Don’t Break the #1 Rule of Icebreakers
Audible groans rolled across the audience as we begrudgingly stood up from our seats. In a room of 200 people, the speaker had managed to universally turn everyone’s attitude negative by uttering one phrase. This phrase is commonly used, but also commonly despised. What’s the phrase? “Ok, now we are going to do an icebreaker […]
The Vision for Swift Kick 2.0
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Progress is impossible without change.” At Swift Kick, we have some big, audacious goals around helping leaders better lead their teams and engage their members. After 14 years of training leaders, we knew a few things needed to change to help us reach our bigger vision. As we look ahead […]
5 Times Leaders are Required to Speak
Something big has just happened. Somebody needs to say something. You look around the room and see everyone staring back at you. Crap, that somebody is you, huh? With a title like President, Co-chair, or Head Honcho, you’re expected to have the words when nobody else does. That doesn’t mean you feel ready. Being a […]
Swift Kick Wins a Record Breaking Fifth National College Speaking Award
Fourteen years ago, I attended my first APCA conference to pursue my dream of being a professional speaker. Because I was still a senior in college, I had to leave after my evening class and drove ten hours through the night from Chicago to Atlanta. Despite high hopes of crushing it, my first ed session […]
Chairs, Stairs, and Garbage Cans: Your Partners in Student Engagement
I recently keynoted at the ACUI Region 6 conference in Florida. For those unfamiliar, ACUI stands for Association of College Unions International. ACUI people are in charge of the physical student union space on campus. This can mean anything from hosting student events, to furniture, to vacuum cleaners. At larger schools, they often run entirely […]
MyView: Alvernia University Dance Floor Theory Training [IMAGE]
They made these shirts specially for the training since they saw me do Dance Floor Theory a year ago at Alvernia.
Dance Floor Theory™ In A Nutshell [QUOTE]
This is an except I wrote from an upcoming NCSL NOW! magazine article about online community engagement… “When talking about online engagement my favorite place to start is offline on the dance floor. We’ve all been to good dances and bad dances. Good dances are proportional to the number of relationships built up on the […]
The First Swift Kick Retreat of 2007
The 1st SK company retreat of 2007 closed on January 10th. This retreat differentiated from the other three we held in 2006 because instead of being about basic logistics of upcoming programs, it was about the growth and vision of Swift Kick as we move into 2007 and beyond. We stated several times on this […]
Our Positioning for 2007
Positioning is one of my favorite parts of a start up. Like chess, it’s moving pieces so the position is advantageous. With Swift Kick, positioning matters for different reasons than my previous efforts, it’s not so much about competition. We are trying to improve education with our own money. There’s a ton of risk in […]
2006 Swift Kick Program Calendar
As we close the door on 2006, here’s a look back at who we worked with: 08/15/06 Penn State – Altoona Leadership Conference 08/16/06 Penn State – Altoona Leadership Conference 08/23/06 US Navy – Waxahachie, TN 08/28/06 Queens College 08/31/06 Penn State – Lehigh Valley 09/13/06 Alvernia College 09/14/06 Penn State – Harrisburg 09/15/06 College […]