Like many of you, I have returned from a truly fabulous several days in Williamsburg at the Executive Leadership Conference. The conference was highly successful by many measures, but our strongest ever participation by government (249!) really brought a new level of discussion and energy to the conference. Kudos to the planning team...it's a huge job and they have much to be proud of. Here is my synopsis of the conference...
We kicked off with a small reception in the Williamsburg Inn. Unlike other years where we have focused on the planning team, we opened it up to all those who were in town early...and their spouses. I think that approach was well-received by our attendees. The salmon en croute was a huge favorite!
Sunday was busy with golf (told it was 5 degrees too cold!), tennis (lots of fun!) bike ride (only Jim Beaupre bit the dust!) Volksmarch (this walk and the bike ride were great ways to see Wmsburg!) and a very special wine tasting. After rehearsing my speech I blasted off to the Partner's reception and then the First Timers reception, followed by the regular reception... felt right from the start that this would be a great conference with lots of enery! Ed DeSeve was our keynote speaker talking about the Recovery Act. Great to have the latest info on that important area... and Ed is a great speaker!
Monday opened with comments from the VA Secretary of Technology and then we were off to the track sessions! Four major areas this year: Infrastructure and Cloud Computing; Innovation; Health IT, and Collaboration and Transparency. Excellent speakers with great content and analysis! Lots of dialogue between the audience and panels.
Before the Monday reception, we shared the results of the SIG Review Team. I think those results will have to be the focus of a separate blog posting to do it justice, but I believe that the process used bythe Review Team was sound and inclusive and they had some excellent recommendations that seemed to be understood and generally accepted by the audience.
Our Monday dinner speaker took the room by storm! Don't think I have ever seen so many standing ovations! Too hard to describe in a blog, but Erik Wahl talked about embracing change while painting. You can see the results hanging in the lobby of IAC HQ!
This year's awards went to Casey Coleman, GSA as Government Contributor; Dan Chenok, Pragmatics as Industry Contributor; Darren Ash, NRC as the ACT President's Award winner; Roger Baker (now VA) and Mark Forman, KPMG as Chair's Awarad winners; and Bob Woods as the Mendenhall Award winner. Each contributed so much to ACT-IAC this past year! PG and I also took a moment to thank Ken Allen for all he does to make our organization shine! The awards ceremony was followed a networking reception and entertainment by the "Fabulous Dialtones".
Up early Tuesday morning for the CXO breakfast with 60 tables filled and buzzing. It seems that people are starting to learn that they really miss something if they leave on Monday night, because the room was packed! Our panel of experts on Leading Transformation through Social Technologies was great... just loved hearing how the Gen Y'ers look at the world!
Donna Brazile was terrific and she even had some Republicans in the audience nodding on some points. She is obviously someone who respects ALL public servants and this came through in her remarks. She was funny, insightful, and provocative! ... or should I say "seductive"?! You had to be there to know what I am referring to!
We closed the conference with an august panel of our senior leaders in the Administration. Good dialogue and some takeaways to bring back to the office.
I think my feeling of exhaustion at the end of our time in Williamsburg was shared by many. Lots of caffeine for the trip back to Arlington! Now looking forward to Management of Change in Philadelphia! See you there!