By Noah Stein
Last week I traveled to Dallas for the American Camp Association’s annual National Conference. Every year this event brings together camp professionals from across the country to learn from industry experts and connect with one another.
My reaction when I walked into the opening session was “Wow! There are a lot of people here.” With over 1,500 camp professionals in attendance, it was impressive to see the size of the broader camp industry. It was heartening to look around the room and see folks from a wide range of different camps -day camps, specialty camps for children with medical concerns, other residential camps like ours – and realize that there are so many people who are passionate about summer camp and its powerful transformative benefits for children.
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I learned a ton from top notch presenters too. Each shared creative and innovative ideas for a variety of different areas from programming to how we track our weather. (It turns out the dew point is very important!) I left the conference with creative ideas from the cutting edge of childcare.
While all of these sessions alone made the conference great, the highlight of the week for me was getting to meet and reconnect with other camp professionals. I had a chance to meet folks from camps who are nothing like ours with completely different models, and I also spent valuable time with our friends from our peer camps, those in our geographic area with similar ideas about what a summer camp experience should be like. Across all groups, there was a general excitement about sharing ideas and asking one another questions to help each other improve. And there was a shared eagerness to get to know one another…camp people are pretty fun! By the end of the week with bonds formed and relationships strengthened we’d reinforced our community of camps.
The whole experience was a blast, and though I haven’t been to many camp conferences before, it also felt familiar…it felt like, well, camp! Every summer, campers and staff converge in Lake Nebagamon. They bring with them their own experiences and ideas. They come from a range of backgrounds and hail from around the world. At camp we share our ideas and learn from others. Throughout the summer we build and strengthen our community. We learn that each of our different backgrounds is a piece of the mosaic that is our camp family.
It was really nice to get a taste of a new kind of camp community this winter and it makes me feel excited to reunite with our community in just 108 days!.
