Round 2 of the Up Experience By Gail Davis | Friday, November 04, 2011
As I explained in my last blog, I had the opportunity to attend the Up Experience in Houston last week. It was a fantastic day full – and I mean very full – of speakers, but it felt like a perfectly performed symphony. I left uplifted and informed and inspired.
The second “Houston Up Close speaker”, Laura Spanjian, kicked off segment two. Laura is the Sustainability Director for the City of Houston. Her passion and commitment to transform Houston into the electric car hub and a true green city were inspiring.
Dr. Anthony Atala, the Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, followed and boy was he interesting. He gave example after example of the different organs, tissues, muscles and numerous other things that have been lab grown and how he is changing the face of organ transplants. He was truly captivating and left everyone speechless on how far we have come in regenerative medicine.
Alison Levine was a huge home run. I first heard Alison last summer and became an immediate fan. As luck would have it, I have Alison booked for one of my clients this week so it was great to reconnect with her.
She has high energy, an impressive resume in the adventure world and is a very strong female speaker. She is one of an elite group of climbers who have completed the Adventure Grand slam, people who have completed the seven summits and skied both North and South pole.
Her messages and lessons learned from climbing the seven summits are applicable to business and life. She talks about teamwork and competency (skills and experience). She stresses that you must have both. She does so in a way that not only gets her message across, but also keeps the audience laughing, feeling inspired and learning lessons all at the same time.
Alison talked about breaking every trek into smaller parts to avoid being overwhelmed. A great analogy for any organization.
She also spoke about disappointments. She did not make it to the top of Everest on her first attempt. Safety was more important than reaching the top. Most climbers who die on Everest don’t die on the way up. They die on way down because they should have turned around sooner. Her second attempt, she went back to honor a friend, and finally made it to the summit.
Rounding out this session was Dan Pink. Let’s face it Dan is a rock star in the public speaking world. He owns the stage. Dan focused on the importance of organizations giving their employees company paid time to be creative to come up with new ideas and what really motivates their workforce.
This is the point we broke for lunch and the inner skeptic in me was thinking “Well, they stacked the morning so well how can the afternoon compete?” You’ll find out in the next blog.
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