On-demand sessions are available on the connect2comms Whova app. Each keynote session was recorded live and is approximately one hour. The breakout sessions were prerecorded by the speakers and are approximately 30 minutes each.

Transform Self-Talk to Elevate Performance
The Inner Critic is the main source of our biggest blocks to perform at our best. Fortunately, there are simple and effective ways to banish the inner critic in order to do our best work as contributors, collaborators, and leaders.

First, you’ll discover the three mental power tools that you already possess to stop the inner critic in its tracks. Then you’ll learn methods for dealing with the fear of being judged and criticized, how to transform highly critical self-talk into that of approval and encouragement, and ways to feel like your ideas are good enough and stop committing “ideacide.”

By the end, you’ll have a roadmap of how to get unstuck, do your best work, and channel your creativity as a force for positive change in the world.

2020 has challenged the things that we might have taken for granted. As we begin to contemplate life beyond a pandemic, there is much talk of a ‘new normal’ across multiple aspects of our lives. The area of diversity, equ(al)ity and inclusion is no exception, with a fundamental shift in many organizations from a state of compliance to a program of advocacy (almost overnight). In this interactive general session, Neil will explore what has changed for DE&I in 2020 and challenge you to consider the opportunity this presents for you not only as a communication professional, but also as an individual.

• The 2020 Effect – Explore the various impacts of 2020 on the DE&I space that have created a night & day shift.
• The Communication Opportunity – There is a wealth of opportunity for the communication professional to support their clients/organizations; it’s not one-size-fits-all, but there is a role regardless of where the organization is on the journey.
• Personal Growth – 2020 has caught many of us out! Challenged us to think differently. Many of us don’t know where to start.

Some professionals seem to have “it” when it comes to their business conversations. They capture extra attention, have a simple and memorable message, and use this skill every day to build their trustworthiness and influence.

For most, however, this is a frustrating and expensive challenge. Messaging and conversational skills are the number-one limiting factor for executives—and the top skill gap among up-and-coming professionals.

This is a challenge we can all meet, to benefit ourselves and others. The encouraging news is that Message Leadership has little to do with personality or experience. Instead, Message Leaders consistently focus on a few specific behaviors that the rest of us can use, too.

Whether you have a leadership position today, are on your way up, or are equipping others to be more effective (or all of the above), this keynote session will help you apply the specifics of how Message Leaders…

• Know the right words, pictures, and stories to share
• Set the right example (even if it isn’t perfect)
• Show others how to be more effective in communication themselves

In wake of COVID-19 we’ve seen a dramatic shift in communication, needs and work styles—how to make critical decisions and cancellations, how to communicate effectively throughout day-to-day changes. Hindsight (like most crisis) is 20/20. Although we are still in the midst of navigating this pandemic, we can use what we know to develop ongoing content strategies throughout the year—not just for the few weeks leading up to key moments.

Takeaways for participants:

• Tools to use throughout the year that can help you pivot when needed (with a focus on digital channels)
• Ideas to effectively change up content or promotions when hit with a crisis or unforeseen event change
• Templates for tracking, scheduling and modifying content on the go
• Content ideas: What to say, when to say it (and the “don’ts” to consider)
• Examples—how have others adapted, what did they change and what stayed the same?

The ellipsis is a mark of punctuation indicating it’s up to the audience to determine the meaning. In Latin, it means “to leave out.” When we think about our organization or our personal culture, where are the dot dot dots? Where is the ambiguity?

Humans can tolerate only so much of the unknown. We like answers. We thrive in predictability. When processes, branding and policies are clear, people can innovate. Future success in our personal and professional brand depends on our audience’s ability to understand us or our organization.

• Where are the gaps?
• Where is the ambiguity?
• What are the opportunities to clarify ourselves, our message and our future?

We’ll explore how to incorporate significance, align mixed messages, and raise self-awareness while applying practical techniques in this session.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds intimidating, but you don’t need to be a webmaster to start improving your website’s ranking in Google’s search results. We’ll share five simple steps you can begin implementing today to improve your website’s SEO. By making small changes in the way you and everyone on your team produces content, you could make a big difference in how many people visit your site.

Why you should care.

In today’s wide world of the web, the unethical buying of links won’t get you anywhere! Google’s search returns websites that provide the best information AND user experience. To make sure that your site ranks well, all content creators—writers, photographers, designers, etc.—must collaborate on their organization’s SEO strategy. No matter what experience you have as a professional communicator, you can play a role in improving your website’s SEO.

Key takeaways will include:

• Divide and shorten your copywriting and add internal linking.
• Optimize your images and optimize for mobile.
• Edit your metadata and social snippets.

Since early March, the United States has been gripped by COVID-19 and its resulting economic impact. Marketers struggle to stay on top of messaging, employee safety and customer engagement during the pandemic. This session will outline the 10 best practices you can use to maximize marketing success and minimize turbulence over the coming months, if not years. With nearly 25 years of digital marketing experience, Anvil Media President & Founder Kent Lewis will share tips and tricks regarding effective marketing strategies including proactivity, flexibility, compliance, authenticity, empathy, informative, entertaining and adaptive. Ensure your company messaging and communications strategies are aligned to the New Normal by attending this workshop. Consumer behavior has changed dramatically since the pandemic began, and new messaging and marketing strategies are required to remain relevant and to ensure messaging resonates.

Why is the art of audio storytelling – essentially born with the introduction of Apple’s podcast platform in 2004 – continuing to rise in 2020? Join Austin Staton for a session on the importance of sharpening your edge in the art of audio storytelling, podcasting for your organization, and how to get started.

This session will focus on:

• The podcasting landscape in 2020 and what you need to know.
• Given the low barrier to entry, is podcasting a largely missed opportunity for organizations today spanning from the ‘mom and pop shops’ to large, Fortune 500 companies?
• Will 2021 see an increase in use of this communication channel for small businesses to international corporations?
• What types of stories should companies weave into podcasting? How often should these be shared?

Companies take years to build their reputation and can destroy it in a matter of moments. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that some organizations have opportunities to improve their communications strategies as a response to their business operations. In her presentation, Eileen will provide tips on how communicators can be proactive with stakeholders and ensure optimal outcomes today and beyond the current health emergency.

Those who attend this session will:

• Apply techniques to maintain business priorities and stay focused in unexpected, high-risk situations.
• Learn how lessons from the pandemic enable better issues-sensing practices and how to identify opportunities before they emerge as incidents or crises.
• Advise communications professionals on how to provide value to executive partners and, together, move forward with company objectives to achieve results far into the future – and using communications as a key part of an organization’s plans.

Do you consider yourself an employee or a consumer? Do you have to pick one? Why can’t you be both? In internal communications, we often place our target audience into one category. But not all employees are the same. There are now four generations in the workplace transition, from Boomers to GenX to Millennials and now Generation Z. The way each generation expects to be communicated to – or with – is different and is often influenced by their offsite experiences with other brands.

To engage employees around the brand purpose, communication professionals might consider applying techniques from customer and content marketing to workplace communications.

In this session, the audience will learn:

• Adapting the 7Ps of the marketing mix to internal communications
• Understanding employees by applying a customer research methodology
• Case study of an IABC Gold Quill award-winning internal campaign that used digital marketing principles to drive employee engagement

A lot has been written and even more has been discussed about achieving gender parity in the communications profession. But is anyone talking about the collision course we’re on as communicators when gender parity meets gender neutrality – when there is no “he,” “she,” etc.? Can we – should we – be gender-agnostic in the workplace? What are the issues? How can communicators influence the conversation? Michael Deas, ABC, SCMP, takes us on a deep-dive into this topic, comparing current AP style guidelines with practical workplace realities. Expect to have your thinking challenged and your perspectives broadened as we explore a very timely and potentially provocative issue for today’s communicator.

At the heart of every great movement, there was a dream. This session gives you the tools you need to close the gap between that dream and the current reality. You will learn the process, and receive the templates, that will move you through a strategic framework to get your message heard, understood and acted upon. A key piece of our conversation will center on how to harness the power of five questions to drive lasting change. This model can be used to build an internal communication strategy to align employees or a marketing plan that grows market share. This award-winning communication model is the difference between awareness and transformation.

You will learn:

• What research should be done up front to ensure you are delivering value to the organization.
• The five questions you must answer to drive lasting change.
• How to build the right conversations.

In recent years influencers inside organizations have been utilized to impact change and transformation initiatives. But what is the difference between ambassadors and peer identified influencers, and how do you make the most of them? Identifying the right influencers inside organizations can help change and engagement teams to sustain change by embedding key messages and behaviors. Influencer mapping and activation can help whether for a transformation project, a safety policy rollout or embracing new technology. This session will demonstrate how to identify and activate influencers.

Your professional experience and your title seem to have less impact on getting leaders to listen to good communication advice than you would like. What to do? It helps to speak their language—numbers—to get their attention. And then you need to use more effective techniques for presenting your solutions and being ready to address their objections. This session will share examples of how to gather research quickly and effectively to make yourself more credible when you advise your management team.

Key learnings will include:

• Research: ways of doing informal research to identify emerging issues or pretest potential messages, using pilot/control groups to test solutions, and using business data from the last time your advice was not listened to.
• Consulting: ways to improve listening skills and use the rule-of-3 for probing questions when a leader first asks for our help.
• Persuasion: how to present leaders with alternatives instead of only one solution, how to “chunk up” to higher objectives or “chunk down” to attractive characteristics of competing solutions so that you and your leadership feel the right solution has been agreed upon.

In 1966, IBM began globally surveying employees. Since then, additional data has folded into the work of Geert Hofstede, a Dutch country culture scientist, and his son Gert-Jan Hofstede. This treasure-trove of insight can help communicators messaging to multiple countries. Join this session to learn how Stacy uses Hofstede insights to help clients make messaging decisions for stakeholders in countries with vastly different culture profiles. Work with multinationals?

Join this session to learn how to:

• Leverage Hofstede’s research to better understand employee behavior in different countries
• Use Hofstede’s insights to improve messaging decisions
• Create a communication plan that targets employees based on country culture

In this session, Stephen Welch and Andrea Alvarez will introduce you to a new model of Influencing Styles which will help you access different ways of getting your message across. Participants will learn:

• The six key influencing styles used in business.
• Easy ways to recognise, and remember the different styles.
• The advantages and disadvantages of each, and when to use them.

Participants will also get a chance to learn about their own influencing styles, and compare themselves to a benchmark, so you can understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

If you’ve ever played on a successful sports team or worked with a high performing business team, you know that effortless feeling of having individual roles and collaborative strengths align to create consistent wins. Defining the chemistry and skills of great teams is often elusive though, and therefore difficult to replicate elsewhere.People data accelerates the ability to decode, diagnose and replicate dream teams. In both corporate and M&A settings 2020 has been a crash course in business agility. For rapidly shifting initiatives, the ability to assign the right blend of people to them creates more consistent results. We have seen the value this data-based look brings to corporate and private equity teams.

Takeaways –

• Insights from a Fortune 500 leadership team about how people data enabled them to see and overcome talent gaps in their business strategy
• How internal communication and self awareness can reduce friction and improve team performance
• How to gain better strategic alignment on goals
• Talent blueprint for accountability

You are an irrational thinker and a liar.

It is human nature. Humans do not always act in their best interests because of cognitive biases that shape our decision making. This decision making or “emorationality”, a term coined by French neuroscientist Olivier Oullier, is the mix of rational and emotional motivations that drive us. As a result, we have biases in our thinking that cause us to be overconfident, mimic others, and avoid recognizing losses, among other biases that we explore.

Key Takeaways:

• This presentation helps communicators:
• Recognize and avoid cognitive biases in our thinking
• Take better decision-making approaches
• Enable enhanced relationships
• Greater appreciation of diversity and inclusivity

Increase your organization’s value by strategically supporting decision-making and strengthening relationships with your boss, colleagues and leadership. Join us and explore ways to confidently leverage communication strategies to position yourself as a sought-after collaborator who can advocate up the chain while professionally and successfully promoting the worth of your people and program. Leave with tips and techniques to help you build relationships with key stakeholders, get in the room and strengthen your communications with leadership.

You’ll learn how to:

• Make yourself heard by communicating effectively
• Establish yourself as a power player
• Deliver the right info to emphasize your team’s achievements

Communicating clearly and effectively is critical during changing and uncertain times in order to mitigate miscommunication in the workplace. By recognizing colleagues and team members communicate, receive and interpret messages differently, we can begin to understand our internal audiences better. How do we ensure we are communicating compassionately within our organizations when there are so many new factors to consider?

Key Take-Aways:

• When we communicate powerfully and meaningfully in a way that aligns with our values, we build strong relationships.
• Doing better at communication allows us to thrive in all aspects of our lives.
• Communicating with more compassion leads to a better workplace environment – ultimately improving employee engagement and morale.

While we claim to be living in the “sharing economy,” it seems that very little meaningful information about such technologies is being shared within organizations. Information related to cybersecurity is usually riddled with jargon and attracts very little attention or interest. The conversation dramatically shifts, however, in the event of a real or perceived data breach. Enter communications and public relations. Discover how professional communicators can play a key role to help unlock the conversation on cyber — while increasing cross-functional team engagement and help keep information safe. It’s a win-win. Attendees have a clear choice to make: Do we continue aiming to simply survive an onslaught of cyber threats, or thrive by orchestrating people, process, and technology?

Attendees will:

• Explore innovative opportunities to engage with teams including information technology, Human Resources, Legal, and Policy to reduce “Shadow IT” and bolster collaboration.
• Contemplate the shared responsibility of information technology (particularly cyber) in 2020, and beyond.
• Discover key actions to undertake (in the next 30 days) to help advance cyber security efforts.