9th Annual Women In Design Conference

Tuesday, November 18

On Tuesday, November 18, the BSA’s Women in Design Network sponsors its annual conference. “Women.Power” is a full day of workshops and events designed to open your mind, engage your imagination, and lead you to discover new ideas that will enhance your career and your life. The conference features an awards breakfast, workshops and an exhibit.

Please note that some of the sessions run concurrently and you will be asked to choose the session you would like to attend during a given time period.

A09 Women in Design Awards breakfast
8:00 – 10:00 am

When you participate in WID, you build strong networks, have access to empowering opportunities, and are inspired to achieve your professional goals and dreams. This breakfast session is another chance for you to connect with your peers, clients, or someone new. In addition, we celebrate the extraordinary women who will receive this year’s Women in Design Awards of Honor. (Please note that AIA/CES learning units are not offered for event A09.)

A29 The work, concerns, and leadership of Women In Design
10:30 - noon

We explore three women in design themes: the work – fresh developments, the process, and the design outcomes of women design leaders; the realities of women in design professions – the statistics, salaries, and future projections; and the leadership – what it looks like, how it feels, and what the future challenges are. We wrap up with a summary of goals and a call to action for the design professions.

A30 Power and influence: presentations that move decision-makers to action!
10:30 - noon

Impressing decision-makers helps win work, change legislation, shape the community where projects are located, affect board votes, and facilitate permitting and approvals. When you present information that may influence a decision that helps you move forward, you need more than just good presentation skills – you need strategies that help you get the results you seek. This session assumes you are already an excellent presenter. We explain how to integrate the techniques that make a difference and how to impress decision-makers by adopting a new standard of sophisticated, forward-looking presentation approaches that really work.

A46 Leadership development action items
1:00 – 2:30 pm

Career wayfinding, development, and advancement are predicated on effective leadership. We describe how to maximize your leadership strengths, understand and work through the obstacles to becoming a strong leader, identify and create leadership opportunities, and develop tools for promoting yourself as an effective leader. We suggest tactics and strategies you can put to immediate use.

A51 Successful placemaking: the integrated design team approach
1:30 – 3:00 pm

This workshop focuses on integrated design team process. Professionals in the fields of planning, landscape design, and public art establish a cross-disciplinary dialogue and present noteworthy case studies, such as the Brooklyn Queens Expressway Reconstruction Project, the Concord River Greenway in Lowell, Massachusetts, Percent for Art projects of the City of Cambridge, and several public parks in Boston. The integrated design process includes the engagement of the community in the design and planning process. Our panel of experienced team leaders recounts experiences related to integrated design and community process and offer insight into its benefits, its challenges, and effective strategies for success.

A55 I don't know how she does it... ?!
1:30 – 3:00 pm

It's a constant challenge for women in the male-dominated A/E/C industry to sustain our careers while being involved mothers. A few successful career moms in the industry describe how to have a successful career while being an active mother. We describe strategies for approaching your boss and your firm about non-traditional work hours. We also discuss how working part-time can be a short-term solution and why a healthy work/life balance is essential. Women who do it all share their stories.

A66 Power networking
3:30 – 5:00 pm

Connections with the right people can put you on the path to success, and resources in your network determine how effectively and efficiently you can get things done. Learn how to build a powerful network with the right methods and tactics. A networking expert shows you the tactics, a building industry professional explains how to grow your network by helping others and how to be an effective and well-respected networker, and a business owner shares her experience in leveraging her network’s power to build and grow her business.

A73 Integrated green – retail case study
4:00 – 5:30 pm

In spring of 2008, W/S Development broke ground on a 600,000-sf life-style center in Dedham, Massachusetts. Among the dozens of tenants are Whole Foods Market and LL Bean, known leaders in fitting-out sustainable stores. The project was marked by the collaborative process of a unique team of developer, tenants, architects, contractor, and consultants who worked together to achieve the common goal of building a sustainable and profitable place to shop. Learn what each party’s goals are in creating a sustainable retail project and how to implement a process that brings all members of the team together to begin working as a group.

A85 The Women in Design exhibit workshop
6:00 – 7:30 pm

This year’s exhibit workshop focuses on the power of design in creating resolutions and making a difference in the world in which we live. Every project holds a challenge and every designer aspires to offer a resolution. From inception to completion, each project presents opportunities to develop creative solutions along the way. From the minute level of details to the macro scale of planning, good design brings positive change. Problem-solving with optimism can result in functionality, increased efficiency, and enhanced beauty. The goal of this workshop is to explore how design professionals take on challenges and how their solutions make a difference at multiple scales. Panelists in this workshop talk briefly about how their own design work has led to resolutions and made a difference, and they also analyze the work submitted for the related exhibit.

A91 The human connection: bring your leadership skills to life!
6:30 – 8:00 pm

How do you create the climate of trust that surrounds effective leaders? It starts by transforming the way you see yourself and your colleagues. You learn how to recognize your unique leadership styles, engender trust in others, effectively guide those they lead, and inspire others to action. In this highly interactive workshop, you learn how to connect and make an impact as a leader at work, with clients, and in your community.

To learn more about the Women in Design network, visit www.architects.org/wid.

The package cost for the symposium is $325 if you register before October 24 and $365 if you register after that date (this is a significant savings over the individual workshop costs). However, you may choose to register for one or more individual sessions by selecting the individual workshops in the a la carte section of the online registration site or under section 3 on the paper registration form.