What A Conference! SCI Celebrates 55 Years

On Saturday, March 5, Sister Cities International closed the 55th annual conference in Arlington, VA with more than 300 members from nearly 20 countries in attendance.

The anniversary celebration opened on Thursday with a Hill Day and included presentations from Senator Richard Durbin (IL) and Representative Mike Honda (CA). In the afternoon, attendees traveled to the Department of State for region and country breifings. Reta Jo Lewis, Special Representative for Global Intergovernmental Affairs was our host and made a keynote presentation about her work connecting local and state municipalities from the U.S. with other local governments around the world. In a short period the Department of State has established solid ties at the subnational level in China, South Africa, and Brazil among others. Maura Pally from the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs discussed some of the department's recent work with youth, exchange alumni, and Muslim-majority countries. Our Sister Cities conference was featured in the State Department's blog - DipNote - the following week. The day closed with a reception in the Benjamin Franklin Dining Room and Diplomatic Reception Rooms. Great views!

Friday and Saturday were filled with workshops on social media, protocol, Africa, and fundraising, as well as conversations about the future of citizen diplomacy. We closed the event by tipping our hats to the best programs for 2010 at the Lou Wozar Annual Awards Luncheon.

A Week Later - Conference Success Stories

Whoa - has it been a week (or two!) since Albuquerque. The praise continues to roll in. Between the youth and adult conference we had over 500 participants from nearly 20 countries. Were you there? See who was by checking out the attendee list.

The Africa and Mexico days were well attended and fostered a very useful dialogue.Our counterparts from US-Mexico Sister Cities Association and the Mexico-US Sister Cities Association were on hand and added a great deal.

Alicia Anstead led a terrific series of conversations around Arts & Culture for the day and her keynote speaker, Bob Lynch from Americans for the Arts.

The kick-off economic development presentations and networking breakfast were a huge hit. Kudos to the State of New Mexico Economic Development office.

Keynoter Anna Munio from Continuum challenged sister city leaders to look at their work through new lenses. Take a look at her PPT and other presentations from the conference.

We also transformed two conference sessions into webinars. Our popular Social Media and Fundraising sessions can be found online for members who didn't make it to the conference. Take a listen.

Many thanks to...Richard Buckler from the Albuquerque Sister Cities program and his army of volunteers, the Albuquerque CVB and mayor's staff, Carol Robertson Lopez for her support as a board member and well-connected New Mexican from Santa Fe, and our sponsors who helped us make it happen.

The debate and dialogue in the workshops, panel sessions and networking events covered the gamut and folks left with a renewed energy, a pocketful of ideas, and inspiration for another year of sister city exchanges and programs.

Join us next year for our anniversary conference at a special time of year: our 55th Annual Conference in Arlington, Virginia USA on March 3-5, 2011. Visit www.sister-cities.org/conference for speaker and session details and to secure the early bird discounted registration rate today.

Not Your Father's Sister Cities Conference!

More than 100 youth and young professionals at the conference. No minimum middle age required.(Posted: from our social media session.)

(Author’s note: If you don’t “get” the title of this post, you are officially part of the sister cities youth(ful) movement. Apologies to Oldsmobile. Do they still exist?)

A Call for Community Diplomacy: Sister Cities International 2010 Conference

This week we launch our 54^th Annual Conference in Albuquerque, NM bringing together more than 500 citizen diplomats and youth from 20+ countries to discuss community diplomacy.

We three top tier keynote speakers. Our opening speaker is from the design consulting firm Continuum. Anna Munio will challenge attendees to think about ‘how’ they approach problem solving in our network between communities. Continumm has been in the middle of creative thinking commercially for a long time (heard of the Swiffer? That was them!) but over the past few years they have expanded their practice to apply their concepts and solutions to social problems. The nonprofit buzz word is social innovation – I think our audience-goers will realize they’ve been social innovators long before it became trendy.

See below about national arts figure Robert Lynch's role at the conference.

Our closing speaker is Leanne Rios from the United Nations to talk about the U.N.’s progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. With an endzone of 2015, some countries are making serious progress while other problems seem to be getting worse. Rios will address a specific campaign to stop hunger.

In our other sessions, we plan to cover the globe in our own way:

• Africa and Mexico have their own tracks on Thursday, letting delegates dig deep into
  discussion and hear more about our urban poverty grant program.


• Arts and cultural programs have been the foundation of many local sister city programs for decades. This subject gets its own track facilitated by seasoned journalist Alicia Anstead in a series of interviews (featuring Americans for the Arts President & CEO Robert Lynch), discussions, and workshops on Thursday as well.


• On Friday, we are introducing a new educational model to our sessions: Sister Cities University. These three sessions on fundraising, Social Media, and Volunteer Management are designed to get members to roll up their sleeves and hear how experts and members programs address the topics while providing real-time answers and
  tips to problems.


• Friday has turned into a nonstop day of workshops and panels on: the Muslim World, Green/Energy exchanges, economic development, volunteer management, youth and multiculturalism, social media, fundraising, elected officials, and crisis management case study. See full schedule.

While I can’t recommend one over another one without getting into trouble with one group of the panelists over others (although I am moderating the fundraising one!), I have to say
hearing directly from local elected officials is always insightful.

Divide and conquer, there’s something for everyone. Learn, exchange ideas, energize your program and our network.