A special Leadership Round Table on Energy & Environment will be held from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm on Tuesday, November 13th, prior to the opening of the SPN Annual Meeting. A private dinner will be held Monday evening at the Ritz Carlton for those attending this Round Table Discussion. This is the first of a series of Leadership Round Tables on Energy & Environment that will be held before the Annual SPN Meetings and before the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank meetings each year. Top energy/environment experts will join SPN CEO’s or Policy Directors.
Limited attendance, to RSVP please email Mike Thompson at mikethompson@erols.com.
Nationwide, state lawmakers are looking to create, expand, or stop school choice. As promoters and defenders of good public policy, state-based think tanks need to focus even more efforts on communicating effectively with opinion leaders, whether they are supportive or opposed to their ideas. This session, conducted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, will detail how think tanks can provide educational resources to policymakers, testify effectively before committees, counter the arguments of the education bureaucracy, and insert themselves in the discussion on how to provide a high-quality education to all families through school choice.
Please RSVP to Keri Hunter, National Projects Coordinator at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice at keri@edchoice.org. Lunch provided.
“Of all the nation’s conservative or free-market policy groups, it may be…Reason Foundation…that ends up having the most direct impact on the actual functioning of government.” - The Wall Street Journal
Privatization of government services encourages competition, demands accountability for performance, and cuts the cost of service delivery while maintaining or improving quality. Yet despite an overall track record of success, there are many in government who are unaware of the benefits of privatization. This lack of knowledge is compounded by anti-globalization, anti-private sector, and anti-capitalist sentiment, which makes the need for education about the benefits of privatization even more urgent.
For more than 40 years, Reason Foundation has been providing research and commentary on privatization as well as hands-on assistance for state and local policymakers in planning and implementing privatization. By articulating best practices through research and media, identifying new opportunities for innovative privatization strategies, and working directly with elected officials to implement our ideas on a range of issues from transportation to prisons to parks to foster care, Reason takes a comprehensive approach to reform.
The Reason team has put together a half-day seminar about the opportunities to reduce the size and scope of government at the state and local level through work on privatization. Along with representatives from other think tanks who work in this area and privatization practitioners, they will review the tools that they use to support policymakers who have an interest in privatization.
Attendance is free of charge, but space is limited. RSVP to Mary.Toledo@reason.org or (310) 391-2245.
Schedule of Events:
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Privatization 101
As government fiscal challenges mount, so do state and local policymakers’ calls for privatization. This session will review the different types of privatization most relevant to state and local policy, the rationale for privatization (e.g., cost savings, improved performance, risk shifting, etc.), best practices in implementation, and more.
2:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. State Level Privatization
Ongoing budget crises, debt and pension liabilities, and other fiscal challenges are prompting state policymakers to take increasingly bold steps in privatization. This session will review recent privatization trends at the state level and will feature perspectives from public and private sector innovators on the what, whys and hows of advancing privatization reforms.
3:45 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Local Level Privatization
Municipalities in fiscal distress represent an opportunity for privatization reform, regardless of which political party is in power. This session will provide an overview of emerging local privatization issues and will feature a discussion with local government privatization practitioners on their efforts to implement robust solutions at the local level.
Jumpstart your organization’s activist engagement programs! Grassroots organizers and trainers will share how you can build an effective call to action network to turn your white papers into winning ideas.
Agenda:
1:30-2:00 Dynamics of the Tea Party
A snapshot of the Tea Party movement and a pulse check of the current momentum. What are future trends and best practices? Train activists to get out of meetings and play effective offense all the time.
2:00-2:30 Establishing Your Call to Action Network
Find and train activists to get out of meetings and play effective offense all the time. Move your strategic plans and policy goals off of the shelf and into reality.
2:30-3:00 Social Media Strategy
How to build your online community of activists through social media and email marketing, and then move them to offline action.
3:00-4:00 Ask the Activists & Partner Resources
Florida activists and national “grass tops” will answer your questions about any and all activisim engagement. Grassroots training organizations will present their tools and trainings available for activists that you can use for your plans.
4:00-5:00 Problem Solving Session
Break off into small roundtable to work through issues that state groups might face on the ground or get feedback on ideas for outreach.
5:00-6:00 Closing Reception (TBD)
Start the Annual Meeting off right with some friendly competition on the beach. Co-ed teams of four will compete for bragging rights. Form your teams before arriving or just show up as a free agent and we will place you on a team.
Enjoy one of America’s most pristine beaches with this tournament to see which policy entrepreneur can construct the best sandcastle! This fun activity will take place on beautiful Fernandina Beach.
The GLF Orientation provides an overview of the SPN Annual Meeting and will be followed by a Generation Liberty Fellows-only reception.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) and Right on Crime invite you to a complimentary dinner event to explore how SPN groups can successfully apply free-market and limited government principles to criminal justice issues. Grover Norquist, a Right on Crime signatory and the President of Americans for Tax Reform, is speaking.
With corrections costs one of the fastest growing items in state budgets and a burgeoning array of state laws concerning ordinary business activities that increasingly criminalize capitalism, there is a vital need for SPN groups to work with policymakers to enhance public safety, control costs, protect individual liberty, empower victims of crime, and reform those offenders who are amenable to rehabilitation.
Launched in December 2010, Right on Crime is anchored by a Statement of Principles signed by 17 SPN group leaders as well as national figures such as Jeb Bush, Bill Bennett, Newt Gingrich, and Ed Meese. TPPF and Right on Crime are pleased to be able to provide support to fellow SPN groups to assist with state work on adult corrections reform, juvenile justice, and the overcriminalizaton of business. Join us for this dinner to learn more about the exciting opportunities to apply our common principles in this area.
There are limited number of seats and you must RSVP to attend.
Join us for a dessert reception and film screnning of InJustice.
InJustice showcases how the class action lawsuit, born from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was skillfully managed by a small group of trial attorneys who manipulated legal rules, procedures — and even their own clients — to become an international enterprise that rivals the scope and profits of Fortune 500 corporations. Visit www.InJusticetheFilm.com to learn more.
Greg Glassman, CEO and Founder of CrossFit
Why would we invite a controversial fitness advocate to address us…a CEO who believes the best path to his success is to empower others to see and seize opportunity? What could he possibly teach us about becoming a catalyst for broader cultural change by utilizing the market, disrupting the status quo, and rewarding individual initiative? Can we learn something from a person who believes important outcomes are worth intelligent sacrifice and extraordinary diligence? We’re counting on it.
MOVE the right audience, the audience that cares, by speaking to their hearts. Using valuable research provided by Heart + Mind Strategies on what people truly care about, this session will focus on how to deploy excellent communications around policy goals. Come see how to go from communications theory to implementation.
The perfect website won’t do it. Nor will the largest Facebook page community. But once your presence is live and online, a many-armed social ad campaign gets your organization followed. Facebook brings action on Twitter and Google+ so that all your public images tell the same story and ask powerfully for your public’s response.
What is Moves Management and how can it assure your success as a
fundraiser and relationship builder? This presentation provides the latest
information about instituting and following a Moves Management system to build
prospect relationships. It provides a logical method to move forward in your
relationships with prospects at the best possible pace.
This session follows the plenary where, no doubt, Greg Glassman, CEO of CrossFit, will have raised issues, possibilities, and concerns that many of you will want to pursue. For CEOs who want more up-close-and-personal time with this CEO of a successful, fast growing, high-risk company, this is your chance.
Whether you are running a start-up, a "start-over," or are just new to building an organization, Operations 101 is the place to start. No long talks or PowerPoints here. You will be able to pose your operation’s questions to the experts so you can get on the path to achieve your strategic goals. Claire Kittle of TalentMarket will be available to discuss hiring, recruitment, and other “people” issues. Levi Morehouse of Ceterus will address your finance, accounting, and compliance questions. Mike Toguchi of eResources can speak to your technology concerns.
This session with Dr. De Hicks will identify key steps every organization needs to take to turn their mission into concrete plans—and to turn concrete plans into habits, processes, and procedures to achieve success. Organizations of every size will learn how to create impact and measure progress along the way, how to create clarity and alignment at every level of the organization, and how to translate plans into individual and team performance tools.
Are you missing opportunities to move policy forward because you aren’t working with allies who hold sway? Outreach experts who work with Hispanics, women, and youth will share fresh opportunities and potential pitfalls to avoid when working with seemingly unlikely bedfellows.
Louisiana won a school choice and tenure reform victory in early 2012, Chicago teachers may have built support for charters and other education choices when they closed “real school,” and parents and schools across the country have adopted technology in new ways to improve the educational opportunities available to children. Meanwhile the fight over Common Core has intensified even as states begin to adapt curriculum to its standards. Be prepared for a vigorous discussion of ways to harness these debates to make significant advances in your state in 2013.
Our counties and municipalities are the levels of government that have the most effect on our daily lives. From trains to transparency, hot dogs to hens, in this roundtable discussion you can share your success stories, explain what you face in local government, and hear what has worked for others.
Join us for this informative session describing various scenarios related to financial management to get your development shop in great fiscal health! Topics covered will include the importance numbers play for nonprofits, what numbers and reports fundraisers and managers need, and how to make the most out of your database.
How to motivate your staff to promote their work through social media? This roundtable discussion will focus on finding ways to better encourage a workplace cultural shift toward engaging ever-increasing audiences active in online venues.
A good story works better, and is more memorable, than a policy lecture. Join this workshop with Kevan Kjar as he guides us through how to apply storytelling to public policy. Make your policy stick through stories that activate people to get involved.
Dr. Hicks, CEO of Stuart Consultant Group. Inc., a successful organizational and leadership development firm, will lead a discussion and Q&A on these topics: define and achieve sustainable growth personally and professionally; address compromising weaknesses; develop self-awareness and life-work balance; learn to better manage time; navigate risk and lean into conflict; fail-forward fast; problem-solve under pressure.
How many units of liberty are we creating? We won’t know that answer, but we can gauge our effectiveness, beginning with a measurable definition of the impact we intend to make. This will impress donors as well! Caren Oberg will be sharing some general principles of evaluation coming from her 10 years of experience ranging from free-market nonprofits to large institutions like the Smithsonian. Andy Gillette will discuss particular evaluation projects being conducted at the Bill of Rights Institute.
Understand how hundreds of diverse groups, each with its own distinct goal, can work together on the issue of school choice under one big tent while maintaining autonomy. Each group advances its work while at the same time contributing to a national effort to raise awareness about school choice and uniting to build a groundswell of demand. How can we replicate this model to move the movement in other policy areas?
This roundtable starts from the principle that property rights and markets provide the best way to protect the environment. You will have the chance to discuss how states can put this principle into practice, reclaim their lands from the federal government, challenge federal regulation of the local environment, ease the burden on private individuals to tap available energy resources, and allow their citizens to build an affordable and sustainable energy future.
What is the best way to improve access to broadband internet for rural residents? In a number of towns and states, government has decided it is best suited to do the job well. But many of these government broadband providers are losing money and draining resources from other government services. This will be one of the topics we cover during this roundtable discussion. Other topics will include taxation of internet sales, including cloud-based services, and what states can do to protect internet freedom.
In-house video can be a powerful tool for promoting your work – if it is planned well. Come to this roundtable discussion and share ideas on how to promote policy through video.
Henry Olsen, Vice President of National Research Intitiative, American Enerprise Institute
Leslie Graves, President, Lucy Burns Institute
Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform
Peter Schweizer, Author (invited)
The reforms we seek are not partisan, but they require policymakers who understand enough about the essential nature of freedom to get out of the way—to work toward reducing the size and scope of government—to advance transparency—to suppress unhealthy interests of big government advocates in favor of safeguards for individual liberty. What does the freedom landscape look like after the 2012 elections? Where do we have new opportunities? Where have the stumbling blocks grown in size?
Special presentation of the Vernon K. Krieble Unsung Hero Award and presentation of $25,000.
Have your Facebook Timeline posts lost viewers since September? Facebook changed the way content is displayed, again. Come to this session and talk through the latest trends in Facebook promotion. Learn strategies to keep up with future changes.
Tired of getting buried in crazy attacks when you release policy reports that highlight problems? Learn how to get ahead of the attacks, find out what the opposition is doing, and equip your partners to go on the offense so that you don't need to play defense.
The drive toward “multimedia everything” can often feel like it is at odds with organizational vision. This showdown between a creative multimedia professional and a well-known CEO will highlight some issues that often come up – and ways to work through them to the better success of your organization.
Learn from our member experts on the topics of events, e-fundraising, maximizing your small shop, direct mail, and how to make the most of your day! Experts from a broad range of fundraising areas will lead small-group roundtables digging into the weeds of these important areas. Chose two topics of the five sessions offered to attend. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on how to execute your development plan day-to-day. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on the topics of events, e-fundraising, maximizing your small shop, direct mail, and how to make the most of your day! Experts from a broad range of fundraising areas will lead small-group roundtables digging into the weeds of these important areas. Chose two topics of the five sessions offered to attend. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on direct mail.
Learn from our member experts on the topics of events, e-fundraising, maximizing your small shop, direct mail, and how to make the most of your day! Experts from a broad range of fundraising areas will lead small-group roundtables digging into the weeds of these important areas. Chose two topics of the five sessions offered to attend. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on e-fundraising. Experts from a broad range of fundraising areas will lead small-group roundtables digging into the weeds of these important areas. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on the topics of events, e-fundraising, maximizing your small shop, direct mail, and how to make the most of your day! Experts from a broad range of fundraising areas will lead small-group roundtables digging into the weeds of these important areas. Chose two topics of the five sessions offered to attend. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on the topic of how to fundraise in a small shop.
Of course it sounds great to build an organization that fosters work-life balance, but how do you actually accomplish that? What policies and practices can you implement to attract the right employees, and make your organization even stronger? Tracie Sharp will discuss how this has come into play at SPN over the last decade; Kristina Rasmussen will discuss what the Illinois Policy Institute is doing as an employer to accommodate employees; Levi Morehouse will fill us in on how to implement new policies while complying with all legal requirements, and Claire Kittle will discuss trends in the for-profit and non-profit sectors and what matters to various employee demographics.
Increase your organization's ability to achieve meaningful policy change by building coalitions around important issues. This session will give you the tools to begin building effective partnerships with the people and organizations that share your interests.
State legislatures have to deal with two immediate challenges from ObamaCare when they return to session in January 2013 – Medicaid expansion and insurance exchanges. We will have a good discussion on each of these topics to prepare you for this debate in your state. You will also be able to learn about positive reforms that can improve access to affordable care.
Learn from our member experts on the topics of events, e-fundraising, maximizing your small shop, direct mail, and how to make the most of your day! Experts from a broad range of fundraising areas will lead small-group roundtables digging into the weeds of these important areas. Chose two topics of the five sessions offered to attend. Bring your questions and your experience!
Learn from our member experts on the topic of events.
Highly effective boards carefully guard and support their organization’s mission, select the executive wisely, provide personal, professional and evaluation support for the executive, oversee effective organizational planning without micromanaging, help ensure adequate finances, and evaluate their own performance. Sounds great, but impossible for an all-volunteer board! Dr. Hicks, CEO of a successful organizational and leadership development firm, will describe ways to make it a practical part of doing business at your institute.
Sponsored by the Mercatus Center.
Take a break and make some new connections.
Pinterest. Reddit. Foursquare. Bufferapp. Tumblr. The list can be endless. In this roundtable discussion, we will discuss strategies for taking advantage of social platforms without losing productivity.
My Food. My Choice! recognizes that the growing campaign by local governments and now nationally, through the White House and various federal agencies, to ban certain foods or tax them off the market is a dire threat to individual liberty. If the state can control what we eat, there is nothing the state can't control. My Food. My Choice! is the citizen-led counterweight to local and national government bullies who've decided that the path to unlimited power is through our stomachs. Come learn more about this movement and how you can get involved.
Federal government failures, excessive spending, deficits, etc., have many sources. But a major area of explosive growth has been the nearly $1 trillion of means-tested entitlements led by Medicaid, food stamps, job-training programs. The more than 200 such programs need to be devolved to the states with finite block grants and a work requirement, modeled after the very successful’96 welfare reform. At this session Ferrara and Uhler will present their study/report on such entitlement devolution and call on SPN organizations in each state to join in “pulling” these programs out of Washington for the benefit of the Nation and the truly needy.
Hosted by Students For Liberty
The forum will bring state-based think tanks together with leaders of the student movement for liberty to discuss student outreach efforts.
The forum’s purpose is to assist state-based think tanks in the development of more active and effective efforts to spread their institute’s ideas to today’s young people and support pro-liberty students in their areas. During this educational forum, Students For Liberty leaders will join representatives from a diverse group of state-based think tanks to discuss best practices of student outreach efforts.
The agenda will include:
Saving the nation and defending liberty is tough work—even with free enterprise and capitalism pointing the way. That’s why we all need to cut loose every now and then. At the Foundation for Government Accountability’s Freedom Field Day Reception at the Ritz, our movement isn’t just about fiscal sanity and the freedom to prosper, it’s also about food, drinks, music, contests and games. Compete with your colleagues, enjoy your favorite tailgate activities, and maybe even get your face painted. Liberty and fun are one in the same at FGA’s Freedom Field Day at the Ritz. We’ll see you there.
Join the staff and Board of Directors of The James Madison Institute for a North Florida tradition: a beach-side oyster roast and Low Country boil. Put on your dancing shoes and shag to the music of the Palmetto Catz band. Flipflops (the footwear, not the political kind) encouraged!
Do you love to turn policy research into charts, pictures, cartoons, and more? Come to our D3 "infographic-off" and work with peers to translate tomes of information into funny, interesting, and easy-to-digest visuals. Facilitating this session, which runs the duration of the SPN Annual Meeting, will be tech marketing engineers and designers ready to help make spreadsheets spring to life as charts, images, and interactive infographics.
Hosted by the American Enterprise Institute
This summer, the American Enterprise Institute talked about how we can get back on the Road to Freedom. If you're as excited as we are, please join us to run, jog, or walk the first 3.1 miles on the Road (Race) to Freedom 5K. Participation is free, but RSVPs are required.
RSVP here: http://www.aei.org/about/road-race-to-freedom-5k
Registration closes on Monday, October 15!
Dr. Alison Mallard, HR Catalyst
A mission worth accomplishing almost always requires team effort. But building a high functioning team does not happen by chance: knowledge and determination are essential. Alison and the SPN Development Team will engage in a lively demonstration to show how an awareness and appreciation of different operational styles have significantly increased personal and team performance. You will learn how to better coordinate efforts, grease communication skids, and work together toward common goals.
The age-old marketing question is: how do you measure success? Come to this roundtable meeting to see how your peers measure success in online marketing activities.
What if a strong criticism of something you’ve said worked in your favor? Learn to make that possible by mastering objection reframing. A couple of simple steps and a little practice and you’ll know the technique. Kevan Kjar does more than explain; he pulls the answer from your own astounded head.
Invitation to participate is far better than being bossed around. What if there were a way to INVITE your message from your target audiences? There is: it's a method referred to as “pulling.” Come learn how others have gained better traction by employing "pull" rather than parroting materials.
The Professor on Gilligan’s Island didn’t have to raise money for his experiments, but you have funds to raise for your group. Daniel Erspamer will teach you how to tell a compelling story to donors that is more compelling than a cast of stowaways trapped on an island.
This is a private, invitation-only meeting restricted for SPN state think tank member CEOs only.
Unless you can accomplish your mission by yourself, building a high-performance team is essential. This requires ability to identify specific strengths, formulate critical objectives, resolve conflict, and operate efficiently together. Organizational psychologist Alison Mallard will expand on her team-building plenary presentation and discuss strategies for addressing these issues for profitable outcomes.
One unintended positive outcome from the Occupy movement has been more questioning of the value of universal college education and the attendant debt. Many criticisms of for-profit colleges can also apply to non-profit and public universities. Controversies at Penn State and the University of Virginia have focused more attention on the proper role of trustees at public universities. The deficiencies in the traditional higher education model have opened opportunities for nontraditional providers. This lively roundtable should introduce you to some helpful resources and otherwise prepare you for the debate in your state.
Kansas and Oklahoma took steps to reform their tax systems this year. A number of other states have plans to make significant budget and tax reforms in 2013. You will have a chance in this session to debate what worked and did not work in states that have already attempted reform, and to discuss what can work in your state. You will also be able to learn about institutional reforms that may seem small but have a big impact.
Tempted to put the search box at the bottom of your page, instead of at the top? Wish your Home button weren’t always in the top left-hand corner? Discuss developing standards in Website design and how they affect an organization’s public impact.
Rod Lowman, President, Lowman Group, LLC
Dee Allsop, CEO, Heart+Mind Strategies
Heart + Mind Strategies is responsible for some of the most memorable commercials of the past decade. Using extensive new research about the electorate prepared especially for SPN affiliates and partners, seasoned experts from the firm will teach us how to move our key policy reforms from white papers into reality. They will describe how we can stop talking to ourselves and lower the risk and up-front investment of talking with citizens and policymakers alike. They will show us how to anchor our brand--Freedom--on the core values of our key stakeholders’ target audiences.
We LOVE data – the more data the better, right? It can help us drill down into exact causes and effects. But piles of data are hard for many people to absorb. Come to this session to see ways to boil down complex data into simple graphics that will delight your communications staff and outreach partners.
Woe to the organization that discounts the power of the millennial generation. Millennials are graduating from school to find no jobs. They’re able to quickly adapt to an ever-changing world, and a little numb to “rules” after being raised in school environments that over-dramatize small things into big problems. This generation is ready to get involved and make changes. Come discuss characteristics of millennials and ways to work with them for a better world.
Are you getting the best results from your online fundraising tools? Find out which tools are getting results and how they can integrate with your organization’s overall digital strategy.
Pinterest is fast gaining momentum as an information sharing tool. Better yet, the demographics of this community are fairly narrow, so you can target your message directly to them. Come discuss specific examples of how other organizations and people have successfully used Pinterest to engage with people.
In 2013 it is predicted that mobile phones and tablets will surpass desktop computers as the website browsing tool of choice. Are you ready for this? Come find out how to adjust the way you present information to better tap into the wave of phone and tablet visitors.
A discussion of the decisions, planning, and execution necessary to take our organizations to the next level.
An overview of what a Board and a Board Member must do to serve your nonprofit well, including the Board member’s role in “fiscal responsibility”. Relating to fundraising, the presentation discusses the importance of the Board’s role as fundraising leaders, principles for world-class fundraising, suggestions on how Board members can help identify, cultivate and steward donors.
There's a difference between being a top performer and a great manager. How do you help top performers in your organization move into management roles? Tony Woodlief, president of the Bill of Rights Institute, will discuss how to identify employees with management potential and what type of support they will need.
The Left is great at forming coalitions, having a united and clear message, and using emotion to win on policy issues. We will look at these strategies and discuss what we can learn and incorporate into our outreach plans.
Indiana is now a right-to-work state. Wisconsin re-elected Gov. Scott Walker because of his stand against public unions. Rahm Emanuel fought the Chicago Teachers Union. Ohio Gov. John Kasich lost a referendum fight over his union reforms, while Michigan and Minnesota quietly made significant progress. These are the labor battles that are redefining the Great Lakes and have the potential to make B1G Country competitive with SEC Nation in the labor market, if not on the gridiron. How does this affect your state? What labor reforms can make it possible for more people to start or return to work? You can discuss the messages and policies that you need to succeed during this roundtable session.
Reports and research papers translate well to online formats...but only with an informed online content strategy. Come, discuss the best ways to package policy for an online audience.
This is an invitation only meeting.
With more than 4,500 federal criminal laws and thousands more at the state and local level, criminal law has gone far beyond its traditional role of protecting one person from harming another. Criminal law increasingly applies to everyday economic activities of individuals and businesses that are neither fraudulent nor inherently wrong, leading to Americans being imprisoned for seafood that is the wrong size, plants that are improperly labeled, and even an overdue library book. Join us for a discussion and complimentary refreshments, as experts highlight how you and your organization can work with policymakers to rein in
overcriminalization.
Where can your researchers and analysts find the latest financial and demographic data for the 50 states? The Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA) presents State Data Lab (http://www.statedatalab.org), a new website permitting users to download and graph states' assets and liabilities, including IFTA's proprietary "Per Taxpayer Burden." Join us for an overview of State Data Lab and how it can help your organization research and analyze state fiscal conditions and context.
State Technology Policy Working Group brings together state-based think tanks, private-sector partners and coalition partners together to discuss technology issues facing the states. Technology is one of the last frontiers of freedom; however, that freedom is challenged more everyday with government attempts to regulate and implement taxes. State Technology Policy Working Group brings engagement to technology policy issues such as streamline taxes, municipal broadband and internet taxation.
There will be more smartphones than computers in the world by mid-2013. If your content cannot be viewed on mobile devices, you will miss this wave. Come, learn about strategies for integrating mobile into your organization – without breaking the bank.
This reception provides a networking opportunity for state-based communications directors to meet with each other, private-sector partners and coalition partners.
This reception provides a networking opportunity for state-based development directors to meet with each other, private-sector partners and coalition partners.
Help SPN honor its past and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the state freedom movement at the Thomas A. Roe Awards Gala. Black tie optional, but encouraged. To learn about purchasing a VIP banquet table, contact Michael Ross at ross@spn.org<mailto:ross@spn.org>.
Continue the Roe Award celebration and enjoy a preview of Oklahoma City as the host of next year's 21st Annual Meeting.
Our think tanks provide great intellectual ammunition, but securing and advancing liberty—the intended outcome of most of our mission statements—will also require grassroots action, investigative reporting, transparency campaigns, strategic litigation, and opposition research. No one organization can do all of this. At breakfast, you will hear a candid discussion and report about a 2012 experiment to help build a durable freedom infrastructure in several states around these capacities, and you’ll hear a proposal for 2013 and beyond.
Life is more than policy, so change is more than government. We accept that children learn best when teaching uses many roads to their brains. The same is true of freedom. We must liberate farmers’ markets, music, film, and education – our very culture – so that all aspects of life are free. Here’s how.
Over the years, this session has become one of the most popular on our development track! Something we didn’t cover in earlier sessions? Run out of time in another session with one of your burning questions? Don’t worry. We’ve set aside time specifically for you to ask questions of the experts who’ve presented throughout the sessions. This is just for you and your questions, so queue them up!
Moderator: Daniel Erspamer, Vice President for Strategic Partnerships, State Policy Network
It's one thing to hire great people, but how should you help them grow personally and professionally? Steve Neighbors, of TERRA Staffing Group, will discuss strategies including reviews, mentoring relationships, and other tools that have made his company one of the top places to work in Washington state. Arianne Massey, of the Koch Institute, will share insight gained from her work with hundreds of people joining the free market, non-profit sector through Koch Institute programs each year.
We must be prepared for attacks by the Left and use them as opportunities to win the battle of ideas. This panel will offer strategies to combat and anticipate, stories from those who have been through attacks, and solutions you can start implementing immediately when you get back to the office.
After spending years talking about state pension reform, who knew it would be local pensions that grabbed headlines this year? (OK, you did.) The question now is how to take the lessons from San Jose and San Diego and apply them to your state. This discussion will cover the mythical transition costs of pension reform and how to explain the positive benefits of pension reform for government employees, taxpayers, and service recipients. You should leave this session confident you can win on government employee pensions in 2013.
Mark Your Calendar for Next Year's SPN Annual Meeting in Oklahoma City, September 24-27, 2013!
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