By Erin O’Sullivan

Is your school packing up a van, forming a carpool chain, or otherwise hitting the road together to head to NIRSA 2014?

We want you to tell us about it!

We’ve heard many wonderful stories about the “expanded conference experience” that schools get when they road trip out together, and we would love to give other members a peek into this world! As Nashville is such a centrally-located conference site, we image this conference will be primed with stories from the road—a whole wealth of experiences that happen before the Opening General Session even gets started.

“Taking a road trip allows you to be in control of your time,” says Melanie Alverio, Assistant Director, Marketing & Member Services at Rowan University Student Recreation Center, who plans on road tripping to conference with Rowan students. “You can explore different cities and meet new people along the way, while still bonding with your work family.”

Gather up the campus rec crew, hop in the van, and head on over to NIRSA 2014!

NIRSA Headquarters would like to run one—or several—feature articles that document NIRSA members and their conference journeys. We’re hoping these pieces will help drum up excitement, inspiration, and anticipation next year as we approach NIRSA 2015 in Dallas.

However, just like with any work we do, we need you, NIRSA’s amazing members, to make this happen! We want you to be thinking about us as you head out on the open road. Keep a journal going, keep the tweets running, keep Facebook-posting! Document funny things said, your teams conference anticipation, moments of bonding on the trip, and whatever else might occur—get those quotes and thoughts down, take the selfies, and then send them on to us after you return home.

Don’t stop there—keep the cameras and videos rolling! From short Vines to produced Youtube-ready clips, we’re looking for a multi-media experience! In the past schools, such as Virginia Tech, have put together awesome conference experience videos—now we want to see your pre-conference experience!

And what would a road trip be without pictures of the guy who falls asleep, drooling in the backseat, the map app that tried to drive you through a corn field, or the World’s Biggest Ball of Yarn (or other cheesy, necessary road-side attraction)? You know what we mean! All those little moments that make the road trip a time you’ll always remember—from the silly and goofy to the heartfelt and meaningful—we want to see it all!

The ideas to speak to are endless, but among the possibilities are:

  • Why is this opportunity such a cool experience for students?
  • How does road tripping to conference expand on the NIRSA experience?
  • What do professionals get out of this experience?
  • Has your school done this before or is this a brand new experience?
  • What fun things are you anticipating in your multi-hour journey?
  • What are some of the challenges of organizing such an undertaking?

Sound cool? Want to show the NIRSA-world your school’s adventure? It’s easy! Just keep those cameras rolling on the way to NIRSA 2014. Then, when you return from conference, send us an email letting us know what the trip was like (you can expand on any of the questions above or ideas of your own) and include any media you’d be okay with us using in the article or on our social media channels. We’ll follow up with you as need be and, as we start getting ready for NIRSA 2015, start sharing some of this “extended” conference experience with the broader membership.

We can’t wait to hear from you!