Sunny Orlando

This past weekend was the Association of Fraternity Advisors Annual Meeting in Orlando, FL. I was only able to be there for the final day and had two big programs on my docket and then time visiting with my parents. This was my first AFA Meeting where I missed the banquet, I had dinner with my parents instead… I also had not realized that my AFA membership expired… I need to jump on that! I had some travel delays, room issues and other, but it was an amazing weekend! Here is my recap….

NAPA Meeting
I arrived Saturday super early in the morning (3AM, thanks airline)… and started a busy day networking and meeting with old friends. I had worked hard on a workshop for that afternoon with NAPA to help their member organizations with volunteer development programs. No matter how many times I present, I still always have butterflies before programs and it was nice that I was so busy right up until my session time I had no time to be nervous. I had presented to NAPA before, on a shorter time block, covering multiple topics… this one was longer, and I wanted to be sure each group had some solid take away items to work on after the conference.

We had a packed house for the session and everyone was engaged and from the feedback received had some great take away items to take back to their organizations. I enjoyed the program and hope to do some follow up with some of the member groups.

Cultural Greek Summit
This year was the Inaugural Cultural Greek Summit… hard to believe it was the first time cultural Greeks from all different types of groups got together to talk. We were not sure what to expect when planning it; how many people would come, how conversations would go, what exactly we would discuss, would we have good take away items, etc.? Lots of questions and uncertainty, and as usual I went into the session very nervous.

Well Sunday morning, we had more people than seats, conversations flowed from topic to topic, we kept energy up, and focused on many key items. We started with feedback on the AFA Annual Meeting, then we broke into some of the Cultural Greek hot topic items, and then broke into groups for discussion on some specific initiatives and ended with some happy thoughts… and even more important, once we finished, everyone just stayed in the space and talked, and networked and continued the discussions!

I was blessed to be able to be involved in the planning, and then just honored to have been the one who facilitated the discussion. We have already had people following up to talk about the take aways and volunteering to help with projects. I am going to have to cast a big net, outside of just those that attended, to get help for our initiatives. Look for some stuff coming soon looking for help…

Now I am reflecting on a great weekend… Not only professionally for me, but proud moments as a fraternity man, and then as a family man I ended the weekend with dinner and spending the night with my parents. Truly just an inspirational, touching and moving weekend. Here is to great things to come…