Adventures in Pittsburgh Part 1

This entry is co-written by Gretchen and Anita aka your trusty Member Development Staff.

We are in Pittsburgh for the Mideast Regional Leadership Conference in addition to working with our Pitt chapter on creating a Strategic Plan. Our adventure begins on Thursday afternoon in a car in Indy. During our 7 hour drive we laugh, we jam to Rascal Flatts, share stories, and eat DQ Blizzards (we both agree the Cookie Jar ones are really good - so get yourself one). We arrive to our hotel around 11pm exhausted after being lost in Pittsburgh for about 30 minutes. This is not the last time it happens, as we get lost each time we leave the hotel.

Friday we get lost going to Duquesne and after an hour (when it should have been 5 minutes) we arrive. Campus is beautiful. The first day goes well. We have guys from Duquesne, St. Francis, Pitt, and Carnegie Mellon. The troubles begin on Saturday morning. While we were up and going by 6:30 am the brothers were sleeping and continued to do so much longer than they should have. This caused all but 5 people to be late - many were over 20 minutes late. Being on time was one of 2 rules and it was already broken. Morning sessions went well and then we head to the Pirates game for a brotherhood outing. The second rule was that it's a substance free weekend and unfortunately, not everybody decided to uphold that rule either. Word of the day was disappointing and it only got worse when members were sleeping during programs after dinner.

Sunday was a much better day. Pretty much everybody was on time and participation was high for the last few sessions. We finished at 11 and everybody departed home. By noon, Gretchen and I were back at the hotel and googling Olive Garden. We had some time before we had to be at Pitt and wanted a good meal in the suburbs. Bingo! 15 minutes away from one. We hop on the series of highways that google tells us to take. 50 minutes later we're worried that we are about to see signs saying "Welcome to West Virginia" so we turn around. Now it's 2pm and we're hungry and really crabby. Then suddenly, en route back to where we think Pittsburgh might be we see something. What is that? A sign... for a street... that is somewhere in the directions to Olive Garden. Cheers abound in the car and we turn thinking "This can't get any worse." Then we find another street on our directions and turn. Next thing you know we question if it's really an Olive Garden in front of us or just a mirage. We enter, we stuff ourselves, and we return to the car. The best part of this story is that it's right off the highway that runs to the hotel and it took us 10 minutes to get back. We then decide that we hate driving in Pittsburgh. Throughout our time here the roads change direction, change names, signs are less than abundant, and we get... lost a-lot.

Mideast Regional Conference

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

The Mideast Regional Leadership Conference will be held in Pittsburgh, September 18-20, 2009 and will be hosted by the Pennsylvania Alpha Xi chapter at Duquesne University. The President at Duquesne, alumnus Lenny Chan, and I have been working hard to secure room blocks, finalize the training schedule, select facilitators, and organize a very fun brotherhood outing for all attendees. The training will provide two separate training tracks on Friday night and Saturday; one will be the (iServe) Institute and the other will be for collegiate members. The two groups will converge on Sunday morning for training that was requested by both alumni and collegians. It's going to be a great Regional Conference that is being planned based on the needs and requests of members in the Mideast Region who responded to the survey which was sent in August. Tell your advisors, alumni, mentors, brothers, anybody who works with your collegiate chapter to mark their calendars for this weekend. More information, including cost and an agenda will be made public as soon as it's completed. Post a comment if you have questions about the event - we love to hear your thoughts!

Midwest Regional Conference in Review

Kansas. I love Kansas. It makes me think of "The Wizard of Oz" which is my favorite movie in the world. The trip began with some major difficulties during my layover at Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP). Let's just say it involved lots of snow, sick babies, and being on a plane for 8 hours and only in the air for 1 of those hours. Yeah - it was as miserable as it sounds.

Fast forward to Friday evening. Alyson and I stop by the Kansas Iota chapter house to drop off breakfast and pop for the guys since everybody is staying at the house. The house is impressively clean and the guys are hilarious! They gave us a tour and were so welcoming. We hung out there for about an hour before heading to the hotel.

Saturday went really well. Ben DeLost presented on Alumni Development first. Then, Aly Campbell, from Alpha Sigma Alpha, presented on philanthropy and fundraising. I stepped out to check on lunch and when I came back I could hear the guys roaring laughter from down the hallway. Then we did some recruitment training and then lunch. After lunch we reviewed the Accreditation website and did an interactive recruitment activity. We ended the day going back to the chapter house and watching "Miracle" and then the guys utilized scenes and quotes from the movie to fix mock chapter issues in small groups. We had dinner at the house shortly after and then everybody stayed at the house to hang out and enjoy the brotherhood.

Overall it was a great conference. We had a colony, Founders Cup winners, and a diverse but strong grouping of chapters were represented. It was really special for everybody to see Mizzou in attendance. Though they had to eave early, all of the other groups in attendance kept mentioning how happy they were to see some guys from Mizzou and that they seemed like really great guys. It was refreshing to see all of these groups getting along and spending time together.

Great Lakes Regional Conference Review

The Great Lakes Regional Conference was last weekend up at Purdue. What a great time! Kevin Lampe might be one of the most fantastic brothers of Phi Kap that I have ever met. I mean he has passion and vision like I've never experienced before. I had the privilege of hanging out with him much of Friday which was great fun. It's exciting just to be around him and hear his stories - personal, professional, and fraternal.

Saturday started off with a Keynote and alumni development programming from Kevin. It's great to watch the guys watch him because you can see the respect. They are so engaged in what he's saying. Then I did a track of recruitment training. It's so hard to do recruitment training because I only had 50 minutes and I could talk for hours about recruitment. We covered just the basics - NIC 5 Step Model, how to have a conversation, how to meet people, tips on non-verbal communication, etc. I love teaching guys to take things out of context. I feel like they get it. It's boring to hear people talk about "Fraternity" for hours so I always love using analogies or making them think outside of "Fraternity." We talked about how recruitment is like dating. Love that. Next was lunch. A Purdue brother owns this great place in West Lafayette and that's where we got food from. We had hot dogs (which I normally think are gross but these were actually really good) and fries. It was nice to have down time and meet some new guys.
After lunch was Accreditation. It's factual and boring for the guys but I sure am excited for it! That program is my baby! We (me, Rob, WPI, Ben DeLost, Brett Breir, Dan Bureau) put so much time and energy into that thing. I can't wait to see how successful it is. After that we had more recruitment training. This time it was a role play activity to help the guys learn how to troubleshoot difficult questions in conversation. This is one of my favorite activities to do with a group of people. I used to do this with the girls all the time but doing it with guys is even better because they're not fake. The last activity for the day was watching the movie "Miracle" and small group activities.

Saturday night. Where to begin? To be honest the outcome of this evening was disappointing. I did not attend, however the chapter was aware that the evening social function was to be alcohol-free. It was not. In addition to drinking, items were stolen from the Purdue chapter house. I am shocked that brothers would disrespect me by drinking and disrespect the Purdue brothers by stealing. It's a shame really. I hope we don't have the same issues at the Midwest event this weekend.