Aug 10, 2006

Young Adult Conference

Just spent the week in San Francisco (a wonderful city--I always ask the question "Why do I live in NY?" when I return from SF.)at the National Young Adult Conference and the NCYAMA Leadership Forum for Young Adult Leaders where I played a fairly major role in both. I presented my findings in Googling God to a group of young adult leaders alongside sociologist Bill D'Antonio from Catholic University and Brett Hoover, CSP (my old boss) and Ken Johnson-Mondragon from Instituto Fe y Vida (Faith and Life Institute) presented great information on Hispanic millennials.

At the conference, Fr. Dave Dwyer and I did a live podcast at lunchtime of the conference and Fr. Dave was one of the keynote presenters (he knocked it out of the park--it's still hasn't landed!). I also served with the wonderful Jenene Francis of Charis Ministries as Co-emcee for the conference.

John Allen, Jr. from NCR and CNN did a phenomenal job presenting "Making Sense of the Vatican." I particularly saw lots of young adults taking notes during his presentation. If you ever have the chance to hear his top 5 myths of the Vatican--jump at the chance. He's a great guy too and has a love of coffee and italian cigarettes.

All in all...a great time had by one and all. Mary Jansen, the director of Young Adult Ministry in SF was a gracious and wonderfully organized host along with her bishop the Most Rev. George Niederhauer, who spent all three days of the conference with us, including a lunch with young adult ministers. Very impressive.

4 comments:

Bill Cork said...

So, how many people were there for the different parts of the event?

god googler said...

About 45 for the young adult leader's forum and 3 bishops too!

And about 140-150 for the conference.

Low numbers...but good participation.

Bill Cork said...

Gee, I would have thought San Francisco could have pulled together that many young adults just for its own diocesan event.

You should have been at the Encuentro Nacional. Lots more of everything. :-) But I'm sure Ken and the others talked about it.

god googler said...

In general, the crowd drew mostly from the California area but from all over the state. Some folks from New Mexico, Chicago, and Detroit as well.

Next year in NYC...May 2007. Be there or be a rhombus Dr. Cork. You have a personal invitation now.

Googling God

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