Day 25

Today I attended Career Boot Camp at the Ottawa Convention Centre. There were over 500 people in attendance, I really enjoyed the day and learned a lot from the sessions.

The “Engaging our Stakeholders” panel in which I was a presenter went well; it was in an ignite style format where panelists are given five minutes to speak about experiences with stakeholder engagement, accompanied by 20 slides. Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds, and slides are automatically advanced. The Ignite format is similar to Pecha Kucha, which features 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. The presentations are meant to "ignite" and generate awareness and to stimulate thought and action on the subjects presented. It definitely can be challenging as you would like to elaborate further on topics but the 15 seconds only provides you a glimpse in time – like a mini elevator pitch. They then had a questions and answers session with the audience and webcast participants following the presentations.

I met so many engaged, dynamic and enthusiastic public servants today. I wish I had have been able to meet them all but sadly it would have taken a full day of networking breaks to meet all 500. We had lunch at the Exchange Pub, it was nice to be able to eat a “hamburger” with the group, the whole time I kept thinking I was eating meat instead of a veggie burger. It was the most realistic looking burger I ever had, and after 4 years vegetarian, I completely forget how a hamburger tastes.

Tonight we went out for an Italian supper with our FYN group and our Champion Graham Flack. It was a really great evening, lots of stimulating conversations and it was so nice to meet everyone face-to- face as we are so used to connecting via teleconference and email. Sadly we missed the Career Boot Camp post-event as it was all wrapped up by the time we finished supper.

Grateful for such an incredible day of learning, networking and fun!  I took tons of notes and can’t wait to read through the golden nuggets of information and various quotes from our speakers today. The stories were very inspirational. A huge thanks to the fabulous @ CBC_CDC organizers and volunteers who made today a tremendous success.

Check out Robert Emmons: The Power of Gratitude video: