PRSSA National Conference was incredible. Here's why.

Post by Matt Culbertson

There are two buzzwords to describe the 2010 PRSSA National Conference: networking and professional development — both hit on the career benefits of attending. I had high expectations, and even I was by surprised by the incredible atmosphere conference provided. And having the conference held in Washington, D.C.? Yep, this was a spectacular weekend.

For the record, these were a few of my expectations for conference. Among them: I wanted to meet some of the future PR leaders of America — I wasn’t disappointed.

A few people who stood out:

• Tony Bradley, a Newcastle, England-based PR executive who told me he regularly travels to the PRSA International Conference on his own dime. Why? A lot of reasons, including that he may meet up with a college student — who happens to be a future PR exec looking to expand to England — which would be a great business contact in 10 years.
• Simon Oh & Alex Priest: after randomly meeting, we mutually recognized each other from Twitter, which was hilarious — especially because I don’t think we ever tweeted each other before conference. (I met them on separate days.) To be fair, this same situation probably happened to me 10 times, but Simon and Alex stand out for how non-awkward the introductions were.
• Stephanie Takach, who basically gave me the Sparknotes version of the intersection of public relations and marketing. She also had some great stories from her work with Tylenol.
• Michelle Olson, my boss at Olson Communications, who I got to hang out with at a Bucca Di Beppo for our PRSSA Western District social. OK, so I get to see my boss three times a week, but it was fantastic to meet up with her and other Phoenix PRSA folks and exchange PR war stories.

If you’ll be a PR student next year, I can’t encourage you enough to attend conference. Any conference will have academic and professional benefits — getting a bunch of people from the same industry together in a conference setting is one of the best forms of groupthink. But the PRSSA National Conference is especially unique: there are 1,000 PR students from around the country, and it’s alongside the PRSA International Conference, which features some of the top professionals from around the country. So if you add in some of the brightest current minds in PR plus some of the brightest future minds, it’s a pretty unique experience.

I came away from conference with new ideas for our PRSSA chapter at Arizona State, as well as for my career path — including a lot of fresh enthusiasm and optimism for this industry. The professional development sessions were very nicely hosted and featured some of the best of the best. Props to the conference sponsors and organizers, including Ashley Wolos, who I met at the Chapter Presidents luncheon. Will I be back next year for the PRSA side of things? I’ll say almost certainly. (Note: David and Sam of David and Sam PR made a great case to our chapter about managing expectations.)