Communicators’ Conference 2019

Above you can see a few of the goodies I came away with – there were lots more. Among the items missing is the St. Augustine’s prayer book, which I am enjoying working through.

When I was asked to speak at one of the workshops, I wondered what fantastic communication feat I’d achieved to warrant the invitation. I soon found out. My given topic was romance scams.

I thought long and hard before I agreed to take part. I decided to go ahead because it was an excellent opportunity to raise awareness about romance scams. I gave a twenty-five-minute presentation as part of the cybersecurity workshop. I also wrote an accompanying article for my fellow communicators to publish. It’s already been published a couple of times, and I hope that many of my communications colleagues will include it in their magazines. The article is written from my point of view (I targeted it initially for publication in a men’s ministry magazine), but it includes information sent to me from some of the victims and their families.

You can read Unknowing Victims here.

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Monday. Spring hadn’t properly arrived in Denver, in the evening it started to snow heavily. I braved the weather and found a good Indian restaurant a few blocks away. It was so good I returned on Wednesday to try some different dishes.

Tuesday, after our pre-conference workshops we held the conference Eucharist at St. John’s Cathedral which was followed by food provided by the cathedral. I was quite unsettled, as I called Ginger from the cathedral and we had to cut our conversation short because of a tornado warning. For whatever reason, the Springfield weather radar was down (one imagines the worse), and I couldn’t get any information. Looking on social media I could only find a severe thunderstorm warning, which was a bit of a relief. I’d have been a lot more worried if I’d found out what was happening. Nine tornadoes touched down in the area (update: the final figure was over 25), one traveling ten miles. Fortunately, no one was killed, though a lot of places have been trashed.

Wednesday was wall to wall workshops. This was a week when my photo-mojo pretty much deserted me. I struggled photographically and personally at this conference and mainly kept to myself. Rather than join in the group dinners, I went back to the Indian restaurant I’d found on Monday.

Thursday. Fortunately by the time Thursday and some free time came around the weather had improved. Still a tad on the chilly side, but much better. After I had delivered my presentation and I’d seen the second keynote speech, I visited the Denver Art Museum.

Friday was a travel day but my flight didn’t leave until 5 pm. So I wandered around town for a while before catching the train to the airport.