CPAESS Admins Sail Far at UCAR's Annual Administrative Conference
On October 23 UCAR held it’s annual Administrative Conference, where each year, any staff member performing administrative duties is invited to attend. This took place both in person at the Mesa Lab and virtually. The theme for this event was "Sailing the 4 C's - Collaboration, Communication, Connection, Community." By focusing on these four key elements, the aim was to enhance our collective ability to work together, communicate more effectively, forge meaningful connections, and foster a sense of community within our organization.
CPAESS staff showed up in force to the conference with two of our administrative members playing important roles. Joel Lampe, a CPAESS Administrator I on our Human Resources team was a member of the Steering Committee; and David Stuebing, also a a CPAESS Administrator I on our Human Resources team presented.
CPAESS' Joel Lampe in the Summer of 2023 at a Business Shared Services (BSS) Retreat during the tour at NCAR's Research Aviation Facility (RAF).
Joel helped to plan and execute the conference. “This was my second year serving on the committee. We started meeting bi-weekly early in the calendar year to begin planning and then met weekly in the few months leading up to the conference. As members of the Steering Committee, our tasks included identifying a theme for the conference, researching and securing a keynote speaker, brainstorming session topics and identifying facilitators for each session, developing an agenda, sending out conference invitations and communications, identifying and purchasing conference swag and speaker gifts, planning the conference logistics, and of course, executing the two-day conference.”
David explained “This year I presented at the Administrative Conference in a session titled ‘Stolen Focus.’ The session was primarily a review of the concepts in the book by the same name, exploring 12 causes of our collectively diminishing capacity for sustained focus and the underlying reasons why these causes are aligned. The session also included an opportunity for discussion among the participants about our own experiences and what steps we might be able to take individually and as LCPOs or even as a larger organization to better enable us to focus on the important issues before us - including focusing on each other, along with the theme of the conference: Sailing the 4 C's: Collaboration, Communication, Connection, and Community.”
The conference was action packed covering topics like social media best practices, public speaking, project management, inclusive meetings, artificial intelligence and much more. See the agenda here.
Several members of our staff echoed Joel’s assessment of the conference “Overall, I felt the Fourth Annual Administrative Conference was a huge success!... It was wonderful to meet so many amazing administrative colleagues who support our organization's critically important mission. The conference keynote address and sessions were all super informative and engaging and I hope all of the attendees learned as much as I did!”
CPAESS' David Stuebing at Red Rocks when he was in Colorado at the 2023 UCP Business Shared Services (BSS) retreat.
David felt that “the conference was a wonderful experience, full of interesting presentations and topics shared by a variety of the highly capable, talented, and engaging staff we have at UCAR in administrative roles.” We couldn’t agree more. Thank you so much to all our staff who contributed and participated, and for the excellent work you do each and every day.
