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A Look Back at This Year’s Virtual Student Life Summit

It’s hard to believe that the 2021 virtual Student Life Summit has already come and passed. It feels like only a short time ago when we were making sure the website was ready, that GatherTown was up and running, that the membesrhip was contacted, and we were only counting down the days to the event launch. 

We hope you had an incredible time this year and hopefully we’ll see you again (maybe in person) next year! In the meantime, we’re looking back and reflecting on some of our favourite parts of the 2021 Student Life Summit.

Networking in Through GatherTown:
GatherTown made networking super easy and fun! If you need a recap, all you had to do was simply walk your avatar up to someone, and boom … you could stop and chat with them. This eliminated the need to always have a designated time and space for when you wanted to network because the option was always available. GatherTown also showed people’s names on the screen, so if you saw the name of someone you haven’t spoken to in a while or if you saw the name of someone you’ve always wanted to talk to, it was super easy to do so.

Roundtables:
The learning opportunities at the annual Student Life Summit are always endless; however, this year specifically it seemed like the roundtables were on fire on Wednesday (June 9th ). If you recall, GatherTown allowed you to bounce around to different roundtables (as opposed to staying at just one) and regardless of what roundtable you (virtually sat at) the ideas and conversations were buzzing.

The Awards Show:
This wouldn’t be a true recap list if we didn’t mention the COCA Awards Night (that took place on Thursday June 10th ). Not only was it great to tune into the awards show from the comfort of our own homes (shout out to the bag of chips no one could see off camera) but, now more than ever, it is incredibly crucial to recognize some of the amazing people who are doing great work in the Canadian college and universities community – we are glad we were able to do so again.

These were just a few of our favourite memories from the 2021 Summit, but now we want to hear from you! What did you enjoy most at the Student Life Summit this year? Let us know by
dropping a comment or message to the COCA Instagram account (@yourcoca). We’d love to hear from you.

Hope to see you again at the Summit next year!

It’s crunch time … the 2021 Virtual Student Life Summit is only a few weeks away and as each day passes, we’re getting more and more excited. We’re so excited that we had to reach out to some of the presenters this year to see what they had to say about the upcoming conference (and to give us a sneak peek as to what we can expect from their sessions).

Here’s what some of the 2021 Student Life Summit presenters are saying about this year’s event:

This year’s Student Life Summit is quickly approaching! And many great things will be happening at the 2021 Student Life Summit (powered by COCA), here are a few that we’re most excited about! 

 The idea of hosting a virtual event may be overwhelming at times (maybe even discouraging) regardless of how many events you’ve held previously. Maybe you're not getting the turnouts you were hoping for, or maybe you have thoughts such as ‘Will people show up?’, ‘Do people want to spend more time in front of their screens?’ leading up to the event. 

By now you've probably thrown at least one virtual event. You’ve probably learned some things for yourself along the way, however, if you’re looking for some extra tips here are three ways you can make your next virtual event even better! 

COVID-19 has been impacting students and student associations across Canada for well over a year now. For the most part, students are attending classes online and associations are operating virtually. And while the vaccine rollout is a step in the right direction, it still will take some time before many of us are fully back on our campuses. In the meantime, we have compiled a list of five things you can implement to make your virtual student association more successful.

If you’ve been humming and hawing about whether you should join COCA (the Canadian Organization of Campus Activities) or not, look no further. In this blog post we’ll delve into a few reasons that are sure to make you think ‘why wasn’t I a member before?

College is meant to be more than just class, it’s full of different experiences! However, many students may feel like they are currently missing out on these experiences – campus concerts, on-campus events, clubs, etc. 

A note from COCA's Board Chair Andy Hall about this year's Virtual Student Life Summit! 

What does it mean to win a full years’ tuition? We asked Achalla Olami to find out. 

In-Person Conference in June Cancelled

Ok. This decision really sucked. It was hard to make. We didn’t want to make it, but we ultimately had no other options.

The spread of the COVID 19 virus has, and will affect us both personally and throughout our organizations.  We wanted to let you know that COCA is already working across the networks with our peer organizations, and many SU/SA partners to determine the best course of action.

This blog post will be some Inception level writing. Ok, maybe not that brilliant, but what I’m getting at is that this blog post will discuss the importance of blogs, while being posted… on a blog. S

What is block booking you ask? It’s a strategy to maximize the student experience by doing more with less.

Whether you’re a beginner or a guru, the event planning world is beautiful, stressful, multi-dimensional, unique, exciting, confus- you get the point.

You may have noticed that the Canadian Organization of Campus Activities, aka COCA is launching a new conference experience for student leaders and professionals in the field of events, marketing and club administration for student associations across Canada.