Sorry for the delay in this post. As you have been seeing in my sidebar, I spoke last Thursday at the 5th Annual Sacramento Conference of Professional BusinessWomen of California. I am eager to share what I learned and the feeling I had coming away.
First, the conference was a huge success by the numbers: More than 3,000 women attended, and there were four outstanding keynote speakers–Naomi Tutu, Jackie Speier, Lucy Liu and Lynne Twist. Each speaker spoke to us at our highest level as businesswomen and women. I met women ranging from senior executives in huge multinational corporations to women involved in not-for-profits both large and small, a dairy farmer and a woman who has cleaned houses for 20 years and loves her business.
Second, watching the connections being made among women from all over the country, across areas of expertise, finding commonality through family and values was heartwarming. One of my passionate delights is connecting–both people and ideas. As I wrote to my daughter, it was Candyland for me.
Third, the prevailing attitude about the economy was realistic, but also tired of all the unremitting gloom and doom in the media. Yes, things are challenging, but there was conversation about looking for the good news and tapping into our huge creativity to develop alternative programs and ways of meeting the challenges.
Fourth, the 250 women who attended my session, “We Don’t Retire, We Reinvent,” were a really thoughtful group. They delighted in looking both forward and back and planning for a future that will bring them delight and fulfillment. It was a pleasure to help so many proactive women look at the next phase of their lives.
I was also delighted to see the wide age range–there were a lot of After 55s, and they were leading the pack in sharing, teaching, connecting and learning. I was a proud respresentative.
This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 8:52 am and is filed under General Business, Marketing, Personal Growth, Productivity, Publicity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Leave a Reply
