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    • Mar 15

Mini-cast 258: The NCEO's Annual EO Conference '24



Bret Keisling features Owner to Owner podcast host Jesse Tyler and Jaymie Oviedo and Lindsay Isaac from the National Center for Employee Ownership discussing plans for the NCEO's Annual EO Conference, which will be held April 29 - May 1, 2024, in Tampa, Florida.

In this excerpt, Jaymie describes how the event is evolving away from speaker-centric, lecture type presentations to sessions that will be more collaborative and workshop-like. Lindsay talks about the brand-new learning track "Building an ESOP Education Curriculum,” which is designed to provide concrete training that employee owners can take back and implement at their companies.




This excerpt originally appeared on March 13, 2024, in Episode 62 of the Owner to Owner podcast.


 

Mini-cast 258 Transcript


[00:00:00] Bret Keisling: Welcome to the ESOP Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Bret Keisling, and as it says on my business cards, I'm a passionate advocate for employee ownership. The National Center for Employee Ownership's Annual EO Conference will be held April 29th through May 1st in Tampa, Florida.


[00:00:27] Earlier this week, we dropped Episode 62 of the Owner to Owner podcast, hosted by Jesse Tyler. Jesse's guests for the episode are Loren Rodgers, Jaymie Oviedo, Megan Bonwell, and Lindsay Isaac, the NCEO leaders putting the conference together. It featured what Jesse called "an under the hood look" at the planning and the work that was involved and is still going on to make this conference the best ever.


[00:00:53] The episode includes a lot of the plans that they have for the conference. One of the things that struck me was talk about how it's evolved from a speaker-centric conference that it's been for many years into one where the presentations are designed to be more engaging than dry lectures, if you will.


[00:01:10] I also love that they are introducing a new track this year called "Building an ESOP Education Curriculum," which should provide hands-on experience for employee owners to take back to their ESOPs, co-ops, and EOTs.


[00:01:24] So, here's an excerpt featuring host Jesse Tyler with Jaymie Oviedo and Lindsay Isaac.


[00:01:30] Jesse Tyler: Now, just your view on that process of winnowing down to those presenters. What are some things that you want to share with the listeners? Just some insights or your experience with that process?


[00:01:40] Jaymie Oviedo: Jesse, I'm so glad that you asked this. I've really started to notice a trend in the event space, but very specifically in our community of employee ownership events is the need for departure from a presenter-led conference experience. It can become, I mean, the conference itself just based sheerly on the size that it currently is right now is and can be very intimidating. And then you're going to take that and you're going to multiply it over two to three days. Now do that and insert your traditional presenter-led type of session, it can really kind of melt your brain, right?


[00:02:17] So, we have really kind of gone out to the community, the employee-owned company members, the service providers and ask them to uniquely come up with an engaging format, something that is more of an interactive style, something that is a workshop, something that the presenter is moving around the room, moving around the space, asking questions, getting folks to continue to think about these different use cases in their business as it pertains to the topic that's being presented and produce a different type of session that the employee owner can really go back to their company and immediately put into use.


[00:02:59] Jesse Tyler: That's fantastic. You can see that focus of what you do. It's lively. It's fun when walking down the hall at a conference and you hear loud crowd reactions or interaction and laughter coming out of an active session, that's a very healthy sign of, you know, that goal and intention, so I appreciate your calling that out. What makes the conferences really memorable? If you can go back and use something. What can I apply? You know, I can't wait to share this! I have to let somebody know before I even get home to share it. That sort of idea with the things that are built together, which is great.


[00:03:30] So, a big one for Tampa is a learning curriculum. So, I'd like to tag Lindsay back in to share a little bit about that. What are some insights you can share? What are you excited most about with this? for the Tampa conference, Lindsay?


[00:03:43] Lindsay Isaac: Yeah, thanks, Jesse. So, as you mentioned, we're having a new conference track this year. It's called "Building an ESOP Education Curriculum." This is something that stemmed out of, like, so many calls we've had with other, you know, ESOP companies and just clear that like a challenge people have is figuring about, figuring out what to talk about, how to talk about it, when to talk about all these things and bringing your employee owners up to speed.


[00:04:09] And so, what we wanted to do was really design a track that's focused on building solutions for this. So, a track that'll allow people to go through and actually help get concrete resources to build that education curriculum back at your company. So, how do you talk about employee ownership? What are best practices with that? How do you teach people how to think and act like an employee owner? Financial literacy education, what does that look like? What are some tangible things that you can be explaining and teaching?


[00:04:40] And so, the idea is that this cohesive track attendees will have really concrete curriculum set of resources to bring back directly to their company and implement. So, we're really excited about this and kind of the networking opportunities it'll create as well for like-minded companies.


[00:04:58] Jesse Tyler: Yeah, it's very cool because you can't tell culture, people have to experience it. And so that you have this whole plan for this is just really, really cool. It's going to help new ESOPs, new employee-owned companies get up to speed faster, but it's also going to help some of the more seasoned ones get fresh legs, get fresh energy, and have some very helpful technique from you and your team, which is great.


[00:05:20] Bret Keisling: If you check out the show notes for this episode, we'll include a link to the NCEO's Annual Conference webpage, which has everything you need to know for registration. I understand the registration is just about sold out, so if you're interested, act now.


[00:05:34] We'll also include a link to Episode 62 of the Owner to Owner podcast. I hope you'll check it out. Jesse Tyler does a great job with every episode he hosts. With that, we'll wrap up this episode of the Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. This is Bret Keisling. Be well.


 

[00:05:50] Bitsy McCann: We'd love to hear from you! You can find us on Facebook at EO Podcast Network and on Twitter [X] @EsOpPodcast. This podcast has been produced by Bret Keisling for the EO Podcast Network. Original music composed by Max Keisling. Branding and marketing by BitsyPlus Design. And I'm Bitsy McCann.


Standard Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and don't represent those of my own firms or the organizations to which I belong. Nothing in the podcast should be construed as guidance or advice of any kind in any field and the fact that I mentioned an organizational website or an advocate or a company on a podcast does not reflect an endorsement, but if you've heard your name or your group's name mentioned on this podcast, I'd love to have you come on and talk about it yourself.


A note on the transcript: This transcript was produced by Descript, an automated transcription service. While it has been reviewed by The EsOp Podcast, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the transcription. Please refer to the original audio when citing sources.

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