In this episode of the UEN Homeroom podcast, Dani and Matt chat with guest educators who attended the 2023 UCET conference. Discover their favorite moments, key takeaways, and hopes for next year's event - all while exploring the exciting opportunities UCET provides for professional growth and leadership.
In this episode of the UEN Homeroom podcast, Dani and Matt chat with guest educators who attended the 2023 UCET conference. Discover their favorite moments, key takeaways, and hopes for next year's event - all while exploring the exciting opportunities UCET provides for professional growth and leadership.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, Dani.
Hey, Matt. Listen, I have a serious question.
Yeah.
How are you?
I am OK. If you were at UCET and saw the closing keynote, I made a joke about talking to some pizza about what happened over UCET. That wasn't a joke. I really did go home and eat a pie pizza pretty much by myself. And I was very happy.
What kind of pizza did you eat?
Oh, I followed Ryan Reynolds's rules. So it was pineapple and olives. It's a great combo.
I can't with pineapple on pizza, but I respect your choice to be able to. But for those of you who don't know, haven't heard, Matt just wrapped a successful UCET conference, and we are going to go through all of the things that we learned at that conference on this episode. So, Matt first of all, for people who don't know, what the heck is UCET?
So I run two roles here at UEN. I am a senior technical trainer, and then I also volunteer as the UCET this year and next year as well, which we'll talk about later in the episode. UCET is the Utah Coalition for Educational Technology. Dani is a past president of UCET.
It's true. I'm a recovering UCET president as well.
That's very true. And recovering, I have heard, is a lifelong thing.
[LAUGHS]
And what UCET does is cover a few different things in the state of Utah. So number one is we have our conference every year in March. It is usually a two-day affair early in the week, usually around 1,500 people. This year, it was very successful. We had 2,100 people.
Whoa.
Gain of 40%, which is incredible. So we run that conference. National speakers come out. We have local speakers, all sorts of stuff. And all sorts of partners, Apple, Google, all those big edtech companies that you use in your classroom come out.
And then we also do ed camps throughout the year. And we sponsor your Utah Ed Chat every Wednesday night on Twitter. So lots of different things that we do. We also have a podcast alongside this that I used to host before I came on Homeroom, and now it's hosted by Kiera Beddes out of Jordan School District.
So UCET does a lot of things. And this year was a very good year. And it was thanks to the community, the board, and just all of us being interested in wanting to get out and see something different with our conference.
Absolutely. So much hard work goes into pulling off a conference. And you know, I think we can say it was all well worth it. It was an excellent conference. And for this episode, we had a lot of people contribute to share what their favorite parts of the conference were, what they learned about. But before we hop into that, let's talk about our first UCET.
Yeah. When was yours?
Oh my gosh, I don't remember the year. I want to say maybe 2010 because I was in grad school. And I was in Laura Hunter's class, who is our COO here at UEN. She taught one of my classes at the U. And I did a presentation on social media. And she said you need to present at UCET. You need to put this in as a presentation. And so my first UCET, I presented and attended, and I've been, I think, every single year since.
That's very, very cool. My first year was the year Dani actually was president.
Woo-hoo!
2018?
I've blocked it out, Matt. I don't know.
I think 2017? Which is insane, by the way. If anybody is doing the math, I started going to the conference, and less than five years later, I was in the presidency. So take that as a note, folks. If you're interested in leadership, you can make it happen.
Absolutely.
And I went because my buddy Quint Henderson out of Weaver School District-- we had just gotten back from South by Southwest EDU week. And he said, hey, you want to keep this going? Let's go to UCET. And I was like, what's UCET? And he told me a little bit. And I was like, OK. And he and I were running a podcast at that time called EdTrex Rewind. And I have no shame when it talks-- when trying to get guests and talking to people. So little did I know that we basically interviewed every one of the featured speakers, people that you pulled in, at that conference for the podcast, then put it all out. And so we were kind of unofficially like the UCET podcast recappers.
Yeah.
And so it was very, very fun. And I just had a great time. And then I think the next year was when they moved to Provo. And I presented that year on maker spaces and stuff like that with some people from my school. So that was my first time presenting, which was the next year.
That's so cool. It becomes addictive, I feel like, just because it's such a good community of educators. It doesn't feel scary to present. So if you have that inkling that you're interested in presenting next year, do it. If you want to be on the board, we are always looking for great educators to serve on that volunteer board as well.
Absolutely. And with that said, let's jump into-- let's hear another voice on this. We've got Kelly Cannon from Alpine School District. She's an elementary teacher. And she's going to tell us a little bit about basically the overview of the conference. But she also serves on the UCET board, which I was very excited about having somebody from the board. So let's jump in and hear from Kelly for a second.
Hi. My name is Kelly Cannon. I'm on the UCET board. And I'm also representing Alpine School District. And I just really enjoyed the UCET conference that we had this year. I loved the theme, which was together at UCET. And after so many hard years through the pandemic and feeling alone and isolated as educators, it was so refreshing to be able to see all of the different pieces that go into our educational system in Utah.
I loved seeing the Utah teacher fellows. I loved hearing from UELMA, the state librarians. I loved hearing the superintendents of rock playing music during our lunch time. We were honored to have Sidney Dixon and Abby Cox come and discuss what they love about education in Utah and I felt so supported and connected to educators throughout the state. And I loved being able to hear so many different perspectives. And I know that Utah Education is very supported and that we have the best people in the state right now leading us and that we are able to share our knowledge with each other and collaborate.
That was a great overview of the entire conference. Like, I'm so excited that Kelly was able to encapsulate a lot of the different features, of the different keynotes and the featured speakers and all sorts of stuff that was happening at the conference in such a short manner.
I know. Very concise. And I love that she brought in the theme of UCET this year, together at UCET. Because it did feel like there was a lot of camaraderie at this conference in particular.
I always felt like I was walking around seeing people that I knew that I didn't know knew other people that I knew. And they were having conversations together. And I was like, yes.
This is it.
Like, that's exactly what I was hoping for. And it was so cool to walk by. I was in a room watching a group set up, and there was a group of teachers at lunch that had just circled all their chairs together. And they-- one of the teachers was like-- they didn't know I was there. She was like, so, how's the conference going for everyone? And this one teacher stands up, and she stood out of her chair, and was like, I have to tell you all the amazing things that have happened so far at this conference to me. And like, it's just so exciting. And I grabbed [INAUDIBLE] and was like, thank you. Like that's so nice to hear. And that was like a lot of things I heard across the conference.
Totally. And it's not easy putting on a conference like this. So I think those bright spots-- because like what was your conference like, Matt? How did you spend UCET '23?
It was a blur. You guys probably saw a suited blur running around because I decided to go full nines on the suit, and my feet definitely felt that afterwards with the shoes I was wearing.
Fancy shoes are not comfortable.
No, they were not. Especially--
They looked great, though.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Looked very handsome.
And so just walking around a lot, talking to people, making sure our featured speakers who had flown out of the state were comfortable, talking to our new partners that had never been at the conference before, people like the Friends of the Salt Lake Public Library or U Lead or Spy Hop and just making sure that they were comfortable and that they were getting good traffic, or walking by the UEN booth every five or 10 minutes, just seeing all the great community collaboration happening there.
So yeah. Just lots of walking and talking and checking on people, helping to make sure that everyone was having a good conference experience. And that's a lot of work. And I was very happy to do it.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You did a great job. It was an awesome conference.
Well, you had a great year, too, though?
I had a lot of fun. Yeah.
Yeah, day two, you're running the Leading Schools Program, right?
Yes, exactly. So the whole second day of the conference, I was in sessions-- a two-hour session with school principals, and then a two-hour session working with instructional coaches in our UTTLN, the Utah Tech Leaders Network. And it was so great to be able to have those meetings within the UCET conference and bring in those groups.
Our instructional coaches and ed tech coaches are always at UCET in force, but it's not usually known as a leadership conference, so it was great to have that strand, a bunch of different leadership sessions this year, meeting with principals, and then Jaime and I from-- Jaime from UEN, we did a learning on the go session on the first day of the conference, which was kind of like a step competition, scavenger hunt, micro learning, mobile learning adventure. And I was just so excited that we were able to pull that off and we had so many people participate in that. Yeah, I don't-- it wasn't a presentation. It was an adventure.
Nice. Yeah, I saw a bunch of people lining up for that. And it was incredible to see. I loved having Leading Schools there because we had a principal, Rob McDaniel, who's been on the podcast before. He was one of our Utah Ed Chat keynote speakers. And he brought a lot of energy for leadership to that space. And that was one of my favorite things about this conference was we shifted from having national voices on our main stage to having local voices, from Abby Cox and Sid Dixon, superintendent Sid Dixon, all the way down to our classroom speaker from Iron School District, our student speaker.
Having that reversal really put the highlight on what we're doing in Utah as educators or educated-affiliated people and show what we're doing well and show what we're doing exciting. And one of my favorite things talking to one of our featured speakers, Dan Rider, was he was so excited that he didn't have to go and do a big keynote, but that he could sit and watch what was happening in Utah, and then go and interact with people in depth with them.
So it was really cool to see that back and forth. And like you said, leadership hasn't been a focus necessarily before. But educational technology now is just part of all of education, and so it's not something that we can separate out and say this is only about educational technology. We have to talk about in terms of leadership and creativity and coaching and every part of education. And so that's why I was so pleased to have our PCBL Room or our librarian rooms with UELMA or Leading Schools.
Absolutely. I think that was super cool. Let's talk about our featured speakers.
Yep.
You've mentioned a few of them. Who was your favorite?
I can't. I can't pick a favorite.
[LAUGHS]
They were all great. They were these are all people that I've seen at conferences, met at conferences, big conferences, like ISTI and South by Southwest and things like that, and have always wanted to bring their voices to Utah because they're people that I really enjoyed their voices at the national level. And so Eric Curts, because he's just the Bob Ross of edtech. Like, he is so calming and wonderful and puts out so many free resources for educators. And he was very, very popular at the conference.
I was going to say, I think that we have some recorded audio about Eric Curts.
Yeah. Let's go listen to a couple of these.
Should we listen in?
Yeah, absolutely.
Hey. My name is Becca Beecher. I'm an ed tech coach over at Granite School District. And one of the sessions I really liked was from Eric Curts. And it was being-- it was called Being a Bionic Teacher. And he talks about all-- or educator, I should say. And he talked about AI features that are going and how we can incorporate them into our classrooms.
And he did a quote in it that I really liked and resonated with. He asked the question, who is the best teacher in the world? And he correlated it to a similar question that was asked to the chess player who won a-- who competed against a computer for the very first time and the computer won. And they asked him who's the best chess player in the world. And that person said, well, the best chess player in the world isn't human, but it's also not a computer. The best chess player in the world is a human who uses the computer together.
So to answer the question who is the best teacher in the world, he said the best teacher is not a human, but also the best teacher is not a computer. The best teacher is a human using technology. And the best learner is a human using technology. It was just a really powerful session, and that part really resonated and stuck out to me.
Hi. My name is Chandra Martz, and I work in Canyon School district as a DTL specialist. One of my favorite things that I learned at UCET at this year was when I went to the Dee Lanier session on solving time, which is a problem solving process that you can have kids work through. It has cards that go along with it to help the students through that process.
This is Sam Mitchell, a technology coach with Granite School District. And UCET this year-- one of my favorite classes that I took was the Secret Class by Eric Curts called The Bionic Educator in which we discussed how AI is changing teaching and how years ago, when the calculator first came out, it challenged teachers in a way of we had to revise our thinking of how we taught because we no longer could just focus on computational and we had to focus more on mathematical concepts and how we looked at this best-- like, who is the best teacher in the world? And the best teacher is not a human. The best teacher is not a computer. The best teacher is a human using technology. And that's kind of the direction we're going with all of this AI and how we need to be looking at the best ways to integrate and change how we're teaching. And that was my favorite class that I took at UCET this year.
Hey. This is Heidi from Nebo School District. My favorite conference-- UCET conference session was Eric Curtz, The Bionic Educator. And he talked about, is the human the best teacher, or is AI the best teacher? And in the end, it comes down to the best teacher is a human who uses technology. That is the best teacher. I thought that was really cool.
Yeah. Eric Curts was apparently very popular. And we may or may not have some secret sessions, secret lunch sessions, planned for UCET '24.
Oh, jeez. Because the secret session I heard was packed and awesome. And so Eric Curts did photo opportunities like a celebrity afterwards.
(SING-SONGY) What?
Which was incredible. Yeah. That session was really good. I got to catch the last 20 minutes or so because I was working the door.
OK.
Letting people in.
Were you, like, the bouncer?
I was the bouncer, yeah.
OK, OK.
Which, if you've never met me, I look like a bouncer because I'm gigantic.
But not in your suit.
Not in the suit.
You're like a fancy bouncer.
I don't know. Maybe-- yeah, I was going to say fancy bouncer there.
[LAUGHS]
But beyond Eric Curts, shout out to all of our other national featured speakers we had. Great sessions from Dan Rider both days.
Got to see Dan.
Yeah. And Dan's fantastic and nothing but good things came out of his sessions, from what I heard. Micah Shippee.
I saw Micah.
Fantastic talk.
It was cool meeting him in person because I only know him from Twitter and then when we interviewed him here on The Homeroom, so it's cool to meet him in person. He was awesome.
Absolutely. And you've heard a little bit from Dee Lanier as well.
Yes.
Some shout-outs to Dee Lanier's Solving Time. Fantastic speaker. I'm hoping-- he talked to me about a session that he's developing about hip hop and how to teach with it. And I was like, dude, next year, we got to have you come back. And then obviously, Darren Hudgens as well did a great job in the Leading Schools room, but also sharing his session Developing Digital Detectives with teachers across the state. It's just fantastic. So shout out to all those featured speakers. And we just really appreciate anyone who came from out of state to come share the national perspective, the international perspective. That really helps us as Utah educators to build and build the best.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was really cool that we balanced all of these national featured speakers with some of our homegrown Utahns.
Absolutely. I mean, we had Abby Cox, who was fantastic, spoke about her life as an educator and some of the things that she's doing with Show Up for Utah. And she actually did a smaller session in the wellness room as well, which was something new this year. We had a wellness room for how to apply wellness into your classroom. And it was really, really well received. It was a full packed room in there as well. And so very cool to learn more about that.
Syd Dickson, always an incredible speaker. And so proud of the work that she is doing with Portrait of a Graduate, with the PCBL framework, all of that work.
And she's just such a champion for our teachers in Utah. Like, when they-- she always says what they need to hear, how respected they are, the great things that they're doing. And I just love that.
Absolutely. And she's so willing to talk to anybody. I learned that last year at ISTI when we had a little Utah meet up with everyone at Cafe Du Monde. And she came out. And she was there talking to everyone and having a conversation. She's just a fantastic person and great leadership.
Down the line, we also had Krystle Bassett from Juab who did a--
Oh my gosh. I cried.
Oh, she was incredible.
I was tearing up in the front row.
Wonderful talk about her growth and that she can do-- she and I talked about this afterwards, or I think I saw her presentation earlier and we talked about doing hard things, how wonderful that is. Dani is still trying to get "That's Amore" out of her head from Tony Pellegrini.
Legit. I loved it. I know he had some technical difficulties, but my face hurt from smiling after Tony's session.
I've only-- I've worked with Tony for a couple of years now. And I've met him a few times in-- at URSA and in real life, those sort of things. I legitimately think he is the nicest person in the state of Utah in education. He is just-- he puts a smile on your face. He wants you to learn about stuff with him. So no-brainer bringing him on.
Jason Eyre from Murray School District talks about e-sports, his work in AI, and bringing those tools to schools. I thought that was really powerful as well.
I loved his e-sports jersey, too. That was dope.
100%. That was a surprise, I think, for everyone, including myself. I didn't know that he was going to do that. It was awesome. We had a great-- we had Joe B. Wright from SEDC, which was one of my favorite talks because seeing him speak about what's happening in rural schools in Utah, which I don't think personally gets enough attention for the good work that they're doing, and him bringing that to the table-- it was great being backstage with one of our other speakers, Kate Williams from Davis. And she was like, I didn't know we had schools with five or 10 students in them. And I was like, yeah. And that's-- I want people to know those sorts of things. And Joe just did an amazing job.
And speaking of Kate, talking about personalized learning, talking about Cinderella making a dress. I thought that was fantastic. And one of my favorites, Davina. She did an amazing job talking about how we can incorporate thoughtfulness into what we're doing, especially with reading. And then last but not least, our student speaker from Iron County. Great job.
So overall, just a fantastic job from all of our local featured speakers from UCET for our Utah ed chats. And we're hoping to keep that going next year. So if you know somebody that is doing amazing work in the state of Utah, feel free to reach out to me. Easy to find online. And I would love to include them in the next year's group.
Absolutely. And it's a short, little talk. So I know it can sound scary, but I feel like anyone who can teach all day in front of kiddos can for sure stand up for 10 minutes, five minutes, and say like, here are all the awesome things that are happening in my classroom and just knock it out of the park.
And if I come knocking on your door-- if you're listening to us and I knock on your door to do this, it means that someone's nominated you and somebody thought that you were doing amazing stuff and that we value your voice in the community. So we talked a lot about this year. We got to talk a little bit about prior years. Who were some of your favorite speakers from prior years?
Oh, that's a good question. You know, I think one that always stands out to me-- I was doing a lot of work with social media in the district I was working in and trying to see that there are ways that teachers can use social media as a tool to connect with parents and to connect with other educators. And it was really hard to get people on board with that because we were still very much in a very scary place. We don't know how it works, or what to do.
And George Kouros keynoted one year, and my boss was in the audience. And it changed his whole perspective and outlook. And he was like, OK. Let's unblock it. Let's unblock it for teachers. Let's give this a try.
That's very cool. Yeah, he's a great speaker. And he's done some really cool stuff in that space of social media and getting things pushed out. I've been trying to think of mine. There have been so many good ones ever since I started attending. Probably my favorite, though, is from your year, Ginger Lumen.
Oh.
I just remember--
She's amazing.
She's amazing. And I remember watching her speak, and say something basically like, if I see a teacher taking away a student's cell phone, I want to know why. And it really helped me to understand why we're so combative against new technology in the classroom and what we can do to maybe embrace technology in new ways.
And so talking to her-- that was one of the people that I hijacked and was like, you want to be on a podcast? And talking to her one on one was one of my favorite experiences early in my podcasting, educational podcasting days. So very cool stuff.
But with that said, community engagement-- this is-- all these speakers, it's all about community engagement. And let's go hear-- we have a couple of people from the community who have said some really cool things about bringing teachers to UCET. Let's go hear from them now.
Hey, Dani. This is Greg. I would say one of the people that made the biggest impact at UCET actually ended up being Andrew Clark. He's from our cohort, actually. I was at a poster session. And I ran into him, and we were talking about what he does as a digital learning coach up in Cache County. And it's actually a really good idea for how we could support schools here in Salt Lake after they're done with the two years they're on the DTL grant. Anyway, that's my biggest impact. Thanks.
Hello. This is Michelle Jensen. I'm an innovative learning coach in Alpine School District. To me, the best thing about UCET is connecting with old friends and making new ones that are all passionate about using technology in ways to deepen and improve student learning.
Hello. This is Ryan Sare from Lakeview Academy in Saratoga Springs. This year at UCET I had the opportunity to bring several teachers with me. And so one of the biggest takeaways that I got out of UCET was the door has been opened for conversations when it comes to educational technology. Now my teachers know some of the questions that they can ask and new ways that I'll be able to help them.
I love this idea of not just meeting people that you maybe don't know at conferences like this, but bringing people along with you to the conference. I think it was pretty cool that we have someone talking about the people that they brought along with them.
Yeah. And that's been my modus operandi as a person as well. Like, I want to bring people-- this year, just thinking for the next couple of months, bringing several brand new ISTI people to ISTI this summer from Utah.
Oh, that'll be great.
Presenting, copresenting with them. And so it's all about that. Like, let's up our community engagement. Let's up who's available in the room. Let's get their voices heard. And there's so many good people here in the state of Utah. You've got to highlight them.
One of my favorite groups that I brought along this year was the Utah Feature Fellows.
Yes.
They've always presented at the conference, but we formalized, here's a room, a space for the Utah Teacher Fellows. Whatever you want to present, let's present. And they knocked it out of the park, always solidly full rooms. They also did the Utah Ed Chat stage, the small stage, and just, again, knocked it out of the park. They were wonderful speakers. And they're all people-- there's a big majority of them that had never been to UCET. And so they came for their first time, presented in a room for them.
And it helps, I think, bring that "you can do it, too" energy for a lot of educators. So I'm excited to bring them back next year and to continue. Like, let's bring more-- it's kind of weirdly disingenuous of me to be like, bring more people, because that way the conference is more successful. But really, I just want everyone to have these experiences and be able to learn from each other. And this is a great place to do that.
Speaking of the other groups, it was great to see that you UELMA had a room.
Absolutely.
So UELMA is the library conference that's typically right around UCET, but they had a presence at the UCET conference, which I thought was super cool.
Yeah. And we brought them in. And they knocked it out of the park as well and just did an amazing job with that space. But perhaps my favorite community connection at the conference, beyond those two, was the coaching room. I don't know if you saw the coaching room throughout, but having-- I think it was 150 coaches from across the state in a room together, and it was solidly full. There's a great tweet by one of the educators that came that presented it in that room, and all of them are doing the wave across because it was stadium seating. It was incredible.
Gosh. I love it.
And so seeing that room, seeing the PCBL room, seeing the UEN Leading Schools room, seeing all of these different spaces where everyone is having a chance to collaborate with the people that they want to learn from-- it's amazing. It's about breaking those walls down, like flattening the walls so that we can all learn from each other.
Absolutely. And not just community engagement, but also conference engagement. I have to say, I loved the number of people that came up to me with pins that they had made for their different-- whether it be their school district or their department, trading those pins was super fun. And shout out to-- I believe it was Jordan School District's DTL team. They all had matching T-shirts. I love that energy.
Absolutely.
You know me. I love a good theme.
Yeah. I had one of the goose chase things, one of our conference fun searches things, was finding-- get the presidential button, which I had 50 of these shaped buttons of the conference logo made.
OK.
I gave them out 10 minutes after the keynote.
Oh my gosh.
So the first day. Like, they just were gone. People were hungry for that engagement level.
Yeah. They were playing along. It was fun.
And you could see that anywhere, like going down to the Friends of the Salt Lake Public Library book sale or going to the expo or the Utah STEM Action Center maker space area. There were so many cool things happening throughout for engagement. And I think a lot of people learned new things. And I think we got a great clip from one of our Utah educators to talk about some of the new things they learned.
My favorite thing about UCET is learning about new tech tools. Like, for example, with Google, the arts and culture color palettes. Awesome.
Hi. My name is Julia Kaplan. I'm an instructional coach at Canyon School District. At UCET, I learned about how to use Canva for personalized competency-based learning. I also learned about different levels of using Canva, like from teacher-centric to student-centric models.
That was wonderful. And I'm just so grateful that everyone had the opportunity to go out and learn from each other at this conference. But from a personal standpoint, one of our featured speakers, Dan Rider-- I learned from him five, six years ago at a conference, South by Southwest EDU, about how to use creativity in the classroom. He calls it critical creativity in the classroom. And I was just so grateful to walk by his door every hour that he was presenting. It was a full room. And he was presenting critical creativity in the classroom to teachers, and having them do things with action figures and LEGOs and opening up their idea of what it means to use technology, what it means to use creativity in the classroom.
And so for me, even though I-- this year, I was on the present-- the building side and the infrastructure side, seeing that there was engagement on those kinds of levels just made me so happy.
I think it's super cool to see how UCET as a conference and also just educational technology usage in Utah has switched so much from the tutorial phase of like, here's how you use an LMS in your classroom, to this creativity, critical thinking. We are getting everyone involved in how can we take things to the next level. Like, it was-- it's not any of that baseline how-to anymore. It's more these creative, real-life experiences that we're learning how to provide our students.
Absolutely. One of my favorite sessions in the creativity room-- I got to watch five minutes of it, and I was so grateful for that five minutes to watch it, was Corey Henwood from Iron County talking about how to design think in a portrait of a graduate. And it was wonderful to see, I think, like, 150 people in that room listening to him talk about that and really applying technology and design thinking to something that's so vital for the future of our educational system here in Utah. So really, really cool stuff. And I'm very proud that everyone had hopefully learned a lot.
Yeah, no. I think everyone had a lot of things that they were able to take back, not just for their classroom the next week, but to rethink on education and where we're going from here.
Exactly.
So yeah. Let's talk about-- there were some changes to the UCET organization. We need to talk about that.
Yeah. I think you said it best. Are you OK?
[LAUGHS]
So I-- we had talked before the conference about making some changes to the constitution. We voted on it this year. And the change that we made is a two-year presidency. So I'm not the first two-term president. I've heard that there was somebody back in the '90s or early 2000s that did two separate years in different spots, but I'm the first two-year consecutive president.
Two years in a row. And you did this to yourself, no?
I did, and it was overwhelmingly voted for. I think it was, like, 400 votes to 12, or something like that, yea and nay. So yeah. Next year, I will be the president again. Kiera Beddes from Jordan School District will be President-Elect. And thankfully, Clint Stephens, who is our past president, will be staying on as well to help out because he is so helpful and vital, along with the rest of the board as well. And we have some great new board members, too.
Yeah, absolutely. But I do want to say, as a past president of UCET, it seems like you get through your conference year, and you actually figure some stuff out, and then it's time to hand the reins over. So I think it's great that you're doing this and that you're willing to do it. Because I was like, ready to run away screaming because it's so much work. So I'm proud of you.
Thank you.
Respect you.
Appreciate that. And we'll see how--
Let me know if you need a hug ever.
I was going to say, we'll see how I feel March 19 next year, how I--
There you go.
And that's one of the big things that's coming out of this, too, is the other big announcement is that we have outgrown our space. We had 2,100 people, and over 70 partners at the conference. Just-- we're too big for our britches down in Provo. So we are now moving down to-- up to the Salt Palace--
Woo-hoo!
--on March 19 and 20 of next year. So a week later than normal, but it's a Tuesday and Wednesday. We will have a giant keynote space. We don't know who's keynoting yet. We'll see about that, and featured speakers. But join us on March 19 and 20 of 2024 for what I hope to be a great second year of the conference. We'll see what happens with it.
Yay. I'm so excited.
Absolutely. Well, thanks for listening today, folks. We'll talk to you again soon.
Thanks, everyone.
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