2023 Fall Workshop Sessions

Park Track
Thursday, September 28 | 8:30am - 12:00pm

Managing Park Amenities Utilizing GIS
Scott Kiley and Dan Schmitt
Modern parks and recreational facilities have complex built and natural infrastructure. They are like mini cities with assets that require inspections and maintenance. GIS empowers staff to manage their assets from anywhere. Interactive GIS maps can engage visitors while park managers can assign and track maintenance assignments to staff who update work progress using a mobile device. All information can be displayed using live dashboards to provide a complete understanding of park operations in real-time.

Fleet Maintenance and Equipment Tracking
Neil Pierce
Oversight of equipment maintenance and tracking repairs. Demonstrate the programs used by Rock county to manage equipment, expenses, location and documentation of repairs, instructions and accidents. Demonstrate the location services we use and the safety/liability aspect of using them.

Organizational Culture 101
Zach Navin
Discuss the process for developing a system that fosters a high performing organization based on data from customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Learn more about the approach Waukesha County took based on Student Education methodology to identify and hard wire what right looks like and focus on continuous improvement using data metrics, targets and rounding... with the lessons learned, impacts, data correlation's and strategy to build trust with your team, partners and elected officials.

Friday, September 29, 2023  | 8:00am - 12:00pm

Urban Trees and Sidewalks
Brian Wahl
Trees and sidewalks often come into conflict with one another. Unfortunately, the trees are often the losers. While we cannot save them all, come learn some strategies to mitigate and ultimately reduce all those, humps, bumps and cracks while preserving the tree canopy and all the benefits they provide.

Identifying and Managing a Spongy Moth Outbreak
Bill McNee
A review and reintroduction to the Spongy Moth, formerly Gypsy Moth.  Presentation will review identification, life cycles, and strategies to control and outbreak.

Pruning Trees for Urban  Environments
Brian Pelot
This session will introduce the importance of maintaining public street and park trees along with explaining the "what and how" of setting up a tree pruning program for your community. Concepts like young tree pruning, cycle pruning and safety pruning will be discussed and try to offer solutions to how can all this work get done?

Recreation Track
Thursday, September 28 | 8:30am - 12:00pm

Working Genius: Maximizing Productivity and Fulfillment at Work
Teresa Hutton
The Working Genius model, developed by Patrick Lencioni, is 20% personality tool and 80% productivity tool. By leveraging the Working Geniuses of each team member, productivity will increase, and team members will find more joy and fulfilment in their roles. Gain an understanding of the Working Genius model and how to effectively apply it in your team.

Total Wellness: A Recreation Based Cancer Prevention Program
Erica Wasserman
In 2020, Milwaukee Recreation partnered with the Medical College of Wisconsin, a private medical school of sciences in Milwaukee and the largest research center in eastern Wisconsin.We developed an evidence based, community recreation program called Total Wellness which focuses on health, wellness and cancer prevention. This is a community-based nutrition and physical activity program that adheres to the evidence based American Cancer Society Nutrition and Physical Activity Guidelines for Cancer Prevention. Short-term goals for the program include improved nutrition and physical activity. Long-term goals include reduced cancer and chronic disease risk, as well as improved quality of life. In this session, we will go over the reason there is a need for this type of programming and how we brought it to life.

Developing your Volunteer Team
Eric Sponholtz
Many nonprofits rely on volunteers to be able to fulfill their missions and create solid impact across the community. But how do you analyze and develop this critical piece of your organization? This session give you the insight and tools needed to recruit, retain and engage volunteers to build and sustain a volunteer team.

Friday, September 29 | 8:30am - 12:00pm

Breaking Through with Benevolence
Laura Colbert
Learn how benevolence can positively impact exchanges with your colleagues and the community. Build and sustain a trusting, safe, and engaging workplace. Turn those high-stress crucial conversations into collaborative problem-solving opportunities.

Family Engagement Ideas
Kelly Coulthard
Engaging families within programs or getting them to attend events can seem daunting, frustrating, and overwhelming at times. This session will focus on taking a step back to reevaluate our outlook on family engagement and developing a multi-tiered approach to engaging more families within our programs. Along with evaluating areas for more engagement, participants will also brainstorm and share ideas to increase opportunities for families to engage within your setting.

Developing Community Partnerships
Kelly Coulthard
Community Partnerships are a great way to add to programming, expand opportunities, and provide new experiences. But how do you start? Where do you start? Why should you start? This session will focus on answering all those questions and more! Come ready to make a plan to identify your goals and objectives around developing community partnerships, tips and trips for connecting with potential partners, and expansion of your database of partners!