NYC, the Epicenter of…Conference Planning?

Stephanie Lamphere, Co-Chair Northeast Regional Conference
Director of Donor Relations
SUNY Empire State College

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock

Back in the early spring of 2020, the Northeast Regional Conference committee’s plans were well underway for that year’s event. The 2019 conference, held at New York University in the heart of New York City’s Greenwich Village, had been a rousing success. That next year, the conference had been moved from the always-unpredictable March date (will it be 20˚ and snowing, or 70˚ and sunny? Flip a coin!) to mid-July.

The venue was set, the RFP had gone out, speakers were being confirmed, and we had settled into the finer details of conference planning when suddenly the world stopped. Over the next few months, the conversation changed from “let’s wait and see, it’s still four months away,” to “let’s push it off a bit,” to “let’s scrap this year, but 2021 for sure!”

In January of 2021, the Northeast group did end up hosting a conference – sort of. Since in-person events were still an impossibility, especially in New York, the committee instead hosted a virtual networking event. This event featured some educational content and breakout rooms for informal discussion. Although it was a lovely hour, it didn’t hold a candle to the conference that we all know and love, in a city that is vibrant, chaotic, and an ideal setting for making professional connections.

Internally, all of our organizations have been making and canceling plans nonstop for the past two years, to the point where we’ve all gotten much more flexible and less beholden to the status quo. We can hope for the best and plan for the worst with laser-focused efficiency. For this year’s conference, we not only had a Plan A and Plan B, we had a Plan C and Plan D too. 

As a committee, we’ve tried to avoid the idea of these backup plans being a “pivot.” Instead, we are embracing the idea of adapting to the needs of the moment in order to accomplish our goal, rather than pivoting from an intended trajectory. It’s not really a pivot if you don’t have an anchor point. The end goal is what we keep in mind, and that end goal has always been an in-person gathering to make connections and learn from each other. How we get there is less important than actually getting there.

It’s been a long slog, and that goal line is finally in sight. We are a handful of days away from the June 10 conference, and we are crossing all our fingers and toes that we will finally reach that line. Collectively, we have planned hundreds, if not thousands of events, and this one has been both exponentially harder and blessedly easier than I anticipated. Instead of the large, boisterous return to New York we’d envisioned, we will have a smaller gathering, with multiple opportunities throughout the day for in-depth conversation in even smaller, more intimate groups. The kind of day where you return to the office with a dozen business cards in your hand and even more new ideas in your head. And it’s going to be a fantastic day.

We’ve had many challenges and realizations along the way. But now that most of the planning is done and we are on the cusp of the event itself, these are the takeaways I want to share for other groups trying to implement a post-COVID in-person gathering.

1. A strong committee is worth its weight in gold. The NYC planning committee has been phenomenal, hard-working, and engaged in the process from the beginning. Having a strong committee on board is what kept this interminably long planning phase moving forward. Assign overarching tasks to sub-committees, make the expectations clear, and allow committee members to take ownership of their respective tasks. We took that approach, which avoided overburdening any one person or sub-committee and got things done efficiently.

2. Explore all your options. We had hoped to return to NYU, but with all higher ed institutions closed to outside groups this year, we had to explore alternatives. Our return to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a past conference host, is at least a familiar one, which has made much of the planning process easier amidst all the other uncertainties we’ve encountered. That willingness to explore the options has helped our conversations to think further outside the box – or off the island, as it were – for next year.

3. Keep your focus on the content. If you’re going to plan an event in the most expensive city in the world (this may be a slight exaggeration, but then again maybe not), doing everything you want will cost more than you can possibly fathom. We had to scale back our expectations, and then scale them back again, and then a little bit more. The bottom line was that we didn’t want to overburden attendees for a one-day event, so we couldn’t include all the frills and niceties that we wanted to. The content is the draw, and we focused on that as the most important part of the day.

4. Be open to changing the plan. I can’t even count how many iterations of the plan we’ve had since March 2020. Now that we’ve settled into what ought to be the final version, I don’t consider all those other plans a wasted effort. Alternate plans are just good ideas for some other event, at another time. (Someday, we are going to hire that taco truck!)

5. Don’t panic! More than once, my co-chair – the cool, calm, and collected Mélissa Malebranche – has had to talk me down off a ledge. Her ability to stop, absorb whatever new information-bomb has just fallen into our laps, think it through, and then thoughtfully respond, was an effective foil to my tendency to nosedive from information-bomb to immediate response. It has been a good reminder to not panic, even when a situation might seem to call for panic, because sometimes things are out of our control, and panic doesn’t help anything. (Monkeypox? Really??) What does help is going back to #4 and rethinking the plan, then doing what you can within the new constraints you find yourself under.

6. Embrace the opportunity. Ultimately, working on this year’s conference has been incredibly satisfying, and a wonderful way to get to know people outside our respective spheres. These are amazing people, talented professionals, and a network I am grateful for. Serving on a conference committee is more than just sitting at a registration table handing out name tags. It’s a painless way to take on a volunteer role – in whatever capacity suits you best – and I hope more people dip their toe in and give it a try.

Registration for the NYC conference is still open, and I encourage anyone who’s on the fence about attending to give it a try. It is also not too early to volunteer for next year’s planning committee and engage in the conversation about where and when the conference will be held, and what the focus will be. Would your institution be a good host site? Come join us and let’s talk about it!

Stephanie has worked in the field of institutional advancement for over 20 years. Prior to joining SUNY Empire State College in 2013, she worked at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY and Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. She began her career in advancement as a grant writer, and has managed special events in addition to writing, scholarship management, financial reporting, and “other duties as assigned.”

She has an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY and a graduate degree in American History from the University at Albany in Albany, NY. She has participated on the Northeast Regional Conference planning committee since 2016.

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