8:00 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.

Chairperson's Welcome & Speed Networking

Meet your fellow conference attendees in this fun and fast-paced forum that will kick start your networking throughout the conference!

Preston Lewis, Co-Founder & Director
BONFIRE COMMUNICATIONS
@bonfirepreston

Preston is an expert in branding, employee engagement and strategic internal communications, Preston is an energetic and creative leader intimately involved with all aspects of the Bonfire business. As an active participant in current projects and responsible for nurturing new relationships, Preston consistently demonstrates the core values that steer each Bonfire project to success. His current and past clients are some of the most reputable companies in the world including Starbucks, Roche/Genentech, General Electric, Harrah’s Entertainment, salesforce.com and HP.

9:15 a.m.

Enabling Employees To Effectively Converse And Collaborate In The Digital Age - And Reap The Benefits For Your Organization

There’s a digital conversation going on right now. All over the globe, individuals are sharing information, expertise, making decisions, building relationships, and more, without even leaving their seats. Sentiment and knowledge are being created around topics that could have a direct impact on your business. Are you out there? Are you part of the conversation? Are your employees? Are your competitors’ employees?!

In today’s digital world, the employee and the relationships and conversations that employee has in the digital space is defining the brand. Because of this, we need to ensure that our employees have the tools they need to reach out so that they can effectively participate in it: from conversing about topics they are experts in, to relationship building, to globally collaborating on projects with other employees, partners, clients, peers, and the general public. The more digitally active your employees are both inside and outside your company, the more current, credible and responsive your company will be viewed.
Using examples from IBM, you will learn lessons on how to:

• Enable employees to build and share their expertise inside and outside the company
• Generate, aggregate and promote social conversations of interest to your company
• Create a globally collaborative employee culture both internally and externally

Kevin Winterfield, Social Systems and Digital Influence
IBM
@kmwinterfield

9:45 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

9:50 a.m.

How To Develop A Social Media Plan To Achieve Your Strategic Goals: Objectives, Tactics And Success Measures

Conservation Halton isn’t your parent’s government agency. Nestled in an increasingly urban setting – Canada’s official fastest growing city – they tow the line between a government regulatory body and a community organization focused on recreational activities and public engagement. They’re never more than a tweet, “like,” follow, pin, tag, reblog or check-in away. Like the environment itself, what good is social media without the people that make the conversations rich and the experiences worthwhile?

Conservation Halton is an environmental agency responsible for flood control, environmental planning, forest management, ecological monitoring, education, and recreation. They do everything from issuing building permits to operating Ontario’s fifth busiest ski and snowboard centre. Their stakeholders are varied, and their staff is just as diverse. From engineers and ecologists to educators and administrators, they encourage their staff to become official social media contributors as well as unofficial brand ambassadors, with some explicit guidelines of course.

While their foray into social media has been cautious, it was never without a clear plan – several plans in fact. It’s all about having a flexible style within a rigid framework. As Facebook and Twitter became popular destinations for brands to showcase themselves and engage their customers in image-building, they took a strategic approach, complete with objectives, tactics and success measures.

You will leave this session with new ideas to integrate social media into your traditional communications, including:

• How social media is relevant to every organization
• The benefits of social media, even when your employees are not able to access it at work
• How to get started on Facebook
• How to overcome the fear of negativity on social media platforms

10:20 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

10:45 a.m.

Digest Session: Your Training Goals

This is your chance to discuss with fellow attendees and speakers what your most pressing internal communication concerns are and what solutions you hope to gain during this training.

11:15 a.m.

How Utilizing The Right Mix Of Technologies Can Keep Your Employees Motivated And In Step With Your Organization’s Business Objectives

New technologies and web services continue to provide bountiful tools for today’s savvy communicator. From newsletters, intranets and email, to social media, mobile apps and digital signage, you’re never at a loss for tools of the trade. But more than just having new tools, successfully demonstrating how these tools can support and drive upper management’s business goals will ensure your program’s overall success and keep employees more informed.

Situated in upstate New York, the Canandaigua National Bank has 500 employees at 30 locations. A key strategic objective for the bank is to maintain a strong corporate culture by undertaking a bi-annual employee survey and improve on low scoring themes. During one review, internal communications scored lower than expected. As a result, company officials began exploring additional tools that could be used to improve internal communications. While the bank utilized traditional tools such as a corporate intranet and e-mail, executives were looking to find a new way to more effectively engage their employees and create a greater sense of internal community. To meet this challenge, the IT department spearheaded a new technology for desktop messaging (think Digital Signage for the desktop) that revolutionized how employees keep connected. Now employees start their day by viewing high-impact desktop messages from HR, marketing, training, and IT. Complementing the banks’ existing internal communication technologies, this new interactive desktop solution has emerged as the employees’ preferred method of internal communication.

In this session, you will gain insights on how integrating an enterprise-wide, interactive desktop messaging system with existing communication tools can keep your employees more up-to-date on business objectives, training programs, new marketing initiatives, benefits communications, compliance, and more.

Sandra Roberts, Senior Vice President Information Technology
CANANDAIGUA NATIONAL BANK

Will Smith, Vice President
ESCREENZ

11:45 a.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

11:50 a.m.

How To Translate Successful External Communication Strategies To Create Successful Internal Communication Programs

The Humane Society of the United States (The HSUS) is the nation’s largest animal protection organization. With more than 600 employees, the organization relies on a network of staff—in the field, in local offices, in sanctuaries and animal care centers around the country, and in their area headquarters—to cover hundreds of different issues every day.

Despite the organization’s sophistication with social media—mobilizing grassroots support on social networks has been instrumental in achieving campaign victories, and last year the organization reached a milestone of 1 million fans on Facebook—internal communications haven’t kept up the pace. That’s changing now that an increasing number of staff work remotely and the organization is engaging a growing number of volunteers, donors, and ambassadors—both groups and individuals—at the local level to drive advocacy efforts and leverage the expertise of The HSUS to make a greater impact.

Throughout this session, The HSUS will share how they approached enrollment in their intranet (and other tools for collaboration) across a loosely-affiliated physical and social environment and culture that relies on peer-to-peer communications. In addition, you will hear about the results of ideas they tested after attending a similar Advanced Learning Institute conference in August 2012, including:

• Using social media to enable and share employee expertise
• Measuring and reporting the effectiveness of internal communications
• Conducting knowledge tests and creating focus groups for research
• Matching tools with user adoption rates to find winning combinations
• Engaging organizational leaders in change efforts
• Using two-way communication to address information gaps and redefine your strategy
• Bridging internal and external communications

Gail Berrigan, Director, Organizational Communications
The Humane Society of the United States

12:20 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

12:25 p.m.
Lunch On Your Own -- But Not Alone!

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion surrounding a hot internal communications topic! Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing internal communications concerns.

2:00 p.m.

Digest Session: Connect The Content

You’ve heard from a number of speakers, now we’d like to hear from you. Network and discuss with fellow training attendees what social media & traditional communication tools you’re using to communicate with your employees and where you have found the most success.

2:30 p.m.

Engaging Company Leaders In The Communications Process

The Arizona Public Service Co. (APS), an investor-owned utility company with almost 7,000 employees and more than one million customers, is striving to increase leaders’ capabilities and accountability in the employee communications process. The company is working to formalize cascade processes and develop a communications skills curriculum for managers. With a large group of “unwired” leaders and frontline employees in their plants and out in the field, APS communications strategies and tools must account for the varying needs and preferences of different populations.

In this session, learn how Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) is:

• Created organization-wide benchmarks for communications effectiveness
• Implemented communications plans that double as contracts in service and partnership
• Developed strategies for leadership participation and accountability
• Established agreed-on reporting mechanisms to share results

Jenna Rowell, Internal Communications Manager
Arizona Public Service Co.

3:00 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

3:20 p.m.

How To Use Social Media To Connect Employees To Your Organization's Strategic Vision In A Widely- Dispersed Company

Aviat Networks is a leader in wireless transmission solutions. Over the last two years, the company has undergone a significant restructuring program. With 1,000 employees residing in over 30 countries, keeping the team aligned with the strategic vision of the company was a big challenge.

Leveraging the power of social networks can make your communications more engaging and develop the brand ambassador that lives inside of every employee. There are almost 1 billion people on Facebook, over 500 million on Twitter, and chances are, your employees are already active users. Social media can be a powerful vehicle for change in your organization. The communications you create connect your teams with the vision and strategy of your organization. It’s a big job and you don’t have to go it alone.

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Choose your destination, and recognize that getting there is half the story
• Build connections and partnerships across organizations and around the world
• Select the right vehicles for the journey
• Leverage the content all around you
• Listen, measure, analyze, adjust, repeat

3:50 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

3:55 p.m.

How To Communicate Effectively With Your Employees Whether They Embrace Or Reject Social Media

“My employees won’t use, yet alone embrace social media. They are scattered all over the country and all have different levels of either computer expertise or technology ignorance.”  How do you reach out to a broad range of employees from tech-savvy executives and managers to employees on the production floor with limited access to computers?

Without turning its back on its traditional livelihood, NewPage, the nation’s largest producer of printing and specialty papers, incorporates social media components into their communication efforts with a combination of print, broadcast and digital communications. They have a robust Intranet and are also using a unique and exclusive NewPage group page on LinkedIn as another avenue of communications with their employees as well as Twitter, Facebook and Yammer.  Whether it’s communicating about company news, product introductions, benefit updates or even weather emergencies, they work closely with their HR, legal, operations, marketing and business excellence groups, as well as the NewPage Senior Leadership Team, to identify the most effective ways to reach out to employees throughout their entire organization.

During this session, you will learn from NewPage’s experiences on how you, too, can:

• Connect your employees though numerous digital tools
• Create a “Working Without Walls” environment and mentality to encourage employees to access information from any location or device.
• Combine traditional communications with the newest trends to encourage employees to have an ongoing dialogue up, down and across organization.
• Align and engage employees with your brand strategy and empower them to consistently deliver and live your key messages and embrace your culture through two-way communications.

Jamie Kenny, Manager, Internal Communications
NewPage Corporation

4:25 p.m.

Your Opportunity To Ask Questions

4:30 p.m.

Digest & Prepare

Need to dive deeper into specific topics? Want more details? Here's your chance!! Discuss with the group what topics you hope to hear more about tomorrow and what questions you have that are still unanswered. Use the expertise of your conference speakers and fellow attendees to gain feedback and ideas for improvement of your internal communication plans.

5:00 p.m.

End of Day One

5:10 p.m.

Networking Reception: Please Join Us!

We invite you to join us for a drink as you relax with your peers. All conference attendees and speakers are welcome to join us for this special opportunity to continue networking. Don't miss this chance to benchmark new ideas over complimentary drinks!

Sign up during the day for dinner with a group. Take advantage of Las Vegas' fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.