To Lead

Leaders Hall

I’m impressed. It all began with leaving NAITSA in a rental, picking up the other execs and then traveling down to Hotel Alma in Calgary. Hotel Alma is located on the UofC campus. Their brand new hotel on res is pretty impressive I must admit. They even have small plastic keys, which were pretty neat. Hotel Alma was the headquarters for the 56 student leaders and 20 school represented. There was a mix of Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC, Ontario and even NS schools, colleges, and universities alike being represented and it was quite inspiring to be around some of the leaders of tomorrow; some of the people who are going to change the world, now that’s a good feeling. Below is a picture of the welcoming committee and my self.

Gallivan had a huge part in organizing and fund-raising this event, as well as U of C, SAIT, and Conestoga College. Together they delivered. Gallivan was there to meet us as we arrived with employees and also one of the founders, John Gallivan and that really sent me a message. They actually care. Not only with warm smiles and great service but we were all each given great leather notebook carrying cases which must have cost at least $80.

From there we were treated like royalty with welcoming beverages, maps of the city, free transit passes and cool bracelets.

Food

Here is an area, which in my opinion, could not have been better. We had sushi, roast beef, scrumptious potatoes, cool finger foods and complimentary drink tickets for each meal. The food was great and had a nice differential touch (again the sushi).

Fed breakfast, lunch and dinner, I don’t think there was a single meal that was sub-par. Except maybe the watery looking scrambled eggs the last morning lol. Below is a picture of what our table placements for our sessions looked like. Sorry I never thought of taking a picture of the food:(

Summer is often interesting around NAITSA. It’s also a bit odd. I’ve had a few students visit me, but the institution is usually very quiet. We don’t have any big summer events, our restaurant and bar, The Nest, is closed until late August, and there are generally less staff in the office on a regular day as people take their much needed vacations scattered throughout the summer. Don’t be fooled though… just because we seem to be quite quiet around here – we’re still working hard. The past little while I’ve been doing some work with the Faculty Development and Performance Evaluation task force and getting some major headway with this group of amazing and inspiring intellectuals. I’ve also been working on developing my SMART goals for the year ahead (I’ve got some pretty cool stuff on the go) as well as working with the Registrar and some others to get co-curricular transcripts implemented.

One of the most exciting things coming up for the four executives is the upcoming Leader’s Hall conference, a conference dedicated to the professional and personal development in student leaders across Canada. I’m mostly excited for this because I’ve never been to a national conference, so the networking opportunities are incredible. The other neat thing about this conference is that this is Leader’s Hall’s first conference. I have high hopes for the conference, especially with Gallivan (NAITSA’s Health and Dental provider) is sponsoring it.

Other than that, not much else is happening until mid July, when we head out to Red Deer for the ASEC Goal Setting Conference. I’ll post about that one closer to the date.

In the meantime, other than work, I’ve been enjoying both the rain and the heat that we’ve had for the past few weeks here in Edmonton, and I’ve been watching the World Cup like crazy. I’m one of those insane people who actually wakes up early to watch the games at 5:30 and 8:00 in the morning. I’m also insane in that I cheer for three different teams. I cheer for Italy because I’m Italian, and you can’t not cheer for your country of heritage. I also cheer for England because I’m also English, and again, I can’t not cheer for my other country of heritage. And finally, I cheer for Brazil for no real reason except that they’re an awesome team.

I know there’s one team that I’m NOT cheering for, and that’s Germany. The only reason I’m purposely not cheering for them: to annoy Tim, because he seems to think they’ll win the cup. I like to cheer against him, and it’s pretty fun.

Finally, something you should definitely check out if you’re interested in writing, is Writing Excuses, a podcast by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells that lays out their tricks, tips, and pitfalls of writing for aspiring authors. Each podcast is only fifteen minutes long because, as they say “You’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart”. It’s definitely worth listening to if you’re into writing.

Otherwise, have a wonderful week and hopefully I’ll be posting again in another week. Cheers!

-Tess

If you haven’t heard of Leaders Hall that’s quite all right because it hasn’t existed until this year. This year is the first year it’s being implemented. I have to say that so far I’m impressed with the event. I have received professional, personalized emails twice now from the concierge service with a pdf compromising personality tests as well as conflict management information. Going the extra mile is key in today’s world with social media and the ability for the consumer’s voice to be heard by almost anyone.

We’re in a world where your actions and the quality of your product is under a microscope, and where anyone can spend 5 seconds to look up a service to see if the proof is actually in your pudding.

So with that said I have to give Gallivan their props on this one. Who’s Gallivan you might ask? They’re the company that takes care of our student Health and Dental program when you register at NAIT. As far as I know they provide health and dental to quite a few institutes across the province. But regardless I’m very excited to be going to this event. We have some sweet keynote speakers such as Kelly Hrudey from Hockey Night in Canada, and some leadership HR folks with tons of experience.

I’m particularly excited to meet some of these speakers and find out if we could possibly get them in here. For the students of NAIT to experience someone like Kelley Hrudey perhaps?

One of my smart goals this year is to have a leadership summit. This summit would probably be around a day in length (the details aren’t worked out yet) and I’ve been looking for engaging speakers to recruit and speak. This, I feel, could be a great opportunity to snag some engaging speakers.

So This Wednesday will be the test of faith. You can be assured I’ll be writing about my experiences at Leaders Hall and whether or not Gallivan has outdone themselves, or if they’ve started a work in progress.

Don’t be shy to leave some posts, we want to hear from the students, and this is a great way to do that.

Tyler

Hey everyone! We’ve been busy here at NAITSA since getting back from our retreat in Jasper.

I’ve grown to love the NAITSA board room over the past month or so, all of our planning has been going on in that place haha. So far the events and brainstorming has been going very well. We’re really excited to bring you some experiences that you can not only have a ball at, but put on your resume!

Sign up to be a frosh leader and take that step to get involved in a leadership role, companies love it. If you are extroverted and love to pump people up then this is an opportunity of gold for you!

I’ve taken up some squash in the past couple of weeks and I’m loving it! There’s some people who are playing with me in the office (Govind) and it’s really going well!

Well that’s all I have for now but I’ll keep you guys posted!

Oooh yes, sign up online at www.nait.ca for a First Year Experience (FYE) orientation and I’ll likely see you there since I’m giving the NAITSA 101 in there after school and on weekends.

Not only will you get to meet your favorite exec but you’ll also learn pretty much all you need to know to get through your first year of school, I highly recommend it!

Alrighty hopefully I’ll see ya there!

Tyler