Starting on Thursday, June 10th through Saturday, June 12th, over 300 BNI Directors gathered at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Close to 200 members showed up for the Members’ Day on Friday the 11th and the 21/2 day conference was filled with networking, presentations offering valuable training tools, and festivities.
 The Conference kicked off with a highly entertaining, 25th anniversary version of The BNI Game. About 20 BNI Directors from across the United States, as well as a few members of the BNI Headquarters staff, were called up to the stage, divided into two teams, and made to answer trivia questions about the history of BNI and Dr. Ivan Misner. With Dr. Misner himself sitting front and center onstage and judging whether or not each answer was sufficient, the pressure was high for the game’s competitors and some of the far-reaching answers and desperate antics that were offered in lieu of the “right” answer were nothing short of hilarious and had the audience roaring with laughter.
BNI’s Founder and Chairman, Dr. Ivan Misner, and BNI’s CEO, Norm Dominguez, both delivered extremely informative and inspiring reports on Thursday morning which discussed BNI Connect, BNI’s branding campaign, the BNI Director Mentoring Program, statistics about growth and retention in BNI chapters around the world, the BNI Foundation’s achievement of donating its one millionth dollar to charity last month, the success of Networking Like a Pro, and more.
 Of all the presentations, however, the keynote presentation at Friday’s Members’ Day event, given by Keith Ferrazzi and entitled “Who’s Got Your Back: Supercharge Your Networking and Move from Membership to Community,” was the highlight for many Conference attendees. Ferrazzi captured the entire audience with his powerful stories and anecdotes and empowered everyone in attendance to take their networking efforts and their business to new levels. His dynamic networking strategies and fresh, out-of-the-box insights on how to approach the relationship building process earned him a thunderous round of applause and a standing ovation from the entire audience and he completely sold out of all the books he brought with him to sell. Click here to find out more about Keith Ferrazzi and his books.
At the close of the conference, many Directors offered comments about what they considered to be the main highlights of the event and in addition to citing Keith Ferrazzi’s presentation, the 15 different break-out sessions given by some of BNI’s best and brightest presenters were mentioned time and time again. Indeed, the insights, ideas, and information on how to be extraordinarily successful in BNI that came out of these sessions were beyond excellent and BNI offers a huge thank you to all those who presented for the integral part they played in making this year’s U.S. Conference “the best one yet”!! |