(07/17/19)

By Jenifer Wisniewski, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

The Conference by the Numbers

138 attendees | 33 states represented | 546 award entries | 104 awards given (several ties)

Still have Georgia on your mind? Did you bring back any new ideas?

ACI President, Jenifer Wisniewski

Well here is my challenge to you. Don’t let digging out of your email and catching up on all the office happenings take your focus off of your new ideas! Sit down right now and write out at least one thing that you are going to make happen for you and your agency that you learned at ACI.
Here’s my personal (partial) list of things to try to accomplish or at least not forget:

• Talk to agency educators who routinely engage non-traditional audiences, then see if there is a way to reprogram what they do to be more R3 oriented.
• Find a couple of authentic, passionate voices that are ready to talk, and use them.
• Tell more personal stories.
• Use Quality Deer Management Association’s (QDMA) Chronic Wasting Disease content. It’s tested, and the language is good. #FightCWD https://www.qdma.com/?s=cwd They will also share their images with us. Ask Lindsay Thomas lthomas@qdma.com
• Make time for personalized media relations when you can. It’s worth the investment.
• Figure out how to use social influencers more to advocate for us.
• Stay in touch with partners and other state agencies and use their existing content when you can. Save time and money.

We have a ton of partners out there that are ready to help us, all we have to do is to remember to ask for help. Here are a few to get to know if you don’t already:

• Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF) 
• National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) 
• Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) 
• Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) and the regional associations 
• The Council to Advance Hunting and the Shooting Sports (CAHSS) 
• National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) 
• National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and your state chapter 
• US Fish and Wildlife Service External Affairs Offices 
• Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation 

Cool research firms to familiarize yourself with their studies:

• Southwick and Associates
• DJ Case and Associates 
• Responsive Management 
• Chase and Chase Consulting 

Here are links to some of the presentations. Still missing a couple, but will have them shortly to post.

• GA WRD Welcome + Managing up
• TWF 
• RBFF
• McKean
• Social Media
• NWTF
• QDMA
• ACI Survey of Agency Structure 
• Making it Last 

I hope all of you who were able to come to the conference this year enjoyed it!

Lastly, I want to impart sincerest of congratulations to all the award winners for 2018. That was some stiff competition and some very impressive winners. Congratulations also to the Spirit of ACI Award winner this year, Blake Podhajsky, who certainly showed his ACI spirit throughout the awards process this year from beginning to end.