This year's New Beginnings conference will focus on "Building Connections."  The goal is to encourage faculty to find new ways to create connections with colleagues, students, and the community.

Connected to this theme, we are doing the second iteration of a new kind of keynote, “20 Ideas in 20 Minutes.” Twenty innovative educators will be doing a  “lightning round” where they each make one PowerPoint slide and speak for one minute about their idea. This way, we offer people 20 interesting ideas in 20 minutes! We’ll have handouts for the audience so that they are not writing feverishly as the brief ideas are shared. We hope this will be a high-energy way to get the conference off to a good start, and to illustrate the theme in an interesting and engaging manner.

Can our 20 presenters actually do all of this in 20 minutes? Only time will tell.....