Fads and Trends

Whether we are planning, presenting, or simply attending, conferences offer us the chance to play the prognosticator. What is hot right now? What will become the next need-to-know thing, and what will be a flash in the pan? Technology continues to garner a bit of attention, mostly with a focus on particular tools that are top-of-mind. As always, though, there are too many offerings to take in everything of interest.

This year Facebook gets some more facetime (will the Beacon debacle be mentioned?), there are updates from the demographic front, we can hear echoes of the 2004 Chevron winner from a new campus and perspective, and YouTube seems to have replaced podcasting as the tech du jour. Are you planning your sessions out yet? Or do you wait until you are on the ground to decide?

At some point a retrospective on conference topics would be an interesting piece of research - track the true content trends and forces that have shaped our professions and have piqued our collective interest. What stories do you think it would tell?

Is Dolly Parton still right on?

In “9 to 5”, Dolly Parton sings about being “just a step on the boss man’s ladder” and how the work world is “all taking and no giving.” In Joni B. Cole and B.K. Rakhra’s new book, “Water Cooler Diaries,” the reader gets a glimpse at a day-in-the-life of 35 women whose jobs range from “orthopedic surgeon” to “voice-over actor.” These 9 to 5 chronicles present a diverse perspective on a variety of professional experiences, and I loved not only reading about the range of responsibilities and roles, but hearing such different and revealing views on careers. While there are plenty of disgruntled employees, there are also many who truly thrive in their work environments.

While reading these accounts, it’s hard not to imagine what kind of day you might jot down if given the opportunity. Like many people, my days vary so much that there’s never a ‘typical’ day (that was even more true when I was a middle school teacher—adolescents have a wonderful way of defying expectations!). In my current role, I’m neither a career counselor nor a recruiter, so I love hearing how people who are in those professions spend their time.

If you’ve time and inclination, jot down a snippet about an hour in your day. Hopefully your account won’t include the dripping-with-sarcasm line: “working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living...!?”

New hires want more than a paycheck!

According to a survey by Experience.com “It’s Time for a Job Description Makeover," 70% of job seekers value company reputation and ethics in a new employer. This often translates to finding a career where employers demonstrate a commitment to improve the local, national, and international community. There is no one model for how employers should do this, but with the increasing altruistic tendencies of this younger generation (volunteering is up 20% among college seniors), it seems like this is one generational trend that will carry well beyond just this group of students.

How do you see this in your line of work? Are students on your campus asking about how to find a job that is more than just a paycheck or making it a priority in their job search? Do you field questions about your corporate ethics and social responsibility from recruits or their parents?

How and Whether to Make a 22 Year Old Your Leader

Ryan Healy at Employee Evolution just posted a very thought provoking blog article for Gen Y employees about how they can become leaders in their organizations. Healy offers four tips:

1. Demonstrate that you're able and willing to make the decisions because leaders need to decide even when they don't have all of the information available.
   
2. Try new things. "Being comfortable and competent in unfamiliar situations is a sign of true leadership ability. So whenever you have the opportunity to do something new, try it!"
   
3. Surround yourself with people smarter than you. You don't need to lead them at every opportunity or even occasionally. But interact with smart people and learn "to hold your own in complex or thoughtful conversations."
   
4. Learn to work well alone. Leaders often have to make decisions by themselves and work through issues without the assistance from others.
   
   

That all said, what should organizations be doing to help 22 year old, recent college graduates and other Gen Y'ers learn how to become leaders within their organizations? College recruiting is strategic because it is used by organizations to recruit their next generation of leaders. But if those organizations don't teach their future leaders how to lead, then their college recruiting programs are doomed to failure.

So folks, how do you teach your Gen Y employees how to lead?

Going Green In New Orleans.......and in your everyday life........

As you may know, one of the NACE initiatives for the upcoming conference in New Orleans includes a focus on being "green". This concept of looking for ways to make an impact on the environment include a number of initatives at the conference including reducing plastic waste by eliminating individual bottled water, using post-consumer recycled materials such as an eco-friendly tote (51% recycled materials), badge holders that are made of 51% recycled material, having recycle bins in place of traditional trash cans at the conference, using post-consumer recycled paper for any printed materials including the conference notebook, and overall limiting the amount of printed materials by providing session handouts electronically. In addition, excess food from the conference will be donated to a local food rescue program.

These types of initiatives may seem small on the surface, but if we all make a commitment to small changes in our work and personal lives, we can make a difference.

As one of the largest recruiter of college grads, Enterprise has seen college students asking more questions about a company’s environmental and social practices. Employers who want to connect with the socially and environmentally conscious students are making their "green intiatives" a part of their recruiting efforts and marketing to college students as part of the company’s environmental or social platform. We are als seeing more employers are using the recycle logo on their career fair giveaways or using giveaways made from recycled materials.

At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, having been in business for more than half a century, we know that leadership is not a short-term proposition. For us, environmental stewardship is a long-term approach to addressing those parts of the world that we touch with our business, and involving ourselves with those issues over which we have some influence. It's an approach built upon a commitment to ensure the sustainability of our business, as well as the sustainability of the world we all share. Our environmental platform includes the following intiatives:

• Empowering our customers to offset the CO2 of their rental by funding projects that work to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• Operating the world’s largest fleet of fuel-efficient cars, including more than 440,000 vehicles that achieve 28 mpg highway or better.
• Embracing New Clean Technologies by taking advantage of existing alternative technologies, such as FlexFuel and hybrid vehicles, and helping expand the availability and use of alternative fuels, such as E85.
• Funding the search for renewable fuels by donating $25 million to one of the world's leading plant science centers to develop renewable, reliable fuels from plant sources.
• Funding the planting of 50 million trees over the next 50 years with The National Arbor Day Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service.

Sharing our environmental platform is important to our college recruiting efforts because it ties to our corporate values and ethics. With a fleet of more than one million vehicles, we understand that we have an impact on the environment. This initiative allows us to demonstrate that we're positively impacting change and we highlight our initiatives on our careers website and through our new website highlighting our environmental platform keystogreen.com.

I'd love to hear what others are doing either from an organizational level or a personal level to make a positive impact on our environment. Does your university or company have any formal "green" initiatives? What tips to you have for NACE members to support this cause?

Student attendance at Career Center Programs

Has anyone else noticed this trend? It seems like there are fewer and fewer students attending programs or workshops that Career Services offices offer. Is your campus experiencing this too? Perhaps your campus is noticing it not only with Career Services programs, but many other programs as well?

Any ideas as to why? Maybe students are just too busy. Maybe they'd rather look up the same information on the internet? Maybe they don't see it as valuable at that moment. Maybe they just don't even know about these programs?

Obviously there are a lot of factors that contribute to student attendance (or non attendance). But what do we do with the fact that this is a reality? Do we not offer low-attended programs anymore? Do we go to on-line only career centers? How can we market programs more effectively? How do we plan around students' schedules?

I'll be looking for ideas in the sessions in New Orleans. I know there are a lot of sessions that highlight great programs going on in Career Centers, and I'm sure they've confronted the student attendance issue to make their programs successful!! I'm ready to soak up all these ideas!

Young Professionals?

Ok - I'll admit it! I am a boomer (mind you on the very back end but still there ). I read a great article today about engaging younger members at meetings and was wondering if this is an area that we should be exploring?

Do we need to have a group for young professionals to network and engage at the meeting? How should such a thing or area be set up? Should we have a forum for young professionals? Is it different for Career Services and Recruiters?

Wow, I am full of questions....anybody want to comment?

Exploding Offers: Here They Come Again

Less than a week ago I wrote that there have been exploding offers this year and will be more but there won't be as many as there were in the 2001-03 recession. An exploding offer is a job offer which an employer makes to a candidate, which the candidate accepts, and which the employer later rescinds usually because of changing economic conditions.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal included an article about how a year ago law firms were falling all over each other to recruit and retain entry level lawyers for their summer associate programs (sort of like internship programs) and as first year associates (entry level lawyers). Now some of those same law firms are cutting back:

• Some law firms like New York-based, 800 attorney Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP shrunk the duration of their summer associate program from 12 to 10 weeks. That effectively cuts the pay of their summer associates / interns by almost 17 percent.
• Other law firms are delaying the start date of some of their first year associates. In addition to Pillsbury cutting its summer associate program, it is also delaying the start date of its first year associates.
• Chicago-based, 700 lawyer Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP is taking an even harsher approach. It admits to exploding the offers for two summer associates and two first year associates who had accepted offers to work at its Charlotte, North Carolina office.

Exploding offers are not confined to law firms. Over the next couple of months we'll see many more examples emerging from employers large and small, public and private, urban and rural.

I get why these employers believe that they should not pay money to employees whose work is not needed. But what I hope that all employers get is that their long-term viability depends upon these interns and entry level hires for college recruiting is strategic and without college hires entering the employment ranks, an organization is doomed to a lack of managerial and executive talent within a decade. If the organization manages to survive it will need the success of some very highly paid headhunters to acquire the talent that the organization could have brought on board at much less expensive rates through its college recruiting program.

It will be interesting to hear from the experts in New Orleans about this issue. When potential presenters were submitting their proposals last summer, the economy was humming and exploding offers were about the furthest thing from anyone's mind. Today though, the situation is quite different as virtually all lay people and many economists believe that we're in a recession and with recessions come exploding offers. I suspect that the The 2008 NACE Graduating Student Survey: Student Perceptions and Approaches to the Current Job Market session will be quite informative on this topic. I'll be in the audience. Will you?

Developing Global Citizens

What do you think about this article from cnn. com yesterday? A good idea? or not so hot?

There is a session at the conference called Give or Take? on helping students become good citizens. Interesting concept? And is it a part of your mission in career services? How about recruiting? Do you expect the same thing in your new hires?

Another voice chimes in . . .

This is quite a privilege. For me that is. I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

My name is Chris Miciek and I have been drafted as part of the 2008 conference's blogging corps. As of this moment I am the Director of Career Services for Baker College's Online and Center for Graduate Studies campuses. Baker is Michigan's largest private, non-profit institution of higher education. I assumed this role a little over five years ago. At that time my two campuses did not offer career services and were facing a majority population outside of the state. Since the institution's mission statement expressly addresses lifetime career support, there was a need to develop a response and enfranchise those students and alumni. My task was to create and run what became the first 100% online career services office. This has included a full slate of standard career services offerings, plus supporting a required internship program. Our combined student population is currently just shy of 6000. Over 60% are outside of Michigan. Some of those are overseas as expats or foreign nationals. It has been an amazing ride.

Yes, I have a bit of interest in the intersection of career services, education, and technology. Because of the strong technology environment I have lived in the past five years, I will be focusing much of my attention on the technology and future casting content of this year's conference. Technology isn't strategy, but it must be a key piece of our strategic plans and vision.

I say "as of this moment" because when I have the chance to meet all of you in New Orleans I will be there as a Drexel Dragon. And I do expect to meet all of you at the Future Directions Committee's session on Thursday morning. Sure it's early but what better way to start the day? Okay enough shameless plugging for now.

Other's have mentioned it so I'll chime in - join us at the Habitat worksites. These are great opportunities to be contributors and not just tourist/conventioneers. It is a pertty good way to network, too.

Embrace your chopsticks.

Networking With 1,500 of Your Closest Friends

One of the real challenges in attending a large gathering like the annual NACE conference is getting together with the people that you really want to see and meeting some new people who you really need to meet. So how do you do it?

I don't pretend to have all of the answers. I don't even pretend to have most of them. But I am happy to pass along a few suggestions that have worked well for me over the years:

1. It is too late for the 2008 conference but try to be one of the speakers. It is VERY easy to meet people if you are a speaker because they come up to you before and especially after your presentation to introduce themselves and pick your brain. Give away a lot of nickels in life. They tend to come back as dollars.
2. Regardless of whether your regional ACE chapter is organizing the conference, volunteer. I volunteered for about half a day a few years ago in Milwaukee and helped check attendees in as they arrived. Yup, I was one of the folks handing over the bag full of presentation materials, water bottles, and other assorted goodies. I probably helped 200 people check-in that day. That's 200 people with whom I had an opportunity to say hello and open the door to speaking with later in the conference.
3. When you have breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc., deliberately sit at tables where you don't know most of the people. It is okay to know one or two but don't just speak with them. Speak with the others at the table. You all have things in common: the conference and even the hotel banquet hall chicken in front of you. Complain about your flight, laugh about the meal, share advice about presentations you attended or plan to attend, whatever. But have fun and enjoy yourself.
4. Arrive at sessions at least five minutes early and sit beside people you don't know. Introduce yourself and ask about their work lives first and perhaps their personal lives (married? kids?) later.
5. Business cards. You can never bring enough or hand out enough. Never, ever leave home without 'em.

Keynote Update!

Dan Pink is launching a new book today called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, written in manga (a Japanese comic book style - which I only know about because a friend of my teenage son is a BIG fan of it!). The site includes a video ' movie trailer' which is very interesting. I have NOT read the book but it will be carried in the NACE bookstore!

Talk about an interesting marketing campaign designed to capture the intended readers. Perhaps we can all learn a bit from looking at this program!

Hello, my name is...

Hey there!

My name’s Meg Busse and I coordinate Idealist.org’s Nonprofit Career Transitions Initiative. The focus of my work is to find ways to connect people to and educate folks about the exciting, diverse range of career opportunities in the nonprofit sector.

My main project over this past year has been the creation of The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers, a comprehensive guide to finding a job in the nonprofit sector. This free (!) book is available online in downloadable pdfs; check it out at www.idealist.org/careerguide. We’ve just finished the second edition: one version is specifically for first-time job seekers and the other has information tailored to sector switchers and mid-career transitioners.

Along with co-authoring these books, I present workshops around the country at conferences like NACE, NSEE, and ASPA, as well as at Idealist’s Nonprofit Career Fairs.

In fact, I spent this past week in Minneapolis and DC, and am heading to Indianapolis on Tuesday for three of our Nonprofit Career Fairs. It’s been thrilling to talk to so many people at our fairs who are looking for a “career with meaning” or some way to connect their paycheck and their passion. The best news is that there are so many ways for people to do this!

There are also plenty of other things I’m passionate about. I’ve lived in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA for the past five years and love the Pacific Northwest for a whole host of reasons, including great food, amazing music and hiking, and the fact that I could snowboard, swim, windsurf, walk on the beach, and take a vineyard tour all within the same day (if I had enough energy!). I love Portland, but I did grow up in New Jersey and am a Jersey girl through and through and always love to connect with fellow New Jerseyians.

I’m so excited to be back in New Orleans this May—it’ll be my second NACE national conference (I had the opportunity to present a workshop at last year’s conference in New York) and this year I’m excited to be exhibiting and roaming around trying to meet as many folks as possible! Do stop by and see me at booth 505 in the exhibit hall and share the nonprofit, west coast, or Jersey love!

The Big Easy is alive and thriving!

First of all, by the way of introduction, I'm Pam Webster, Corporate Recruiting Manager with Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I work at our corporate office in St. Louis where I've been in my current role for the past three years. Prior to moving to St. Louis, I spent 20 years with our Southern California operations where I began my career with Enterprise in our Management Training Program. I worked my way into management before moving into HR and Recruiting and have been involved in college recruiting for the past 19 years. I've been actively involved in WACE, then MPACE where I served on the board. I've been a member of NACE for many of those years and have served on the NACE Future Directions Task Force, and this year had the pleasure and honor of serving as a co-chair for the 2008 Conference Programming Committee.

I am now a NACE blogger, and am also a first time blogger............Steven, you may need to teach me a thing or two.

I'm actually in New Orleans as I write this blog, attending the American Marketing Association's 50th Annual Collegiate Conferece. I've spent the past two days getting to know some amazing students that are here for training and development in the chosen major of business and marketing, even with the tempt of Bourban Street just a few blocks away. I've been back to New Orleans several times a year since Katrina, and the city is getting back to the great city that New Orleans is. You will experience, great food, great music, great history and great hospitality! And guaranteed, you'll gain a few pounds while you're here. While you are here, make sure you head down to the Cafe Du Monde, an original french market since 1862, and taste the beignets, the state donut of Louisiana........and at a price you can't beat--three for $1.82.

If you've never been to New Orleans, you may have a difficult time understanding the city. It looks like no other place in the United States---it seems almost European.The first puzzling impression usually comes from the appearance of the French Quarter near many of the city's hotels. It is more than just a few blocks of townhouses and cottages standing side-by-side, up against the sidewalk. The size of the district startles even those well traveled in the rest of the nation. You'll experience a melange of people moving at all hours of the day and night in the very center of the city. You will quickly learn that bars have no closing hour (and I know how NACE folks love to party), that the food is spicy, and that the music is pulsating almost everywhere.

What's exciting to me about NACE 2008 in New Orleans, is an opportunity to work with the Area Habitat for Humanity, helping families realize their dream of affordable housing. More than 100 families have benefited since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We've also got some great programming planned and of course the best networking where friends and colleagues can come together to catch up and share idea and have the opportunity to meet new friends along the way.

So, if you haven't made plans to attend the conference yet, we hope it will fit into your busy schedules and you can join us in New Orleans!

How to be a part of the Recovery!

Thanks to all our bloggers for jumping in!

And just a reminder, after reading Steves post of 4/4, that NACE has TWO work days scheduled with Habitat for Humanity. You can read all about the project here.

Dont think you can swing a hammer or hang drywall? ME neither....but I can wield a mean paintbrush if I need to.:)) Regardless, we can all do something. Even if it just means carrying water for another person, I can contribute.

I personally will be working on Saturday and promise we will all have a great time! Why not join the fun and help out!

Returning to New Orleans

One of the reasons that I'm excited about the NACE conference this year is that it is located in New Orleans. For those of us who had the good fortune of visiting New Orleans prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we know what an incredible city it was. There are so few cities in the world which are electric and New Orleans was definitely one of those. In the U.S., I would put New York, San Francisco, and Chicago into that same bucket.

I joined the board of the non-profit organization, Nechama: Jewish Response to Disaster, about four years ago. I flew down to Mississippi five days after Katrina to see what help we could be in helping people clean out their homes and small businesses. You couldn't get near New Orleans as it was still under water and the gulf coast from western Alabama all the way through Mississippi and Louisiana was absolutely devastated. There was too much damage and too little water, fuel, electricity, and security for us to attempt to help out in those areas. But I found that there was plenty of work and logistical support a little further north near Hattiesburg, Mississippi so we started there and as life started to return to normal or at least somewhat normal further south we moved down there. Nechama has gutted out dozens of homes in New Orleans since then and we're quite proud of the work that we've done there.

Today, New Orleans is again a vibrant city, especially in the tourist areas. But I urge all attendees of the conference to venture outside of the tourist areas. Go to some of the devastated areas and see first hand how terrible the flooding was and how much work remains to be done. This is a city that needs and deserves the help of all of us. Bringing NACE to New Orleans will help tremendously. Consider donating a day or even part of a day to the ongoing clean-up efforts. Consider contacting your federal political representatives to get the money flowing properly. But above all, come to NACE, enjoy New Orleans, and be part of the process in getting this proud and wonderful city back to 100 percent.

Becky Vianden Introduction

Hello everyone!

I am excited to be a NACE Blogger! This is my first experience at blogging, and I'm sure it will be fun. Hopefully it will be fun (and of course educational) for those of you reading as well. :)


Currently, I am at the University of Arkansas Career Development Center, serving as Associate Director for Program Development. I'm fairly new in this position - just started in December 2007. My previous experience in Career Services has been as Associate Director of Informatics Career Services at Indiana University as well as some time with eCampusRecruiter as a Software Consultant.


There are several reasons why I was interested in becoming a blogger for the NACE conference, but one of the reasons stems from our attempt at using a blog here at the UA Career Development Center. This semester, we started a blog for our Sophomores, called the "Sophomore Scoop" to provide a place for sophomores to "discuss" career development "stuff" for students at that level (choice of major, internships, campus involvement, etc). We have a real Sophomore student as the blogger, presenting topics for discussion based on her experiences. We envisioned a blog where most of the student learning was coming from the comments that various students would make to the blog - kind of like discussion among the blogger and all those making comments to the blog. Being a blogger for NACE will, I hope, be a learning experience for me not only about NACE related information, but also about the process of blogging. I hope to learn some tips that we can apply to our own CDC blog about how to get those blog "conversations" going. (Any advice welcome!)


This will be my third national NACE Conference. One of my favorite aspects of attending the NACE conference is having the chance to learn about new ideas that are out there. If you're like me, I always feel renewed and refreshed after attending a conference because I see so many great ideas out there that are being done in other centers that I'm inspired to try some of those ideas as well. For example, in our center, we'd like to start a blog in the Fall where we follow a few seniors as they make their way through the job search. And wouldn't you know it, there is a session to be presented at the conference that details this very topic. I'm excited to see how this campus went about doing this, what their outcomes were, and if they'd do anything differently.


And of course, there's nothing better than meeting up with old friends and making new ones at the conference. See you in New Orleans!

Intro from Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com

I'm honored to have been selected by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) to again present at their annual conference and to also be part of this group blog effort.

For those who don't yet know me, I'm the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading job board for college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs. Our business model is much like that of Monster or Careerbuilder in that employers pay to advertise their job openings and the students and recent graduates use our site for free. Unlike some of our college job board competitors, we don't provide job board software to individual career service offices so we're set up more like sites such as Monster and less like sites such as MonsterTRAK or NACELink.

The origins of CollegeRecruiter.com date back to my senior year in college in 1988 when I published a campus map for my undergraduate school, the University of Manitoba. That's right. I'm a Canuck. Actually, I'm now dual as I moved to Minneapolis later that year and became a U.S. citizen the same day that O.J. Simpson was acquitted. My guess is that the connection between those two events means more to me than it does to him but that's okay.

After moving to Minneapolis I attended and graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Law so I'm a Golden Gopher fan and also a lawyer. Well, I'm actually a fully recovered lawyer as I only practiced for a year and then got out to enjoy my life. In 1991, I re-started the undergraduate business and in 1995 we added an employment magazine called College Recruiter.

The magazine initially was only distributed by University of Minnesota career service offices to their students but due to employer client demand we expanded the distribution metro-wide then state-wide then to the five state area in the Upper Midwest. We then added similar publications for Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; and Columbus, Ohio. But in 1996 a career service office director at the University of Minnesota told me that there was this thing called the Internet. She'd never been on it but she was hearing from her students that they were doing job research on it so she thought we should get a site. Later that year we went live and we gradually moved our business away from campus maps and employment magazines and to CollegeRecruiter.com. By the fall of 2000, we were only on-line.

Those who know me know that I'm an avid blogger. I write almost every day and often multiple times a day at CollegeRecruiter.com Blog about issues mostly related to college recruiting, social networking, and occasionally unrelated topics for which I have a personal passion such as retired hockey star Mark Messier.

Another passion that I have is how social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace can and should be used by candidates and employers. I've been fortunate enough to be quoted about these issues by a number of local and national publications and been a guest on some radio shows and television broadcasts. The NACE conference selection committee was kind enough to allow me to speak about this topic at this spring's conference in New Orleans. My goal is to show employers how they can destroy their brand by misusing the social network sites. I hope that you'll attend and help spread the word that employers should use but not misuse Facebook, MySpace, and the other social networking sites.

Caponi Introduction

Hello everyone,
I am Kim Caponi, Assistant Director of Career Services for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. I started this position in December 2007 prior to that I was the Career Center Director at North Iowa Area Community College in Mason City, IA. In addition, I have taught goal setting and job search skills through the welfare reform program.

Currently, I continue to live in Mason City and drive up to 2 hours or more to Ames for work (depending on traffic and the number of stops I need to make). Although I have been a NACE member since 2000, was involved in the Attracting New Professionals committee and wrote an article for the 2-year articles collection, this will be the first national conference I have attended. This will also be my first visit to New Orleans.

It is always exciting to me to attend various conferences as I return to work with renewed energy and new ideas. Although I still have the new energy that comes with a job change I am still excited to meet new people, put faces to names I have seen through the listserv, and come back bubbling with ideas. I'm also hoping for a little sightseeing and if anyone knows of some great vegetarian restaurants in the area please look me up. I look forward to meeting many of you in New Orleans!

Welcome to the Conference Blog!

We've arrived! At least the blog has! This blog will be part of the information you get about the NACE Annual Conference. You will be reading several different perspectives as there are 5 team members who have decided to join this "maiden voyage". They will be introducing themselves to you over the coming weeks!

I invite all NACE members to read and comment on the blogs here - even if you can't be in New Orleans you can read up to the minute information and then perhaps get a glimpse of the activities taking place during the meeting!!

As a native New Orleanian, I am proud and thrilled to be part of the NACE 2008 Annual Conference Team! Welcome to my town!

Regards,
Nancy Mikkelsen
NACE Director of Education