I am still amazed it’s almost here.
In just a few weeks, I will be heading to Cannes to attend the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity for the second time. First time I attended the festival was in 2017, where I walked away with a ton of insights, experiences, and stories to share w/ my students. It was two years ago when I wrote this post that created a huge spark, resulting in a new event for this year’s festival.
This is what I wrote in the post back in 2017:
- Propose an Educators Summit for Cannes Lions. This was something I immediately thought of when I first attended the festival. You see veteran professionals and young professionals, but you really didn’t see educators. There is a big focus here for education and mentoring at Cannes Lions, which is fantastic. However, I think the missing link here are the educators. In higher education, we are seeing more pressure put on educators to be relevant and up-to-speed on what needs to be taught and emphasized in our classes to make sure our students are best equipped with the best tools possible. We have seen brands like Adobe (with Adobe EDUMax) and agencies (Edelman) host Educator Summits before. These are usually two days of workshops, talks, and sessions dedicated to educators on case studies, practices, and lessons they can integrate into their classes. Also, you would be able to see the bridge between Young Lions (students and young professionals) and Lions (Veterans in the industry) come together with this missing link.
As I have always told my students when it comes to blogs and writing content: you never know who will be reading this content and want to take some action on it.
What happened next was truly amazing. This post, and my observation, helped spark a conversation between Bill Ward (co-chair of the Cannes Lions Educators Summit), and Steve Latham (Head of Talent at Cannes Lions, who is the chair of the Cannes Lions Educators Summit). The rest is history! We were able to officially announce that for 2019, the Cannes Lions Educators Summit was going to happen. I am still pinching myself to see this all come together.
We even have our own logo! How cool is that?!
We will be sharing the full schedule and itinerary soon, but I have to say this is going to be a really special event. We will have some of the top professionals, brands, and agencies speaking to the educators from around the world and share their expertise, insights, and how we can better collaborate together to help the future generation of professionals. The summit will consist of a half day of sessions dedicated to educators and professionals, but we will have at least a session a day during the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity exclusively for the educators.
I will be wearing a lot of different hats for the Cannes Lions Educators Summit – co-chair, moderator, and panelist (will be presenting as part of an academic panel).
It will be a very busy week, but I am very, very excited. For the past few years ever since we first started this conversation, a lot of planning, brainstorming, discussions, meetings, conference calls, and more have taken place to make this dream become a reality.
I am looking forward to meeting all of the educators from around the world and getting them connected to the fabulous professionals we have here. In the preliminary talks I’ve had with the speakers, everyone is so excited to be part of this summit. This is what it is all about – we are all in the same page and want the best for our students.
I am excited to see everyone in a few weeks. If you will be in Cannes also for the festival, let me know and I’d love to meet up!
Hope you all are having a wonderful day.
Best Wishes,
