If you attended this year’s alliance, you might remember there were several opportunities to provide feedback on the conference. As usual there were the individual session and overall conference surveys. In addition there were focus group sessions and roaming surveys taking place about the venue. The workgroup that coordinated this effort had the slogan “Together we make a difference”. The team has compiled the results from all the feedback. One of the ways the data was analyzed was by “Likes” and “Dislikes".
It's probably no surprise that what attendees like the most about Alliance is the networking, meeting people from other institutions and exchanging information about the processes and practices they have in common with each other. The willingness to share solutions with peers from other institutions is amazing.
What might surprise you more than the obvious Likes would be the Dislikes. One of the biggest Dislikes is that sessions overlapped- basically too many good sessions at the same time so it was hard to choose which one to attend. What a great problem to have! Another big one from this year was the venue/weather. Well, the conference planning team can control a lot of things, but the weather isn’t one of them.
By now you have probably seen the “Save the Date” announcement for Alliance 2019. The conference planning team went to work as soon as this year’s conference ended to make Alliance 2019 even better. Using the feedback provided by Alliance Review work group, the conference team is hard at work planning next year’s conference. Lots of effort is going into utilizing the information you provided to make it an even better experience. You can look forward to some new session types, a slight change of schedule, opportunities for more networking and of course an awesome venue – the Swan & Dolphin at Walt Disney World.
Start thinking about a topic for a presentation, it won’t be long before proposals open – remember Together we make a difference.