Florida Sand, The First Time Was A Charm

So, this weekend I attended my first Florida SAND conference. At first, I wasn't sure what to expect; I had never been to an event like this. I had heard mixed reviews from those who have attended in the past. It started slow; there were a bit of technical and arrival glitches with myself and my PCA. However, once we got there, it quickly became apparent that this would not be anything like I had heard.

Friday night was a chill night; I met some pretty amazing people and lost Uno's rather exciting game of No official conference business that took place that night. Although my PCA won a bag of espresso beans for some strange reason, I was hoping we would win the autographed football but still pretty awesome.

Saturday was the heart of the conference, right away Saturday morning, I realized that something was different. My college brain had kicked in again, and I was in learning mode. I have tried two other academic endeavors since I graduated with my Masters, one in real estate and one in Political Science. Neither of those was as engaging as the Florida SAND conference was. I guess it just took my brain a while to realize that disability advocacy was what it wanted to focus on. As the Saturday session progressed, we voted on the legislative platform. Without getting into the details of the proceedings, I will say that we came up with two legislative issues: That of provider rates and transportation.

One of Florida SAND's essential functions is to provide a legislative platform for people with developmental disabilities. After the legislative part of the conference ended, we broke for lunch, where we were randomly mixed with other groups that had attended the meeting. We were then given a challenge to overcome, having the sense of humor that I find the word challenge ironic. The challenges ranged from how we would react to being denied the right to vote to the somewhat controversial challenge of meeting Donald Trump. While I am supportive of Trump, I will leave my feelings about that for another blog.

After lunch, the conference broke into my favorite sessions; characteristically, at that point, my body intervened. First, I witnessed an excellent presentation on marketing and fundraising that I was not familiar with. It was given by the head of the conference and her husband. After this, I was hoping to attend a session on recruiting allies and like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, medical issues intervened. I was able to come back near the end of the session and caught some great tidbits from a woman named Whitney and a gentleman by the name of Arizona.

 The day's final session piqued my interest because it dealt with increasing one's voice on social media. This blog has been going on for quite some time now, but I learned some valuable do's and don'ts for an increasing presence on social media and using it effectively to advance one's cause. The night ended with a dinner at a local Olive Garden type restaurant and an optional dance. Seeing as how I don't have all that great of moves with or without the chair, I spent most of the dance talking to some great people. I then went back up to my room to watch some TV before calling it a night.

 

The last day of the conference consisted of a general board meeting for all Florida SAND members. The conference wrapped up around midday on Sunday. Overall the discussion was very informative and very productive for me on a personal level. This was the first time that the conference had been held in nearly two years. However, it was hard to tell that there had been such a large gap between this conference and the last one. It seemed as if the conference and its organizers had put an extreme amount of effort to present a quality experience for all those involved. Some things need to be improved upon, but improvement is always a good thing; nothing is ever perfect.