The Hottest Ticket in Town

2005 International Conference, Los Angeles, USA

[Published: September 29, 2005]

Alisha Green and Chris Dunn represented the University of South Australia Golden Key Chapter at the 2005 International Conference, in LA. Throughout the conference there were many learning opportunities and self development courses. This is a combined account of Alisha's and Chris' experiences.

Thursday August 11th

The 2005 International Conference started off with a bang at 'Catch the Wave' on the Thursday night. In the ballroom of the beautiful Westin Century Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills, the different GK regions competed for spirit awards and a lot of fun. Being an Australian, it was an unusual experience witnessing such enthusiasm, almost like a pep-rally from the movies. The Asia-Pacific region created a cheer and we decked ourselves out in green, yellow and black, waving flags and inflatable crocodiles. The Canadians and South Africans had amazing cheers, but the Asia-Pacific region walked away with an award for best spirit! It was a real buzz being part of such a happy, excited crowd of people. The party then moved out to the hotel pool deck, with a swinging 60's band and cocktail food.

Westin Century Plaza Hotel, Beverley Hills

Friday August 12th

Friday was a day of seminars and Chapter Workshops, where conference participants learnt more about the Society, Chapter leadership, event planning and fundraising. Alisha and Chris conferred before the workshops to minimise overlap and to maximise the number of workshops attended. Two of the workshops Alisha attended on the Friday were 'Chapter Budget Planning' and 'Full Year Planning'. Chris attended 'Realising Golden Key's Promise of a Global Community' and 'Putting Membership At The Wheel'.

Westin Century Plaza Hotel, Beverley Hills

Chapter Budget Planning (Alisha)

The Chief Financial Officer of the Golden Key International Honour Society, Mr. Cedric Edmundson, presented an interesting and useful look at annual budgeting. He discussed how to budget to meet Chapter goals and best support members, as well as outlining how to physically create a budget. Members without a financial background found this to be especially useful.

Full Year Planning (Alisha)

Presented by Jennifer Hargreaves, a GK Associate Director from Canada, this session was aimed at Chapter leadership. She talked about how to turn ideas into solid, workable plans. Jennifer also talked about people management skills, and how to get your team motivated into action. There were four major steps that she outlined in the process of putting a plan into action:

1. Research: consult stakeholders
2. Planning: vision and mission statement
3. Implementation: action the vision
4. Evaluation: survey people involved, report on results for future use

There was also further discussion about step two: Planning. I found the process outlined to be very useful, despite it's simplicity. There are three questions that Jennifer believes a group should answer in order to find a direction for their activities:

1. Where are we now?
• Little active participation of members
• Relatively unknown in University/local community
• Five campuses - widespread student body
• Little University social lifestyle
2. Where do we want to go?
• Scope - activities/opportunities, look at activities that have been successful and opportunities that remain available
• Posture - look at the fact that we are competing for people's time
3. How will we get there?
• SWOT analysis is a useful tool in defining the Chapter's characteristics
• Will need to have a timeless continuous quality, that subsequent committees will be able to work with
• Needs to be wide-reaching to embrace all members, and needs to be personal to the Committee to inspire their dedication and hard work
• Needs to identify with Golden Key's specific values/benefits
• Measurable results can help speed progress and improvement

As Chapter President, I found this session to be very helpful in terms of thinking strategically, and implementing long term plans. It also reinforced the importance of keeping written records of plans and outcomes in order to keep continuity in a Committee that changes so regularly.

Realising Golden Key's Vision of a Global Community (Chris)

This was a confusing title because it actually referred to the Golden Key website, and was not what I had imagined it to be. The speaker revealed that there is another Golden Key website in development that will replace the current one. There will still be individual chapter websites maintained by the Chapter and its members. However, the hope is that through the design of a better web site it will be practical for Chapters within the same region to coordinate events with each other. As I understood it, Chapter members would put on their web page upcoming events, or events still in a planning stage, and these appear on other regional Chapters pages also. This way other Golden Key members from different Chapters can assist at a planning stage or even join in on events. The website itself does not appear to be accessible at the moment.

Putting Membership at the Wheel (Chris)

The speaker had shredded his speech and rewritten it twenty minutes before the start, so his points were in dot form only. I have thought about these points and an informal summary appears on the Presidents forum - I have presented the raw data here, , for other members to contemplate at their leisure.

Chapter events fall into two categories - membership drives, including campus awareness activities, and fundraising. Fundraising is a catch-all word for all activities where campus awareness is not the primary objective.

He believed that t is counterproductive to try to do both at the same time. For smaller chapters, priority should be on membership drives as active members are important to the survival of the Chapter, whereas fundraising is not. Once there are enough members to keep the Chapter afloat, the Chapter should then form task groups to plan and execute specific events. Ideally there should be two or more task groups, with at least one working on membership drives, and at least one working on fundraising tasks. The speaker suggested that a Chapter needs to achieve a certain 'critical mass' of members so that people within it are not overburdened with too many tasks.

The first point of contact most people have with Golden Key is the email or letter they receive congratulating them on their eligibility to join. Some immediately dismiss it as spam. However if people receive an email and a letter they realise the unlikelihood of their real address and email being linked, and read on. The suggestion is to send the letter first, and then a week later, the email. He also suggested including a Frequently Asked Questions list with the email, as this is when people will be most curious, as part of the document but not as an attachment, as people are suspicious of attachments in emails from unknown sources.

After the invitiations for joining have been sent, the Chapter should have a 'Meet your local Chapter' event, inviting all these potential new members. This is the third and last official contact you would have before the actual initiation ceremony.

After the ceremony is over, send a letter or email to members who did not join, reminding them that they are still eligible to join and ask them to contact us if they had any questions. The speaker said you could also flat out ask them why they did not join to try and get some feedback on possibly ways of improving the invitation. Anything that initiated dialogue was good in his opinion.

He then went on to existing Golden Key members, and the kinds of questions potential Golden Key members (and the general public) might ask. Specifically, we should be able to answer confidently when we are asked what Golden Key is, what benefits are provided, and why someone should join. We must be able to justify a reason for joining, and that acknowledgement of being in the top 15% is not a good reason because people then see it as a badge of recognition on their resume and don't realise they are actually joining a Society. Holding the AGM as late as possible allows new members time to get to know the Chapter and be involved in events, encouraging them to want to take a more active role or at least be interested.

The speaker then closed by saying the best way to get people to accept their invitation to join is if they have actually heard about Golden Key before they receive their invitation.

Fundraising for a Better World

The next event Chris attended was the 'Fundraising for a Better World' workshop. This was not so much a workshop as a more formal explanation of why we were collecting books, how they were used, and how we can help. He received information on Better World books that will be presented to the Chapter separately from this report.

Night on the Town - Santa Monica Pier

On the Friday evening, buses were organised to take everyone down to the Santa Monica Pier. We all had some greasy American fast food and many took advantage of the sideshows and rides on the Pier. Others walked to the Third Street Mall to do some shopping and watch the street buskers.

Saturday August 13th

Saturday started early for some that rose to the challenge of the 'CEO Challenge: Boot Camp', including our Vice President Chris Dunn (One month later and the pain finally went away). The day continued with Professional Development Workshops on topics such as Public Speaking Skills, Getting the Job you want after Graduation and the Art of Schmoozing. Chris attended another Chapter Workshop with an unhelpful title.

Chris Dunn, Alisha Green, Becky Gollings and Phoebe Poon, Saturday Lunch and Awards Ceremony

'FISH! The movie' OR What Do Flying Fish Have To Do With Running My Chapter? (Chris)

As the rest of the Chapter workshops were all US related I chose this one - it turned out to be very odd, starting with the speaker wearing a large felt fish shaped hat. Unfortunately it was too late to leave, which was good as it turned out to be a surprisingly insightful - and bizarre - workshop.

The philosophy of this workshop was 'The attitude you have affects others around you'. More specifically, people in leadership roles need to take care in how they behave and speak with others because the people they are leading will tend to match the leaders behaviour. People often assume this means avoiding negative behaviour, however this speaker wanted to encourage positive attitudes. An enthusiastic cheerful person energises others around them. An enthusiastic cheerful leader inspires others.

The speaker isolated four broad topics with the aid of a movie, which did include flying fish. These were 'Be There', 'Make their day', 'Play' and 'Choose YOUR attitude'.

Although inherently a very simple workshop this is one that is intended to be run in a business over a week, not jammed into fifty minutes. This workshop was intended for Golden Key leadership and their involvement with non-executive members.

Be there - means being engaged, by actively having a mental presence in activities. Avoid daydreaming and allowing you to be distracted. Focus on what you are doing. Other members can tell when leadership is switched off and lose interest themselves.

Make Their Day - means helping other members enjoy their time in the Chapter. This can be something as simple as remembering the persons name. Making people feel valued is a good summary of this point. Members should feel happy and involved during Chapter activities and enjoy the company of other members. This fosters a positive attitude about being involved with the Society.

Play - The speaker referred to Tom Sawyer, a character in Mark Twain's book of the same name. The character managed to turn a chore prescribed as punishment into a game, and was able to make quite a profit from the enthusiasm of his peers. By injecting fun into an environment it encourages other people to participate. He then pointed to the hat that he had been wearing at the time that we had all laughed at and said if anybody wanted to talk during the upcoming discussion, they first had to wear the hat. Yes, you did have to wear the hat to be heard, and yes, it did look spectacularly silly. The point, however, was not.

Choose your attitude - Leaders have a responsibility to control their moods because other people naturally draw their attitude from the leadership group. The speaker felt it was more important to NOT have a negative attitude than it was to have a positive attitude. Unfortunately we ran out of time at this point and we had to move on. I left my email address for the speaker to provide more information but he has not yet contacted me to do so.

Career and Graduate School Expo

Throughout the day, a Career and Graduate School Expo was held, with people representing Boeing Company, Ford Motor Car Company, GE, Harvard Business School and Nestle. Conference participants were able to talk to company representatives and find out about graduate programs and job opportunities.

Keynote Speakers

The first keynote speaker was Keith Ferrazzi, on building and maintaining people networks for career success. The relevance of this to the Chapter is the importance of two way communication and making time to build friendships with other people. At a Chapter level that means something a simple as replying to emails and organising social activities as well as educational activities. Keith also gave some tips on how to have meaningful conversations with complete strangers and develop more lasting connections with people.

The second keynote speaker was Marshall Goldsmith. Of the two speakers, we found Marshall's talk was the most rewarding. Marshall spoke on the importance of accepting negative feedback and prescribed us a series of exercises that were quite simple, fun and effective. There was a great deal more on this which was more relevant to personal development. We received many handouts and Chris wrote notes if anyone is interested. Marshall's talk was valuable not just because of the content but because it encouraged people to actively communicate with others and help each other become better leaders.

Conference Close

Saturday evening saw the close of the conference with the semi-formal Glitz and Glamour Closing Banquet. Everyone looked like Hollywood stars in all their finery and sat down to a delicious three-course banquet.

After the banquet, the Dance began in the Hotel Ballroom. With a DJ playing all the best RnB dance tracks, everyone danced into the small hours of the morning.

We made a huge number of friends over the event. Chris managed to get a total of sixty three other Golden Key members details and is still in contact with most of them. He used his time after the conference to meet up with Golden Key staff during informal talk sessions, including Kriti Colless, Dean Butters, and Alex Perwich, the CEO of Golden Key. He found talking with these leaders of Golden Key to be very insightful and inspiring and is looking forward to helping our Chapter become more successful.

Westin Century Plaza Hotel, Beverley Hills

Overall, we found the Conference to be a deeply satisfying and highly educational experience. We literally did not waste a minute. Anyone who went to the conference left with new skills and a great enthusiasm towards using them. We both highly recommend to all of our members to attend a national or an international conference. The professional and personal rewards are endless and you can really see the worth of the Golden Key International Honour Society.

Alisha Green and Chris Dunn

NEXT CONFERENCE: CONNECT 2006, Melbourne Australia. Please keep in touch with the website for upcoming details.