2011 ICAN Conference Chair

Well, as many of you already know, I am heavily involved in ICAN, better known as the International Cesarean Awareness Network, and I have been since shortly after the birth of my first child. I started my own chapter in my local area, and then I moved on around the time that I was ready to give birth to my second child to become the Northeast Regional Coordinator also. Because I am so passionate about ICAN and what they do, I have been always willing to go above and beyond to help.

So when the opportunity came up to be on the 2011 ICAN Conference Committee, I of course applied. Knowing that this conference, I will not be too pregnant to travel, heck, I won’t be pregnant at all! LOL So I knew there would be nothing holding me back this time. I desperately wanted to go in 2009, but Ben decided to join us just 3 short weeks after the conference in Atlanta, so had I gone, who knows what would have happened!

I originally applied to be the 2011 Speaker Chair, with a second option as the Registration Chair. I thought the speaker chair would not only be fun, but because of the awesome connections I have made in recent months, would be perfect. (Not only that but I am starting an ICAN movement towards a “Silver Fox” panel for the conference which would include Marsden Wagner, Eugene Declerq, and Sutart Fischbein) and the registration chair was simply a second pick.

Yesterday, Maureen, the woman who is the head for the conference in 2011 contacted me with a favor and of course, like I always do, I took on the challenge. Which was to accept the National Promotions and Publicity Chair instead of what I had applied for because of the lack of interest in the chair position. I was truly surprised at that because with all the social media today, I would have assumed that people would have jumped on something so easy!

Of course I told Maureen, like I normally tell any ICAN Board member, I would help where ever they needed me to, and then she told me to consider myself the official 2011 ICAN Conference National Publicity and Promotions Chair. Score!  While I was pretty confident that I would obtain a position on the conference board, I did not think it would be anything as important.

So what exactly am I supposed to do with this title right?  Sounds like it is pretty broad?  Well some of my duties include what I already do on a pretty much daily basis with social media connections.
Some others include :

• Advertising the Conference to ICAN members, and other National Organizations that would be interested.
• Develop advertisement for the conference.
• Communicate with National Publications (which I have already been doing heavily with the recent media on c-sections, maternal mortality, and the NIH VBAC Conference).
• Networking… Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.. (So if you want to blog about the conference as it gets closer, I am your woman!)
• Work with the Local Publicity and Promotions director to write press releases

So many more things, it seems to be like a great position, and like I said before, I am in the habit of really doing most of anything they ask of me. One example is a video I made earlier in the year for ICAN. I obtained the music from a friend of mine (Rob Taylor) who is a local musician in my area, and all the pictures came from ICAN chapters and members Nationally.

I hope you enjoy!
I had a really great time making it, and I am super excited in my new future at ICAN, at least until it is over in April of 2011!

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