Behind the Scenes at the Annual Conference
Anyone attending the annual conference will
recognize the friendly faces of the Foundation
for Long Term Care Conference staff. But
the success of the conference involves
LeadingAge New York policy and governance,
membership and marketing, finance, IT,
administrative and executive staff; member
governance and committee volunteers;
industry partners and vendors.
Planning for the conference starts more
than a year ahead, with site selection and
negotiations with the conference center and
hotel. This is quickly followed by a call for
proposals for session topics, which are vetted
by the LeadingAge NY policy staff and the FLTC
education committee.
The FLTC conference staff assembles the
sessions as you would a jigsaw puzzle,
developing a program that appeals to attendees
from all of our service lines and balances their
need for up-to-the-minute information with
leadership and inspirational programming, and
everything in between. A program is written, an
app is developed, the tradeshow floor is mapped
out and menus are selected.
Marketing keeps the membership in the know
on the excitement in store for the coming year
as well as registration deadlines. There are “a
thousand and one” details and decisions – but
like Olympic athletes, the conference team
coordinates it all and makes it seem effortless.
We are always striving to improve the
conference experience for our attendees. FLTC
staff attend other organization’s conferences
to obtain the latest information on facilitating
learning, educational approaches, and the
acquisition of capability. This results in
introducing new formats such as our popular
Learning Lounges and a focus on more
interactive sessions.
Last year staff did a comparison of seven
LeadingAge states conferences to see how
New York would measure up. We found that
compared to similarly sized conferences, we
offered more sessions in our concurrent session
slots, invested more resources in higher profile
speakers, and spent more on food and beverage.
On the downside, our registration fees were
on the high side. When presented with these
findings, the LeadingAge NY board agreed that
we should roll back our pricing to 2006 levels.
We were delighted when we had a higher than
expected turnout at this year’s conference.
We are always eager to hear from our attendees
and exhibitors on how to make the annual
conference even better. Please contact Kathy
Gormley, director of confere