit, it’s an opportunity to connect one-on-one with peers and test new ideas that can be used to enhance their own conferences while learning valuable information to advance their organizations as a whole. With so many panels needed to address diverse topics, there is always a need for innovative ways to convey the information.

AMR's Molly Marsh discusses changes in conference planning with a new networking initiative in that made a positive impact on the conference attendees.

The Challenge
The Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH) defines diversity as any and all differences between and among people. ACH welcomes all diversities, recognizing that various life experiences, perspectives and cultures inform and enrich their understanding of the world, each other and themselves.  ACH is committed to building an inclusive organization and has identified diversification of membership as a priority action.

The Challenge
Manels…they’re a thing. It’s rarely intentional, but one of the challenges in volunteers working on components of a conference is that they aren’t always in a position to see how their individual work impacts the big picture. For the National Association of State Procurement Officials, well-intentioned volunteers developing conference sessions worked to identify individuals with the best expertise on each topic. But, NASPO found that a conference pieced together by different volunteers ends up with session after session of men-only being presented as the experts in the field. The “manel” phenomenon didn’t go unnoticed, one evaluation response noted “The last few panels were devoid of women. Given the large number of women involved in procurement, and the specific challenges women face…I hope that next year the panels are more balanced.”