Kelsey Voorhees, ACA International’s account coordinator, shares about her role planning education content to Help Members Succeed.
9/27/2019 9:00
ACA International provides member training and education opportunities in multiple formats, including books, seminars and web courses. No matter what the delivery method, the education lifecycle—from an idea to the finished product—is rigorous, and takes months of fine-tuning. In the September issue of Collector magazine, Kelsey Voorhees, ACA’s account coordinator, talks with Managing Editor Anne Rosso May about planning education content for the association’s conferences and the rush of seeing her hard work in action.
Tell us about your role at ACA.
For the last year and a half, I worked as ACA’s education specialist. I helped coordinate and manage all of our education sessions, both online and face-to-face. In August, I actually started a new role at ACA as the account coordinator, working with ACA’s regional and state units.
How does ACA plan education sessions for its major events?
There are different processes for the different events. We do try to keep the full year of education content in mind when we’re selecting topics for face-to-face events.
For our Annual Convention and Fall Forum, we send out a request for proposals months in advance, asking people to send in their ideas and speaker suggestions. Then those submissions are reviewed by staff and association committees. We repeat that process a few times to narrow it down, and then we send out more specific requests if we see any “holes” in the full agenda. It takes quite a bit of time and discussion to select the final sessions. For example, for this year’s convention we had about 75 formal proposals and we could only accept 35.
There are always other breaking-news topics that come up too, like the CFPB’s proposed rules, so we try to save space for those “known unknowns.”
Have you ever coordinated sessions for more than one event at a time?
I am constantly coordinating for more than one event at a time. Our online schedule is always growing with more CORE webinars and Hot Topics that need scheduling and management. We start planning Fall Forum content right after the Annual Convention wraps, and vice versa. In between those, we get the sessions for Spring Forum set up.
It can be a lot to handle, but it’s a team effort so there is always help from other staff. Lists and calendar reminders are my best friends.
What are the challenges of your job?
The challenges are really coordinating all the speakers—there are usually multiple speakers per session—and then updating the materials for the event. When there are changes, we have to make updates in about four or five different places for the Convention: ACA’s website, the PDF agenda, the printed pocket agenda, the mobile app and the PlayBack Now agenda. All the materials have deadlines and some changes can’t be made after a certain point, so getting all the session and speaker information early is key. That said, life happens and changes definitely happen later than deadlines, so we usually always have to update after the deadline.
My favorite part of coordinating these sessions? Being at the event and seeing all our hard work in action. It goes by fast, so it’s kind of a rush to get there and be with our team just making it work!
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