First, there is more planning to do! This year, we had an AWHONN Emerging Leader in our Section. Shannon Stalbird had her project which was having the first ever Student Symposium at an AWHONN Convention! The Florida Section has been doing this successfully for quite a few years at our Section Conferences. Our "Shannons" as we call them, Shannon #1 Morse and Shannon #2 Stalbird worked together to come up with a plan to present to National AWHONN and we were given a GO! They got the very best Florida Section Leaders together by teleconference and came up with a plan. We developed our sessions, came up with speakers and decided to do a lot of skits that our leaders would act out for our students/new grads. We had to come up with registration process and work with the Convention Center for the room and how we would set up, food, etc. Our amazing Leaders came in on Saturday night and set up for our conference and gave up time to get ready for our wonderful students. We had our Student Symposium on Sunday morning and it was a huge success!! Check out our Facebook page to see some of the skits! We used FB Live to record them! https://www.facebook.com/FloridaAWHONN/
A photo of all the students and new grads that attended the 1st EVER Student Symposium at an AWHONN Convention!! The Florida Leaders who helped with this are all scattered in there too!
Another first was AWHONN National asked us to help with the first ever Student Ambassadors! We were able to have students help with giving convention goers directions, helping with the booths, helping with all kinds of activities during the whole convention. The Florida Section Leaders interviewed students/new grads and picked out the best of the best! We hope you met some of them at Convention!
You also get invited to some activities that you have never attended before. Like a VIP reception that you have to wear cocktail attire too.... I have never been that fancy at an AWHONN Convention before. Luckily, I have become friends with AWHONN VP of Nursing Liz Rochin over the last year or so and I was able to make a call first and do the "what are you wearing?" call! Thanks Liz! This was a very fun night meeting the AIM Sponsors and thanking them. Here is a picture of us at the reception. We cleaned up good don't you think?
Sunday afternoon, I spoke on a panel with some pretty incredible people! Our session was called "Are You Prepared? Disaster Planning: Fires, Floods and Hurricanes" Let me tell you, speaking on Sunday is the way to go! No stressing, just get it over with! I will remember this if I am ever fortunate enough to speak at Convention again!
You meet the most incredible vendors when you are working on Section conferences and at National Convention. It was cool when one of my vendor friends, GE Healthcare, asked me to do a short video clip about their Monica Novii. I said yes and here is a photo of my film debut. That has definitely never happened before!
Because I am a Section Leader and know the importance of "being there" I also talked my employer to "be there" as a vendor and we had the best recruiting team there from Lee Health! Thank you! And, if you want to work with an amazing Women's and Neonatal team, call us! www.leehealth.org
The President's Party was fun with all these great Florida Section members and Leaders!
Then there is a Section event to plan and our Florida Leaders did not disappoint! We planned a Pajama Party!! This involved working with the hotel and arranging the event months before it happened and then gathering the Leaders together to plan the activities for the night. As usual, Florida Leaders did not disappoint! We had the Student Ambassadors providing aromatherapy hand massages, get the baby on the breast game, Jenga, shadow puppets, pictures, prizes and more. It was great to meet members from across Florida during the party! Thanks to Hologic for sponsoring our party! ALSO, thank you for all the AWHONN National Headquarters people who joined us!
Oh, we also sold AWHONN Florida tee-shirts! This didn't happen on it's own either. Thank you to our Lee Health uniform store who was able to help us with the tee-shirt order!
Thank you to my partner, Pat DuRant, Florida Secretary/Treasurer, for all your help during this Convention!
So, Wednesday it ended....That's a wrap! I learned a lot more about leadership during the Convention and what is expected of a Section Leader. Thank you #AWHONN for a fabulous 2018 Convention! Thank you to all the vendors and speakers! We learned so much! We connected! We re-charged our passion! We are now off to our homes do great things for our women, babies and their families! #NotOnMyWatch #SpeakUp
Florida Section is indeed, THE BEST!
