5 Keys to Getting the Most Out of Event Attendance

Attending an event, whether online or in person, is an investment of time and money. It's an investment well worth making to further your professional education, make new personal connections (as well as those that will benefit your organization), and provide a platform to promote your organization and its activities. In order to get approval to spend the time away from daily responsibilities, and to use professional development funding from your organization, you'll need to show how you plan to make the most of your investment of time and money.

Consider these tips as you register for your next event. Continue reading

Surveying the Government Event Landscape

GovEvents recently surveyed its members to get a pulse on how the government community is utilizing events for career growth and networking. The survey looked at how attendees and organizers were mixing in-person and virtual events and what drove decisions to attend.

In this survey, 69% of respondents reported attending one or more in-person events (with 1-2 events being the most common) while 93% said they attended one or more online events (29% reported 10 or more). Respondents also said they would likely maintain these levels in 2023.

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How GovCon Got Its Groove Back: Networking Best Practices

In-person events are back in force, but we're all a little rusty at networking. Anyone who has attended an in-person event recently has likely had the conversation with fellow attendees, "Wow, I'm not sure how to do this anymore." To help us all get back in our groove, we wanted to pull together a list of tried and true as well as some new tips to make your attendance at the next government networking event feel a bit more natural. Continue reading

Agility. Enabled by Agile.

Agility has been a key attribute for success over the past year and a half. Everyone had to quickly adapt in their personal and professional lives to do things in new ways to keep business and society running. Even the great bureaucracy of government found itself pivoting and quickly changing "how it's always been done" to meet the needs of the day. This should not end with the return to what feels like pre-pandemic normal. In the form of Agile methodology, Agility will play a huge role in the government's ability to continue the fast-forwarded digital push as a result of the pandemic.

Just as government pushed agencies to try Cloud with the "Cloud First" initiative, some are suggesting the same approach for Agile. An "Agile-First" evolution would have a huge impact on IT modernization efforts, accelerating the move from legacy processes and technology to a modern digital approach. The response to COVID-19 showed that the government can move quickly in changing how they do work (across all areas of government). An Agile-first "mandate" could institutionalize that speed and make it the rule rather than the exception.

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In-Person Events a “Go” for Government — But Don’t Take Away the Online Option

This May, after the CDC updated their public health guidance around masking and social distancing for vaccinated individuals, GovEvents surveyed its members to find out what government professionals were comfortable with in terms of in-person events. Feedback from event planners at the beginning of 2021 showed they were beginning to plan toward a hybrid event schedule, looking to introduce in-person events in the late summer or fall. Now that schedule seems to be a reality based both on health guidance and attendee attitudes.

The GovEvents survey of 275+ public sector professionals found that nearly 75% of respondents would be comfortable attending an event in-person sometime in 2021.

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