TriState TRiO Conference in LaCrosse Wisconsin

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This week, I attended a TriState TRiO Conferendce in LaCrosse Wisconsin.  The three states involved were Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.  I drove there with my co-workers.  The area around LaCrosse is very pretty with some rocky hills along the freeway and beautiful river walks.

The conference was packed with activities leaving us only with 15 minute breaks between the sessions.  It was from 8am to about 9pm+.  I was wiped in the evening and did not stay for the fun dance and auction fundraiser.  I bid on some silent auction and did not win anything.  In fact, I was trying to spend some money, but had no luck.  All the stores in the area were closed at the times that I stopped there.  They were opening at 10, then closed for lunch until 3pm and then totally closed at 5:30pm.  I made three attempts and all of the attempts were at wrong time.

I was one of the presenters and I was disappointed that my presentation was one of the last one’s.  I was nervous and anxious all of the time before I actually finished my presentation.  I wished it would be on the first day, so I could present and relax, but no!

From my presentation experience, I learned that I can do it.  I was calm and my voice did not shake at all as it used to happen before.  I got good evaluations. 

I presented on the existential approach and its concepts as I use it with my clients in my office.  Some of the information was too philosophical for the audience and I would need to re-do this presentation using simple examples.  Also, I would need to involve more audience participation.  Or I think I scared them with the Existential Shock exercise.  This group was too quite, I had only four people that had comments out of 30.  I was relieved when it was over. 

My co-worker presented on Coach Approach and I have learned a lot from her.  The coach approach involves a lot of very good questions such as: “What do you think you need or want? When you have that, what will you have?”  This question needs to be repeated at least 3 times, Go for the heart of the matter, and listen for values. 

Also, I really liked an exercise when client would rate their happiness or life satisfaction on a 1-10 scale (1 is bad and 10 is great) and write down why it is on that number.  Then client must write a number of 1-10 where they wish to be.  Then, client must write at least 3 realistic action steps that will bring him/her closer to the desired number.

 She also explained the accountability study, when client must be accountable to someone for doing the steps.  If one is accountable to report to someone by Friday 4pm, 95% chance this client would follow through on the action plan and homework.

 I attended other interesting sessions that were fun and gave me more ideas and resources.  I will write more about one of the presentations separately.

One presentation was on “A complaint free world”  Presenters work with high school students and during summer program there are always a few students that keep complaining about everything and bringing down the rest of the participants.  This curriculum from this website was very helpful and fun.  The presenters use it themselves in their office and try to limit their complaining attitude.

Another presentation was on career counseling.  Most of the information presented was not knew to me, however, this one website I was not aware of.  It is a great resource from University of Minnesota Duluth Career services website “What Can I Do With This Major?”

Overall, everything was great at the conference.  One of my goals was also to get to know people that looked familiar to me and remember their names and faces.