Amplify A|E|C Pay it Forward Grant - Amanda Haven
Posted on Oct. 18, 2023 / Event Recap / Subscribe 0
At the annual SMPS DC Summer Celebration event in June, I had the honor of being selected for the 2023 Pay It Forward Grant. The Pay It Forward Grant recognizes one active chapter member who has made a significant commitment to supporting the chapter and who can “pay the conference experience forward” to other chapter members who are not able to attend.
Amanda Haven celebrating SMPS’s 50th anniversary at Amplify A|E|C 2023
It was my first time in Austin, TX and the city and conference did not disappoint! Except for maybe the heat. Austin had a whopping 106-degree heat index throughout the conference. Thankfully all the sessions and events were indoors!
This year’s Amplify A|E|C Conference focused on the topics of leadership, marketing strategy, social media, and artificial intelligence (AI). With more than 50 sessions over three days, I along with more than 800 other attendees had the opportunity to learn, network, and grow with colleagues and peers in the A/E/C industry. In addition to the breakout sessions, four keynote speakers discussed topics such as business growth through social media and future thinking.
As a small business owner supporting small to large businesses with proposal management and business development, I gravitated toward the sessions about business growth, branding, and creating business efficiencies through the use of AI. It was hard to choose the concurrent sessions to attend but thankfully I was able to lean on my fellow SMPS DC attendees for information from other sessions. While all the sessions were great, the following three sessions stood out to me because not only did they offer actionable tips that will help my business grow but also challenged the way I currently view future possibilities.
Before the conference even started, I was pretty much fangirling over the fact that Richard Van Der Blom was going to be speaking at Amplify in not one but two sessions! I have been following Richard for a while now on LinkedIn for tips related to developing my LI strategy and his sessions at the conference were everything and more. His keynote session focused on practical advice to help your company or personal brand succeed on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool to leverage but as Richard noted, you have to do more than login and occasionally post. Being successful on LinkedIn means taking a methodical approach to how you boost your engagement. While the keynote was a high-level take on the who, what, where, when, and why of using LinkedIn, his follow-up breakout session went more in-depth on the how. His discussion incorporated how to create a strategy on what content you should be sharing on LinkedIn, how to nurture relationships on the platform, and how to convert this all to new leads. There was such a wealth of information shared in these sessions and I can’t wait to implement it, then see the results.
Keynote Speaker, Richard Van Der Blom
Rounding out my top three was the session by Kelly Tsao on future thinking. Her keynote, Future Thinking in an Uncertain World: A Lightweight Method for Strategic Foresight, really caught me off guard. I admittedly went into this session with my pessimistic judgy hat on but by the end of the session, I was yearning for more information. I even tracked her down at the end of the session to tell her how much I loved it. She did an amazing job at describing what futurism is (and what it’s not) and how we can step outside liminal thinking to deduce through strategic forecasting that there can be other possibilities other than our own beliefs. Her presentation and speaking style made it easy to digest such a complex topic. It also emphasized to me to never miss out on an opportunity to learn at a conference, you never know when you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
A close runner-up was the session Level Up Your Communications Strategy - Take a Holistic Approach by Ali Panditrao and Maria Rodgers of SMPS New York. Ali and Maria shared how firms don’t have to wait until a project is complete, which could be years after an RFP, to create a communications plan. By developing a strategic communications plan after an RFP win but before the project starts, you can create a strategic and holistic plan that maximizes the biggest bang for the company.
I’m grateful to SMPS DC for providing me with the opportunity to attend Amplify A|E|C 2023 and I’m looking forward to sharing more post-conference information with all of you in the upcoming months through the distribution of resources and conference knowledge-sharing from myself and other chapter members who were able to attend. Be on the lookout for more information in upcoming chapter emails. Not sure if SMPS DC has the right email on file for you? You can make edits to your SMPS contact information by updating your member profile on smps.org.
More About the Pay It Forward Grant
Members of the SMPS Washington, D.C. chapter with a minimum of 2 years of continuous membership in SMPS are eligible to apply for the grant. The call for grant applications goes out to all members every spring for an opportunity to attend the upcoming SMPS annual conference. The grant covers the full registration for the conference and also provides a stipend for travel and lodging costs.
Amplify A|E|C 2024
The 2024 Amplify experience will be held on July 24-26, 2024, at the Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City.
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