A trip down memory lane... SADD conference edition
Right now, the SADD team and many of our students were meant to be having a ball at our first of 3 conferences for 2020. Instead we’re all at home, finding new ways to work and helping each other through this lockdown period. Since we can’t be there this year, we thought we’d look back at some conference highlights from years gone by. Our Operations Manager, Vic, has been involved with 7 years of SADD conferences so she’s here to share her memories and highlights.
I think we can all agree we are all living under circumstances that aren’t normal right now. Events have been cancelled, school and work is done online from home and we can’t go hang with friends whenever we feel like it. While there really is no absolute normal for SADD each year, there are definitely some staple features of our programme that have had a shakeup. At the time of publishing this blog post our team was meant to be stuck into day 2 of our first of 3 annual conferences, and this is the first year in many that conference isn’t happening. While we are in full support of our country’s actions to reduce the spread and eliminate Coronavirus, there is still an air of sadness and disappointment from our team and our student members that we can’t hold our usual epic events.
In lieu of this year’s conference season, I thought I would use this opportunity to take a trip down memory lane of previous years’ conferences, looking at some highlights and memorable moments.
Themes and challenges
Each year up until 2020 we have had a theme for conference that gave context to key messages and the challenge we set for delegates. It’s always good fun to brainstorm concepts and see them come to fruition. Each conference has included a challenge element where students are put into groups and given a task to complete – over the years this has included designing activities, fundraisers and campaigns, filming videos, creating year plans for schools and future visions for SADD.
One of my favourite themes and challenges was 2017’s Let’s get Digital. This theme reflected the launch of our completely overhauled website in early 2017 and the conference challenge was for students to create ‘how-to’ videos for our suite of activities to be hosted on the new site. I loved this one because the concept actually originated way back 10 months before conference when our 2016 National Leaders held a session on what they wanted the new website to look like. A big thing that came out of that session was the idea to have videos as well as written guides for our activities so that students could explore info and tips in different formats. We still have many of the videos created at this conference on our activity page today!
Branding
We’ve had some awesome designs over the years for our logos and conference tees. We have always produced new imagery each year and use this across all of our conference branding. We’re lucky to have Rebecca from Rebecca Ann Design create our branding packages – she knows the SADD brand well and has always created fun and attractive work for us.
The tees are a cool limited edition release each year, each with a new design. I’ve been to my fair share of conferences since I started with SADD in 2012 and this is just a small sample of my collection!
Student creativity
The work produced by student groups each year is always so inspiring. Many of our activities, campaigns and resources have been designed by students in a matter of hours at a conference event, including:
Some of our long-standing poster designs – Stop Drop Flop, Life is not a Toy and What If? Were designed by students in 2012
Our annual distraction campaign, Go Phone Free, originally came from a fundraiser concept designed by students at Auckland conference in 2017
Most of the activity how-to videos have been filmed by student groups at conferences in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and many of the activity concepts were designed by students at conferences too!
Some other memorable moments:
In 2014 we announced our change from Students Against Driving Drunk to Students Against Dangerous Driving at our South Island conference at St Andrews College in Christchurch. This was the first time introducing any students to our 6 principles which was a really momentous occasion!
The discos! Often cited as a highlight by students, conference discos are an opportunity to let loose and celebrate with some music, food, dancing and of course – epic costumes. Seeing what students come up with for their disco outfits has always been a highlight for our team!
Holding large residential events with 60-120 people doesn’t come without the occasional drama! We’ve had freezing nights without heating, many IT and internet issues, lost property and courier holdups. One moment that comes to mind was in 2017 at our Christchurch event when a main water pipe burst on the street which cut water supply to the venue for most of a night. As you can imagine this created a few issues as it happened at the start of the disco and students were all thirsty for water after all their sweet dance moves. Cue our team frantically rushing around finding which toilets were still operational and ensuring everyone was kept safe and healthy.
But the best memories of all come down to seeing what the students achieved each year. Watching lifelong friendships be made, seeing students grow in confidence and experiencing the epic work created by hundreds of young change-makers each year is just unbeatable.
While we have had to forgo conference in 2020, it doesn’t mean we can’t experience connection, creativity and some fun challenges. We have set up the SADD Digital Crew for our students to join where you can connect with other SADD students, join in on some cool games, quizzes and meaningful discussions and have your say on some big projects and challenges. If you’re keen to hear more – check it out here.
We’ll be back in person visiting schools and running workshops as soon as we can, but in the meantime, take care in your bubbles, look out for each other and stay safe.