WIN Conference - The Highlights

It's true that time flies. It's already Sunday and the WIN Conference for 2007 is nearly all wrapped-up. There are some optional workshops running this morning, but the bulk of the 700 women here for the core 2.5-day program have either left or are now in their rooms packing their bags for room check-out.

It was a weird site just now at breakfast... a hotel completely overrun by women over the last 3-4 days, now had lots of men in the breakfast buffet room. It's funny how the eye became so familiar looking around and only seeing women, that the men at breakfast became "an unusual sight"!

Even though I wasn't able to blog about the conference on a daily basis, I still have lots to fill you in on, so probably the best way to do that is via our normal website. I'll write up a two-part report - posting part one October 1 (US time) and part two when we update our home page again on November 1 (that will give me time to write a part two!). It will be easy to find the reports, as we'll put a photo and prominent link on our home page, for both October and November.

Amongst all of the speakers who really inspired me, I'd have to say that my favourite was definitely Norwegian Explorer, Lecturer and Educator - Liv Arnesen.

This lady was amazing, yet so incredibly humble. Since the age of 8, Liv had dreamed of skiing to the South Pole. At 41, she realised her dream and became the 1st woman in the world to ski solo to the South Pole.

But as if that was not enough, she later went on to ski on a trip with Ann Bancroft (American) - the 1st woman in the world to ski to the North Pole. Together, they skiied across the Antarctic continent (in reaction to her critics who said that skiing to the South Pole, a 1200km trek that reached 3000 meter elevation, was "too short" a journey!).

Equally impressive, was that Liv and Ann, who had designed their Antarctic trip as an educational trip for children - both to empower them and to encourage them to dream - reported on their website each day what they were up to. By the end of their trip, with the help of a lot of US media, they had 10 million children registered on their site to track their journey online. That's just phenomenal. What an empowering experience for all who were involved.

You can check our their website here. Their stated shared mission is "to inspire people, particularly women and girls, to follow their dreams".

Here's cheers to Liv (& Ann). I take my hat off to you and wish you all the best for every adventure you embark on in the future.

Andrea