What we're looking forward to most at SchoolCEO Conference

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SchoolCEO Conference is now less than a month away. Many of you have got your tickets and have it marked on your calendars. But if you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time!

We’re looking forward to hosting school leaders from across the U.S. and Canada in SchoolCEO’s hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Check out the video here or click the thumbnail below!

As the date gets closer we wanted to share a few thoughts with you about what we’re looking forward to the most.

1. Karen Eber’s Perfect Story keynote and workshop:

Karen Eber is the author of The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories That Inform, Influence, and Inspire. What you may not know about her book and her talk is that she isn’t going to ask you to find a perfect story, but instead how you can take imperfect stories and make them perfect for YOUR audience.

In fact, Eber has already been on calls with a few districts that are bringing teams to SchoolCEO Conference to make our time with her as inspirational and productive as possible.

2. There are few speakers that feel more like a celebrity to us than Neal Foard . We’ve been sharing his YouTube videos and Instagram Reels for years. To have him tell these stories in person feels like the holidays have come early.

If you’re not familiar with Neal Foard, watch a few clips here to feel inspired. Beyond his encouraging true stories, Foard will show us how to unlock creativity and ingenuity in your school marketing without a big budget or a team of creatives.

3. SchoolCEO Conference has always featured experts from the private sector to give you ideas and insights you don’t normally have access to in your day-to-day work or at other conferences.

This year we’re adding three school leaders and educators into the line up: Michael Bonner from Ron Clark Academy and Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Collier, Ed.D. and Coty Kuschinsky , APR from Saginaw ISD in Michigan.

In separate talks, they’ll discuss how great school marketing is a collective effort that involves many voices all telling their own portions of the same story.

One question for you

1. What’s the most memorable conference you’ve been to and why?

Email us at editor@schoolceo.com or book a time on our calendar and let us know.

Two resources to help

1. Marketing is ultimately about relationship-building, and few know that better than Neal Foard. He sat down with SchoolCEO to share some lessons learned over 30 years in the advertising business. The main takeaway? Values like authenticity and trust aren’t just good for business—they’re fundamental to who we are. — Read The Human Side of School Marketing

2. Schools have amazing things happening every day, but how can you best bottle those moments and share them with your wider community? Karen Eber has some advice on how to make the most out of your storytelling. In addition to being a keynote speaker for SchoolCEO Conference, Karen joined us for an episode of SchoolCEO Podcast to talk about her background and about the power of storytelling. — Listen to How Storytelling Can Shape School Culture on SchoolCEO Podcast

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Three ideas from SchoolCEO Conference speakers

1. “Framing is about being intentional…and it’s, I want to invite this person into a conversation worth having. Let me not shut any doors on them by choosing the wrong word or skipping over the context or failing to show folks that we all have a stake in this issue. So, it’s an invitational rhetoric, not an argumentative rhetoric.” — Dr. Julie Sweetland on SchoolCEO Podcast

2. “You can’t demand a withdrawal from someone you’ve never invested in.” — Michael Bonner

3. “If we are not sharing our story or we're not sharing our own authorship, then we're allowing outside individuals to be able to craft the narrative of what their assumed experiences have been.” — Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Collier of Saginaw ISD in Michigan