In this fast-paced opening session, you will get to know your fellow peers, hear their biggest internal communications challenges, and can learn a few fun facts.

Technology has enabled an endless stream of options to receive information. Being able to be heard in a noisy world requires the art and (brain) science of effective communication. Communication expert Kristin Graham will share insights and actions you can take to improve your day-to-day communication.

This opening session includes:

• Research on attention spans in today’s online environment
• Insight on why multitasking is a myth
• How to craft bite-sized content to get people’s attention

From the very beginning of human history, storytelling has been used to share knowledge, make sense of the world, and teach values and behaviors. Today, storytelling can (and should!) play a significant role in building culture and shaping the employee experience.

Most internal communications professionals are pretty good storytellers, but we don’t use stories strategically to achieve our goals and deliver results. When Robert Munsch wrote the classic book The Paper Bag Princess, he set out to empower young people to be themselves by turning the princess stereotype on its head. As internal communicators, we need to follow Munsch’s lead by establishing clear goals and then find and tell stories that help us achieve them. We need to tell stories that give employees the insight they need to flourish in the workplace while supporting successful business outcomes.

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Understand how storytelling can build your brand and culture from the inside
• Find out how to uncover stories that will help you achieve your goals
• Discover an easy framework for creating compelling stories
• Learn how to build an authentic storytelling guide for your organization

This might feel counterintuitive to our hyper-busy, too many items on the to-do list lives as communications pros, but before you draft that next employee story, I’m asking you to slow down. Let’s slow down the content churn and focus on the best way to tell a story and consider if it might be even better to give that employee the platform to tell it themselves. Let’s take some time at the beginning to give that employee’s story a better chance at a lasting impression.

In this session we’ll talk about:

• Evaluating the best channel and medium based on the story
• Slowing down to give the story our best effort
• Letting go and taking advantage of the benefits of employee-created content

Learn some new and old writing tips from the unique perspective of a newspaper reporter, almost therapist and corporate comms director/writer. You’ll learn how to speak across generations and laugh at/share our cultural differences. Warning: Speaker hopes to be funny. Memes may be involved. She will try to keep it as clean as possible.

Hear from a panel of communications peers who will provide tips and practical advice on your most pressing communications questions and hurdles.