This past weekend, Windsor, Stephanie, and I, along with Brittany, Chelsea, and Taylor of our Executive Team plus a couple of our interns headed down to New York City to throw our first ever National Intercollegiette Conference, sponsored by Intel! Our vision was to bring together 300 of our team members and readers under one roof for a fantastic day of panels and workshops, networking and community building, inspiration and celebration. We couldn’t have been more thrilled to host such an enthusiastic, professional, and ambitious group of collegiettes (plus one guy!), and to finally meet many of our remote team members as well as devoted readers.
I had the privilege of running around all day as our roaming photographer, so I got to listen in on every event throughout the day as well as witness and document some of the most memorable moments of the Conference. Here’s a rundown of how everything went down, sprinkled throughout with some of my favorite photos from the day!
First, a HUGE thank you to Intel for being our Conference sponsor, for decking out the space with a gorgeous array of new Ultrabooks for us to play with, and for bringing in Anna Post as our morning keynote. The Conference space featured a couple stations scattered around showcasing Ultrabooks including the Acer Aspire S5, ASUS Zenbook UX32, Lenovo U310, and Toshiba Protege.
For her keynote, Ms. Post, the great-great-granddaughter of the “Queen of Etiquette” Emily Post, gave conference attendees on point advice about professional etiquette in the digital world. So fascinating! For example, she addressed what would be the appropriate way to deal a call from your boss in the middle of a client meeting. Watch Ms. Post’s keynote and Q&A below, or on our YouTube channel.
Afterwards, attendees had their pick of twelve different panels over the next three hours. Big round of applause to all our fantastic panelists, who ranged from first-year editorial assistants to high-powered female entrepreneurs, to veteran journalists, fashion designers, and more! It was great to see so many collegiettes networking with each other and with our speakers in-between events.
Chipotle catered the perfect lunch for our conference following the morning panels. Girls grabbed their fill of warm juicy burritos, stacks on stacks of chips, and an endless supply of freshly made guacamole and salsa! We loved seeing tons of hungry (and happy!) collegiettes chowing down on their Chipotle!
After lunch, we welcomed Ann Shoket, Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen magazine, to the stage for an afternoon keynote filled with advice for aspiring journalists and stories from her own career experiences.
Following Ms. Shoket’s keynote, we broke into workshops led by the Her Campus Executive Team! Stephanie led a workshop on “how to be a content queen on campus” while Brittany worked with Campus Correspondents on how to make their chapters the biggest, baddest thing around. Windsor and Taylor shared their tips on how to throw awesome parties on campus and score free swag. For my own workshop with Chelsea, I gave a presentation on how the branding of Her Campus has evolved over the years and offered a sneak peek at the new HerCampus.com launching this fall (!), while Chelsea gave an overview of Her Campus’s social media strategy and tips for leveraging it powerfully.
We wrapped up the day with an hour of networking and raffle prizes from our awesome sponsors, including Alex & Ani, Fossil, Jack Wills, Juicy Couture, Natori, Georg Jensen, PrettyCity.com, Kohl’s, Harvey Prince, K-Amato, and StyleOwner.
The grand prize giveaway from Intel was a brand new ASUS Zenbook UX31, one of the sleekest and most powerful ultrabooks on the market today! Congrats to our winner, Harper Yi, who won by tweeting about how Intel’s solutions have powered her professional work and personal interests.
Every collegiette left with a goody bag worth $150, stuffed full of goodies from Intel, Juicy Couture, Zotos, Alex & Ani, Softlips, Harvey Prince, Seventeen, Secret, Stila, Lord & Taylor, Candy Store, Quincy Apparel, ILWYW, Contiki, Jack Wills, Snapette, and of course the Her Campus Shop!
Throughout the day, collegiettes snacked and hydrated on delicious Popchips, Honest Tea, Hint Water, Svelte CalNaturale and Crystal Light Candy.
We all met up again for a phenomenal after-party at Juicy Couture, where we sipped yummy mocktails and munched on macarons and mini ice cream cones, rocked out to the amazing DJ Jennifly, and of course shopped the rest of the night away. It was enough to inspire me to Instagram this silly pic below!
Thank you again to all of our wonderful sponsors, our captivating speakers, and most of all, our fantastic team members and readers. It was our absolute pleasure and honor to throw this first ever National Intercollegiette Conference, and we are humbled by the huge amount of support we’ve received throughout the years that has made throwing this event even possible. We love you all! HC Love!!