The 2010 Minary Conference on Alumni Education, Engagement and Travel takes place November 1–4 in Southern California, its first new location since the late 1980s.
Another change is a tweak to the name: Minary has always been the "conference on Alumni Education." Now it's Alumni Education, Engagement & Travel, to better reflect the needs and interests of attendees.
Program
Speakers include Reed College's Mike Teskey on crisis communication, Brett Thompson of Stanford discussing trends in alumni travel, and C. Thomas Faulders II of the University of Virginia, with a keynote on What Engagement Professionals Can Learn from the Corporate World. The full agenda is online and there are numerous small breakout discussions, plus roundtables. And of course, plenty of time built in for enjoying the facilities and location, which is a very beautiful area.
Meanwhile, I am pleased to be included on the conference agenda, speaking in three installments. I will give a talk on "the three dimensions of alumni relationships," lead an informal fireside chat about future trends in alumni engagement, and will close with a detailed discussion of several "social network use cases" from the matrix that I blogged in July.
Location
Minary's previous venue in northern California was far removed from the distractions of big city hotels and traditional conference centers. But for some, Stanford Sierra Camp was hard to get to (almost two hours' drive from Reno, and more than two hours from Sacramento).
So to shake things up a bit, this year's planning committee has moved the program to UCLA's beautiful Lake Arrowhead Conference Center. The facility is quiet and removed from distractions, but quite accessible from Los Angeles.
Lake Arrowhead is a two hour drive from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and Ontario Airport (ONT) is just an hour away. And having the greater L.A. area relatively nearby should allow alumni officers to set up events or alumni visits as part of the same trip, making it easier to budget and more effective overall.
Registration is available online:
Minary Conference Registration site
You can also visit the general Conference site for additional information: Minary info site.
History
The name "Minary" comes from the meeting's original location, Dartmouth College's Minary Center in New Hampshire. Colleague Andrew Gossen reported recently that the original Minary facility is shutting down after 40 years.
I hope to see you at the new Minary Conference on November 1!
Panorama of Lake Arrowhead winter scene by John Colby, via Creative Commons. There won't be snow there on November 1...it should be mild Southern California fall weather.