AEU Skills Summit

29 Sep 2018 | 09:00 am - 06:30 pm
Place : Washington Ethical Society 7750 16th St NW Washington, DC 20012
Cost : $70 for individuals, $65 each for two, $60 each for three
$25 each for family programming (children must be accompanied by adult)
Phone : 212-873-6500
Email : lmiller@aeu.org

AEU Skills Summit 2018

Saturday, September 29, 9am-6:30pm
Sponsored by American Ethical Union • Hosted by Washington Ethical Society

Register for Skills Summit here

Join us for a full-day of insightful discussion, interactive workshops, and fun collaboration. Together we’ll explore best practices and burning questions on how to grow humanist communities.

Schedule
9:00am Breakfast & Welcomes
9:30am Skills Summit begins

Learn about the American Ethical Union and how it helps growing humanist communities.

10:00am Morning Workshops

Creating Effective, Engaging Content for Social Media w. Louise Jett
Social media platforms give every local group the opportunity to tell their stories and grow their communities in effective ways. Authentic content resonates with current and potential members alike. Please join Social Media Expert and Educator Louise Jett for this workshop on content creation. There are an assortment of free resources available to help create engaging content, but how do social media marketers constantly keep up? What types of posts work best? What’s the difference between content creation and curation? What tools can be easily used for creating and sharing various art and messaging online? Louise will explore the answers to these questions while giving attendees the opportunity to brainstorm and collaborate.

Organizing for Success w. Bart Worden and Sarah Levin
What does it take to have a strong and vibrant organization? High ideals, a clear message, and laudable goals are vital but without good organizing great ideas and aspirations may not be translated into action. How can you recruit, energize, and deploy your organization’s members for important programs and projects? How can you sustain or expand your efforts and achieve a balance of creativity and continuity? This workshop, facilitated by Bart Worden, Executive Director for the American Ethical Union and Sarah Levin, United Coalition of Reason Director will offer a hands-on opportunity to apply organizing ideas developed by Marshall Ganz of Harvard University to your organization’s efforts and “enable people to turn the resources they have into the power they need to make the change they want.”

12:00pm Lunch
1:00pm Afternoon Workshops

Hands-on Livestreaming Practice w. Robyn Kravitz
Does your congregation currently live-stream your platforms or are you looking to expand your current live-streaming setup? Come to this workshop to get some hands-on practice with a Mevo live-stream setup! This workshop will take you from setting up the equipment, running the live stream, and embedding the video onto a WordPress (or similar) website.

Outreach through Public Relations –> Play it Forward w. Liz Singer and Richard Koral
Good PR outreach is playing PR forward. This means not only garnering public attention through PR, but turning it to best advantage once you get it. Our goal is to energize not only new comers and new seekers with the mission and accomplishments of the Society, but existing members as well. We will explore methods with which your group can gain a market foothold through PR and grow market awareness by multiplying its impact. We will review checklists, templates, quick-looped videos, and a portfolio book that compiles the successful PR you’ve garnered to make it impactful for the long run. We will touch on effective email blasts, website and Facebook teasers, and more. These techniques are cost efficient and easy to set up. Each participant will have a complete PR kit to take back to their group and begin implementing immediately.

3:00pm Making Anti-Racism Real in Your Humanist Group w. Candice R. M. Gorham, MA, LPC

This substantive and participatory program will address how humanist groups, as majority white communities, can do anti-racism work constructively and with integrity, without appropriation, victimhood, or de-centering other races. Gorham is a licensed professional mental health counselor and former ordained minister turned atheist activist, researcher, and writer on issues related to religion and the African-American community. She is a member of the African American Humanist advisory board, The Secular Therapist Project, The Clergy Project, and the Secular Student Alliance Speaker’s Bureau. This program is sponsored by American Humanist Association.

5:30pm Group Discussion
6:30pm Skills Summit ends

Transportation and Housing
WES has some street parking nearby and can be reached by S2 & S4 buses or red line to Silver Spring station. The building is accessible. To request home hospitality, please email hospitality@aeu.org.

Register for Skills Summit & Family Saturday here