The following is a transcript of the Sept. 23, 2024, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s news director. Our guest on this episode is Ursula Schryver, APPA’s Senior Vice President for Education, Training and Events. Ursula is joining us today to discuss upcoming APPA conferences. Ursula, thanks for returning to the podcast.
Ursula Schryver
Good morning, Paul. Thanks for having me back.
Paul Ciampoli
Ursula, before diving into details on the specific upcoming conferences, I wanted to give you an opportunity to provide an overview of the benefits of attending those conferences.
Ursula Schryver
There are obviously a lot of benefits to attending APPA conferences and really participating in any of our training programs, whether they're held in person or virtually. All of our programs fall under the APPA Academy, which is the education and training arm of APPA. And so broadly stated, the APPA Academy is public power’s resource for education and certification and our focus really is on public power employees and when we develop programs we view them through that lens. Our goal is to provide training opportunities in formats and price ranges that suit each person's needs and so to accomplish that, we have a wide variety of programs that we offer -- that includes conferences, which we're specifically talking about today, in-depth classes in person, virtual classes, short hour-long webinars, on demand self-paced training and in-house training. The goal really is to provide all types of education and training in the formats that are most useful to each particular individual. In terms of the benefits of attending APPA Academy events, obviously there is the educational content.
All of our programs feature public power specific topics. They include industry experts, instructors with years of experience in public power, public power case studies. The conferences feature high profile speakers, a wide variety of breakout sessions on critical and timely topics, and then obviously the more informal roundtable discussions are incredibly important at those conferences. We also offer continuing education credit for all of our programs, so we have CEUs that apply to really everyone, CPEs for the accountants, PDHs for the engineers, CLEs for the attorneys....and then we also offer several certificate programs that take a deep dive into topics such as leadership, key accounts and those types of areas. And then, finally, and probably most importantly, our conferences, specifically the in person conferences -- offer an opportunity for networking, sharing of ideas, making connections, making those connections, and learning from others in the industry and hearing how they've handled similar situations. And then having those contacts that you can reach out to when you have a question is really invaluable.
And I'll personally say that the relationships that I've developed over my 27 years here at APPA attending our conferences have been extremely rewarding both from a professional and a personal level. Seeing the same people year over year at our conferences and events, you really do develop those friendships and have those connections so you can reach out to them, whether it's personally or professionally. Those are really lifelong friendships that you develop over the course of the years and we see so many people that have been coming for 20 years, but then when I look at the number of new attendees, I would say at our business and financial conference last week, I would say at least a third of the people there were first time attendees. So it's really great to see that combination of the new people coming in, but then the people that have been coming for a long time as well.
Paul Ciampoli
We have several conferences scheduled to take place in the coming months, so could you provide additional details on those?
Ursula Schryver
We do have quite a lot coming up for the remainder of this year, so there are plenty of opportunities for training. Next up, we have our Fall Education Institute, which is being held September 30th through October 4th in Seattle. The education institutes are week-long series of classes that allow attendees to do a deep dive into topics such as basic and advanced accounting and work order and fixed asset accounting, cost of service and rate design, overhead distribution systems. We're also debuting a new Leadership Essentials certificate program, which is a three-part program to help new managers and employees develop their skills of both their team and of their own on their own. So the program focuses on proactive performance, coaching, problem identification and decision making, and developing high performing teams.
So this is a program that we are planning to offer annually -- we have it at the Fall Education Institute the end of this month [September 2024] and then we'll be offering it again in May at our Spring Institute in Orlando, FL. So hoping this really is a new program that's going to be really valuable because we do continue to hear that people are looking for leadership training, people moving into new management and leadership roles, so this is an area that we've really started to flesh out our programs and develop more offerings. Then in mid-October -- the 20th to the 23rd in Nashville, we will be holding our Legal and Regulatory Conference. This conference attracts about 200 public power, energy attorneys and regulatory professionals and includes updates on legal and regulatory topics and issues facing public power utilities. We have a wide variety of topics obviously being covered there. Ethics is always a hot topic for the attorneys, we have sessions on AI, energy policy in the next administration, a discussion on what's next with Chevron out. In addition to the conference sessions, we're offering two pre-conference seminars, one on generative AI for legal services and one on fundamentals of EPC contracts for energy projects, so a lot of good training, a lot of good opportunities there for the CLE credit.
And then finally to round out the year of our in person conferences, we'll have our Customer Connections conference, which will be held October 27th through 30th in Louisville, KY. This conference focuses on customer service, communications, key accounts and energy innovation and adoption. So a very customer focused and community focus of that conference -- our first time in Louisville for any of our events, so we're really playing that up, hoping to have some fun out there. We have a fun Kentucky Derby themed reception and band so look forward to rounding out the year with our in person programs in Louisville.
Paul Ciampoli
Looking ahead to next year, obviously there's a lot that's already scheduled and ready to have attendees attend. I wanted to give you a chance to go into details on what's on tap in terms of conferences for next year.
Ursula Schryver
First of all, my team would be appalled if I didn't also mention that we have a lot of virtual programs coming up both at the end of this year and early next year. We have our typical accounting and technical classes. We're also debuting additional leadership virtual programs -- the beginning of the year. So, as always, continue to check our website because there's always new things coming up. But since you asked me specifically about conferences, I'll dive into those just a little bit. We are already starting to plan the programs for the first half of 2025. We'll start out the year with a joint action conference in January, which will be held in Scottsdale, AZ.
This conference obviously focuses on issues that are relevant to joint action agencies or to utilities that are participating or involved in joint action agencies -- we typically get about a little over 100 attendees there. We have this year for the first time, we have a member planning committee that is going to be developing that program...making sure that we're developing timely topics that are going to be really attractive to people that want to attend those conferences. And I'll say that all of our conferences -- we are looking at whether we can make improvements -- changing the format, adding additional timely summits on the front end or the back end, or concurrent with the conferences. So really looking at all of our programs to see what we might do to improve them moving forward. In terms of other plans for 2025, we have our Legislative Rally here in DC in late February. That's another one where we're offering some new changes there.
Instead of having the preconference seminars...and which we charge a fee for that in depth training, we're going to offer free deep dives into topical issues. So attendees have programming that they can attend throughout the day on Monday, so we'll have an hour and a half deep dive on tax issues. Another deep dive immediately following that on supply chain issues and then that will feed into some of the committee meetings and other programs that are typically offered at the legislative rally. So really trying to develop a little bit more content, offer really those deep dives into topical issues that are going to be really relevant as people go onto the Hill and have discussions with the elected officials in their areas, so that's another exciting change that we're doing for 2025. Rounding out the first half of the year, we have a CEO Roundtable in March on Amelia Island, Florida. We'll do a golf tournament in coordination with that.
We have our Public Power Lineworkers Rodeo, which will be held in late March in Roseville, CA -- the Roseville Electric team is all in...it's going to be a really fun event. It's kind of kind of become a competition year to year on who can host the best rodeo, so looking forward to seeing that and then immediately following that we'll have our Engineering and Operations Conference in Sacramento. And then finally wrapping up the first half of the year, we have our National Conference -- obviously our largest meeting of the year -- will be held June 6th through 11th in New Orleans, LA....We're going to have a local arrangements committee meeting in November to start planning that and we'll have registration open January 1. And so like I said, lots of stuff coming up throughout the year and lots of additional virtual programs.
Really our tactic has been since the pandemic, it's having those core conferences where people can come together, network, in addition to the education and training programs, but then supplementing that throughout the year with topical issues in a virtual setting so people can come to the conference, they can participate in a virtual class. And if you want to bring a class into your utility, we can bring it through our in-house training program. We can bring our programs to your utility so, as I started out, our goal really is to meet you where you want to be and provide the training in the format that works best for you.
Paul Ciampoli
The last question I have for you is with respect to APPA’s in person conferences and events as well as virtual events, where can people go to get additional information?
Ursula Schryver
You can go to our website at publicpower.org and it's under Education and Training. And, of course, you can always reach out to me or my team. Educationinfo@publicpower.org is the place to go for that and like I said, the website is the best place to get the primary information.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for joining us again, Ursula. We really appreciate it.
Ursula Schryver
Thanks, Paul. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA. I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
