TANA’s 83rd Annual Meeting – Heroes of Hope, is the winner of the 2020 TNSAE Award of Excellence for Special Events. The statewide awards competition is held annually by the Tennessee Society of Association Executives to recognize the best work of Tennessee association professionals.
When COVID-19 hit, our program committee made the quick decision to scrap its original agenda and immediately plan for a virtual annual meeting with new topics related to the pandemic.
The convention theme “Heroes of Hope” was selected to portray our membership fighting the battle against COVID-19.
The committee knew they could not just provide a Zoom class, it had to be more. The challenges were as follows:
- Create the same amount of excitement and “live” interaction with nationally recognized speakers, as well as hometown education from or own back yard
- Stay relevant due to the audience being healthcare providers and the COVID-19 topics changing almost daily
- Involve exhibitors and student attendees that have just one chance a year to interact with TANA members in person
Here are a few of the key elements we incorporated to make the meeting feel less virtual:
- Live Yoga Class with Terri Durbin, DNP, PhD, CRNA
- A nurse anesthetist/comedian, Jon Holmer, MC throughout the entire meeting who did fun skits and segways from one session to the next in his bathrobe or from every room in his house with a cocktail in his hand
- Panel discussions with Nurse Anesthetists who were serving in NYC and New Jersey on the front lines of the COVID crisis, as well as a CRNA Business Professionals Panel with presenters from many different practice backgrounds all with live Q&A
- A live College Quiz Bowl with 350 attendees where all participants played team trivia on Kahoot and a school video competition which was won by UTHSC this year
Additional comments on our entry by the judges:
- “Great materials and visuals; very thorough!”
- “Great job! Lots of creativity and out of the box thinkers.”
- “Very creative and well-implemented!”
TANA is very proud of our achievement with the Tennessee Society of Association Executives to have earned their Special Events Award for 2020! Thank you to our program committee Chair, Brody White, DNP, CRNA and the entire program committee for all the work that went into making TANA’s first virtual annual meeting, “Heroes of Hope”, a success! Congratulations on this award!