The Whole UIA Together

We just returned from Tempe, AZ, where we held our first in-person convening in three years, and I am elated to share that it was the best convening we have ever done!

Admittedly, I was nervous heading into it. Over the past three years, the UIA, our central team, and our campuses have grown and evolved significantly. As a result of typical turnover and transition happening across higher education, nearly all of our central team, most of the campus team members, and our entire squad of fellows had never been to a UIA convening before. Adding six new campuses in the past two years only made this first convening more important (and potentially all the more complex).

The challenge of this first event was to seamlessly merge the past and the future. I wondered if we could bring our unique and vibrant in-person culture “back,” using what worked well in the past, while understanding the new realities people were bringing with them and making every new campus and member feel like they had ownership of the experience – all while keeping people safe. This was no small task.

In the end, by inviting the various communities represented in the UIA to co-create the experience, we – the whole UIA together – delivered an event that was the best convening we have ever had (a sentiment I heard again and again).

In the spirit of sharing and diffusion (because we want all gatherings across higher education to improve so good ideas spread faster), here are a few things we gleaned from this experience that may be helpful as you engage in more in-person activities:

Don’t fight biology: Make agenda and logistics decisions based on what will give people the most energy. No sitting for 8 hours, always order high tops around the perimeter for people who use standing desks, and select food and snacks based on their energy output (avoid the carby buffet of baked goods if you don’t want people feeling sluggish, adapt to people’s physical needs with time zones and starting at 8 am is mean.
Energy in and out: The first words, experience, and direction you provide set the tone for the entire experience, be intentional and encourage them to take ownership of what they get out of the event, give them agency and pay attention to the aspects of the experience that will be “energy giving vs. energy sucking” (a great frame to use on your calendar to edit meetings as well!).
Set the vibe: Sound, smell, attire, ambiance, and amount of light exposure in the room is all-important to how it is experienced.
Be intentional about every aspect. I’m not saying spend a zillion on backdrops, you’d be surprised what you can accomplish with some uplighting on a white sheet.
Make it fun: People are tired of the two-dimensional experience of zoom, they are looking to experience things they can only do in person. Create experiences that are lighthearted and playful if you want them to be creative and generative. For our event, I used personal resources to order a collection of inflatable costumes in case people wanted to wear them- they made people laugh and reminded them they were in a place where we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Recognize the impact of Covid on how we learn: People cannot sit and just be talked at all day, instead aim for a 50/50 split of listening vs talking to peers. Whatever you do, I strongly recommend ordering fidget toys to give them something to help them stay focused in the event. We put these out and didn’t know if people would use them, turns out - they never put them down.
Think outside the box: We used a rock paper scissors tournament as an intermission energizer using the song “eye of the tiger”. It was short, energizing, fun, and a simple way to set the next speaker up for success when the afternoon lull would have normally set in.
Indoors/outdoors: Find a location that lets you eat meals outside if you can. We targeted locations that would enable all meals to be outdoors and that was a helpful factor in determining our final selection.
Past vs present: Don’t try and recreate who you were, instead focus on who you are now and what you’ve learned. This exercise feels small but there are major decisions we are punting to the past rather than recognizing who we are and giving ourselves a chance to build something truly remarkable that serves people in this moment.

Check out some fun pictures from our convening below! Have you learned something from your first gathering in a while? What is missing from this list that you would suggest we incorporate?

Bridget Burns
Executive Director
University Innovation Alliance

“You can’t always do things perfectly. But if you do things with as much thoughtfulness as you can before you let them go out the door, people always remember that."

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