After a three-year pandemic hiatus, KC IABC reconnected at this full-day event.
By Anna Goebel
Writer’s Note: This post was not written by AI / ChatGPT, but it could have been…
I have been attending KC IABC’s professional development events since I found out about the organization fresh out of college in 2010. This year’s Business Communicators Summit (BCS) had some familiar faces and themes from past events, and some starkly different topics as well. Notably, communication around the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and subsequent, turn-on-its-head way of doing business and working, as well as the rapid deployment and usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools made widely available to the public in the past few months.
Let’s start at the beginning, though, for a recap on the jammed packed day of programming, and did I forget to mention…? This was the first in-person BCS since before the pandemic. It was also the first time many attendees (including speakers) have been to an in-person conference in that same time period. It made all the little things like smiles, dressing professionally, causal conversations, coffee and swag bags all the sweeter.
The Keynote of the event was D. Mark Schumann, IABC Fellow, who kicked off the presentation as a self-described “person helping people during the unscripted parts of their lives.” And that is when the mesmerizing presentation unfolded. Collectively, you could feel the emotion in the air as Schumann described his experience working for the CEO of the hospital responsible for taking victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. He then carefully moved onto another sensitive, more recent event and guided the room in how people, businesses and the cultures they represent function after the COVID-19 pandemic repercussions.
The way he spoke and the way he involved the audience in taking time to think and write their own responses in his provided worksheet was just the ease back into the professional conference events we needed. In simple terms, he helped the audience think of better ways to help their company leaders communicate, behave and develop. In a deeper connection, he helped the audience with leading their culture, which he defined as gratitude and determination to change the world.
““If we can’t lead culture, we cannot change the culture.””
BCS is known for its breakout sessions. That makes it hard to know which one is the right one to attend, knowing you will miss out on something great in other rooms. That said, I will cover a few key things I took away from the presentations and overall experience throughout the day.
Firstly, AI is a big thing. It isn’t going away and as scary and unknown as it seems, we have an opportunity (and maybe soon a responsibility?) as marketing and communications professionals to get familiar with it and use it just like any other tool in our toolbox, as they say. Dan Barker was just the right speaker to talk about AI and marketing. His company is built on AI and he even uses AI as his sales people. Spoiler: Some of his customers didn’t even know the sales “people” were actually just AI.
This was one of the more genuinely interesting Q&A sessions of the day. People in the audience had a lot of questions, concerns and fascinations. Barker handled the questions with the kind of real human touch the presentation required. He didn’t shy from that fact that the machine (e.g. ChatGPT) is only as smart as you make it when you train it. Stay with me…
Barker gave a homework assignment for the people in the room to try out ChatGPT over the weekend. His tips were as follows:
1. Train the model – educate the system on your organization and what it does so it can apply that to its responses.
2. Be specific – if the AI doesn’t get the response right, tell it! Direct it more with more specific details.
3. Define the audience – this again helps the AI learn. Also, label your conversation tabs in ChatGPT so you can jump around and go back to certain ones that pertain to a specific topic.
4. Have a clear Call to Action (CTA) – Write with the end in mind.
Most importantly, the biggest takeaway from the session was to not be scared of the technology and think it will take your job or create bad content. We are all used to bad content out on social media now, so hopefully your instincts will kick in if you see bad content being generated by AIs. Embrace the unknown and try it out. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Who knows, you may need to be the AI communications expert in your company.
““AI can make organizations smarter. Smarter organizations can make more money.””
Networking was rapid fire in between sessions, but the best tips on networking came over the lunch hour with Alana Muller, owner of Coffee Lunch Coffee. Let’s be real, networking only comes naturally to a few people and the rest of us are awkwardly trying to think of what to say next. Well, Alana provided the group with some great takeaways, of which the main lesson was to approach networking with a positive attitude: “I am a master networker.” The other tips were to: prepare, reach out to your own network for support, be generous and say thank you (maybe even in written form).
“ “Connections, community and belonging = Networking. Who can say they don’t like connections, community and belonging?””
There wasn’t an empty seat in the session on Building a Brand. Maybe it was the title ("What Companies Are Getting Wrong About Building Brands and Organizational Trust"), maybe it was the promise of research and national data on brand that drew people in. Either way, the people got a great dose of how to build a brand – and how to build a good survey for that matter. Kurt Bartolich, and Cory Scheer expertly navigated through a complicated topic and drilled down to the true hidden gems of the presentation.
The resounding theme was loyalty and consistency trumped all when it came to brands. The advice was to focus on clear messages, not clever ones (pump the breaks insurance commercials) and in a crisis, don’t respond rashly.
Pro Tip: People care about brands that they can trust. Trust is made up of competence, the ability to problem solve and capacity to care for others. Trust can be exercised through a company’s people, policy and practices.
Overall, it was wonderful to be back in the conference setting hearing relevant case studies, real-world experiences and actionable lessons I could use in my own day-to-day work. The good news is that you don’t have to wait until next year to get more professional development from KC IABC. Each month the chapter hosts a professional development event, and there are sometimes free, more causal events sprinkled in throughout the year. If anything, I hope you take away from this blog that it is time to get out again and find opportunities to meet and learn from others. You might stumble across a new chapter in your professional life!
Anna Goebel is the Director of Marketing for Integrated Roadways and responsible for KC IABC’s email communication for the 2022-2023 board year.
