For many years now, I’ve been able to participate in the Lilly Conference held in San Diego at the start of each new year. This year was a bit different, given that we had a larger group than normal who were able to participate from Vanguard. Noreen participated in the poster session and shared about her student-faculty collaboration research on belonging. It was interesting to talk to her that evening about some of what she found surprising in that research.
I also was able to see Enid present about an app her students created in 20 minutes in her digital entrepreneurship class. David Rhoads kicked off that session with some inspiration from other universities to get us started. I was able to be the closing keynote and facilitated the Go Somewhere card game that looks at metaphors that people use to describe artificial intelligence. It was such a lovely time to close the session.
It was so fun to hear people laugh together and experience joy in that final session. We also did what I could best describe as a collective sigh together as I held some space for the difficult things happening in the world. It was one of those situations where I know it’s an overused cliché, but where you could literally hear a pin drop in the room. So the combination of the joy and the pain was just a beautiful thing to get to experience.
One other memorable aspect of attending the Lilly Conference was a shared meal with some of the people from our group. We decided impromptu to each share either what our research in our dissertations were, or for those going through a doctorate now, describing current research endeavors, as if we were talking to a 10-year-old. We laughed together as we joked that particular words someone was using were probably not the most relevant for a 10-year-old, and course-corrected from there. That one question helped me get to know these colleagues in ways that felt profound and unique, and I’ll treasure that experience as a special memory.
As far as the other sessions I attended, I got lots of ideas for potential podcast guests that I’m looking forward to following up on in the coming months, and got to reconnect with people who have been listening to the podcast for a long while now. I’m looking forward to next year’s Lilly Conference, and we’re hoping that there might be an even larger group of Vanguard faculty presenting and sharing their great work at that time, too.
