I was honored to be the Keynote speaker for the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association Convention on November 16-17 in Naples, Florida.
Thanks to an introduction from Rob Kehoe, a member of the NSCAA staff, I spoke with Gothard Lane from the IWLCC and made arrangements to speak at their Convention. It is always an honor when any group, no matter how big or small, invites me to speak at their event.
While at the IWLCC I gave two talks. The first was on The Impact of Social Media and the second was The Modern Coach: Coaching in the 21st Century.
The Impact of Social Media
The Keynote on Wednesday, The Impact of Social Media, was adapted from a talk that Amanda Vandervort and I gave at the 2011 NSCAA Convention in Baltimore. I adapted many of the slides to the IWLCC and also added in some great collegiate examples of how teams are using social media and digital media to achieve individual goals.
While I love to praise the role of social media and it’s ability to be a game-changer if used correctly, I also brought up questions regarding compliance, player privacy and other pressing issues in collegiate athletics. A main point I hammered home is for coaches to make sure they include their compliance officers in any social media planning if it goes beyond what their collegiate athletics department is already doing, especially with regards to recruiting.
Impact of Social Media – Click here to view the slides in a .pdf
The Modern Coach
Thursday’s talk revolved around The Modern Coach, a spinoff title that Jeff Tipping used in several presentations with the NSCAA. My talk was not on the technical or tactical aspects of coaching, but rather what five characteristics that successful modern coaches need to think about in the 21st century.
Thursday’s talk was a new topic and a new deck, but after speaking with coaches post-talk, it was extremely well received. I look forward to developing The Modern Coach chat in the future.
The five main characteristics I focused on were:
1) Tries new technologies to understand how their players think.
2) Seeks out new ways to objectively measure performance.
3) Is location independent.
4) Understands the importance of collaboration.
5) Creates sharable content and understands it’s role in the bigger picture.
Click here to view the slides in a .pdf.
Thank you to everyone at the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association for inviting me to speak and for being such gracious hosts during my time in Florida.
For those who attended, you can always get in touch on twitter @ryanknapp or email me at ryan [at] ryanjknapp [dot] com.
