Omicron Delta Kappa sponsors a variety of leadership development conference and workshops. Throughout our organization’s history, we have held biennial conventions. The move to annual conferences was to begin in 2020; however, in light of the COVID-19 situation, the 2020 National Leadership Conference has been canceled.
The 2021 National Leadership Conference was held online in April. This event was full of firsts for O∆K. The first all online conference. The first in the new series of annual conferences. The first to openly invite lifetime members not currently working with a circle to present and attend. It was a great success thanks to the hard work of a volunteer Conference Plannig Team. In another first, not only are all the keynote speakers (Jill Tefienthaler, Rick Brite, and Summer Owens) posted to the O∆K YouTube site, but many of the concurrent session presentations were recorded and posted for the ongoing learning of our members. Check out the 2021 NLC recorded sessions on the O∆K YouTube channel.
The 2018 convention, the 50th in O∆K’s history, was held in Nashville, Tennessee on the campus of Belmont University. The speakers for the 2018 convention included Tom Bowen (back by popular demand from the 2016 convention; University of Memphis Circle and Athletics Director), Nancy Hunter Denney (Grand Valley State University Circle and Executive Director of Lead365), Janis Hirsch (Rollins College Circle and television comedy writer and producer), Kevin Kruger (University of Maryland, College Park Circle and President of NASPA), Eric Motley (Samford University Circle and Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute), Corey Seemiller (Wright State University Circle and author of Generation Z Goes to College), and Jamie Washington (University of Maryland, Baltimore County Circle and CEO of the Washington Consulting Group).
The videos of the 2016 convention featured speakers including Tom Bowen, motivational speaker Ann Marie Klotz (Grand Valley State University Circle), and Miss South Carolina 2011 Bree Boyce (Francis Marion University Circle) are still available as is the video of then Hope College’s President John Knapp’s (Samford University Circle) presentation on “Thinking in the Round” and Derreck Kayongo’s (East Carolina University Circle) inspirational opening keynote address.
The videos of the 2014 comments from Congressman John Yarmuth (University of Louisville Circle), Author Steven Fulmer, Coach Mike London (University of Richmond Circle), Teach For America’s Chante Chambers, and The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Mike Riley (Wake Forest University Circle) are also still available.
TED, the online platform for sharing ideas that matters, also has a wide range of videos on the general topic of leadership. Check out some of O∆K’s favorites here.