Smiling, Energetic Faces!

The smiles were magic. In a very short time, 30 -35 people were filling the room with laughter, conversation, and repetitions of, “It is so great to see your face.” The room was filled with the noise of in-person connections that technology will be hard pressed to ever duplicate. Everywhere I looked members, new and old, and guests were sharing our Chapter’s first, in-person event, a Happy Hour, on June 15^th at the Blue Mesa Grill in Plano.

What a joy the event was! It provided me a powerful reminder of why ATD Dallas Membership is valuable to our members. The conversations were about what individuals had been doing behind the virtual meetings of the past 16 months, personally and professionally. Conversations, “This has been great, let’s get together and visit further”, “Hey, I have someone you may want to visit with, let me connect you”, “I have been waiting to visit and check out the Chapter, everyone has been so gracious tonight, thanks”, and “I missed getting to see you”, saw the evening FLY by.

It will take time to work through the various impacts of the pandemic. However, the energy and smiles at the recent Happy Hour suggest, we are starting to turn this corner, learning lessons, and being reminded through handshakes, high fives, and hugs, of the valuable of sharing time with fellow members in the same space. I look forward to seeing each of you in person at some point in the near future!

By the way, in addition to the benefit of personal connections at our various Chapter events one of the member benefits available to you as an ATD Dallas member is access to Degreed. Degreed is a better, smarter way to discover, learn and certify the skills you need for the future. Degreed connects all the resources people use to learn and grow, including corporate learning systems and millions of courses, videos, books, articles, podcasts, and subject experts from thousands of sources. Degreed links to, curates and tracks all of your professional development activities.

If you are not familiar with Degreed, check out this video for more info https://vimeo.com/288087833/c741147fa0

If you haven’t already created an account go, why wait? https://tddallas.org/AboutDegreed

In closing, join us for smiles, laughter, energy, thought-providing presentations, a strong-keynote speaker, and resumed in-person connections at Southwest Learning Summit, August 19^th, https://tddallas.org/event-4161123