The 2024 ACC/AAAE Planning, Design and Construction Symposium in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 5^th through 7^th is featuring the new Innovation Track. This track is a combination of AAAE, Innovation topics, and heavy Young Professionals involvement. Please join us today to hear about the session topics and thoughts that went into making robust and relevant topics for all age groups.

The Hold Room, Season 2 Episode 14 – Laura Canham, Amanda Sheridan, and Abigail See

Transcript

[Introduction]

TJ: Welcome to The Hold Room with ACC: a quick update on all things relating to airport development as well as the Airport Consultants Council.

Laura Canham: This episode is part of the passenger experience headers hosted by ACC's Terminal and Facilities Committee in this series. We are collecting the experiences and perspectives about the future of passenger travel, including changing demographics such as the U.S. population, aging and becoming more multicultural, new technologies, labor, and supply chain. Shortages and what the future may have in store. Thank you for joining us in the Hold Room.

[Interview]

Max Vale: Welcome back to the Hold Room, everyone. I'm Max.

Kisa Hanlon: And I’m Kisa.

Max: And we're very excited today to talk with the hosts of the Innovation Track for the AAAE/ACC Planning, Design, and Construction Symposium happening in March 2024 in Salt Lake City. We've got Laura, Amanda, and Abigail with us, who are the hosts. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves.

Laura: Thanks Max. I'm Laura Canham with McFarland Johnson. I am an aviation planning project manager here and I'm the host for the Innovation Track. So very excited to be here today.

Amanda Sheridan: And I am Amanda Sheridan. I'm also with McFarland Johnson. And I'm helping Laura as the YP track host for the Innovation Track. Also very excited to be.

Abigail See: And I'm Abigail See. I’m an associate managing consultant with Jacobsen│Daniels, and I'm happy to be helping out with one of the innovation YP tracks for this year's Symposium.

Laura: And one person who was not able to make it is Molly Statler. We don't want to forget her because she's been instrumental throughout this process.

Kisa: Awesome. Well, I know we want to dive right in there. I think the Innovation Track is one of the most exciting and also challenging. I think if you're probably the host to keep coming up with what are the innovative topics that everyone wants to hear about. So going right into it, I guess we'd like to hear what do you all have planned for this upcoming Symposium.

Laura: Thank you, Kisa. Yeah, we’re really excited about this. So, this year is the first year that we're doing the Innovation Track. It used to be the mini track and now we're a full-fledged track in and of itself. And so as part of that, there are five sessions. The first one is going to be coordinated through the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) and we are just as curious as you as to what that workshop is going to be. But some of our items. So, we're going to have a couple of people speak because we have it split up that the young professionals are organizing two of the sessions and then Amanda and I are doing the other two and continue to communicate throughout the process. To make sure we have a good balance of all the different topics. So, the first one I'm going to talk about is sustainable culture change and we want to make sure that the aviation industry is more inclusive, more diverse and how we get there. So, some of the really cool things that are going on, we're hoping to build upon AAAE’s inclusion in aviation conference that just happened a couple weeks ago and continuing to move that topic forward because it is such a relevant topic in our industry. To be able to find more diverse younger workforce with the focus on underrepresented groups and looking at the future leaders and if the future leaders of any company are not seeing themselves in the workforce, they are less likely to come work for those consulting firms, airports, and different contractors. And so we really want to focus on having successful strategies in place and methodologies that we can use to move that forward active tools to foster a more diverse and inclusive workforce and kind of learning from other people's experiences, both the challenges, the lessons learned, things to be aware of. Just really be more intentional in mentoring and fostering both economic and professional growth. Another workshop that Molly has been organizing, and she's not able to be here today, is the opportunities for artificial intelligence and aviation to develop innovative solutions for planning and design specifically. And you know, this is really cool of being able to coordinate together with young professionals and being able to incorporate such robust and relevant topics into our Innovation Track because this is the forefront of where we are. There is no question that AI is going to be part of our lives. And so keeping that in mind, and understanding how it can be a benefit for airport planning and design, but also understanding what some of the challenges and limitations might be where we need to focus some attention. So, hoping to have a thought-provoking discussion to talk both from the developers of AI to different airport applications. So, we'll have airport representation and the consulting side and really getting the full breadth of what might be going on through the planning and design using. And then also real world application of how it's been successful, how it has been improving efficiency and again what kind of lessons learned and challenges do we need to be able to consider throughout this process.

Kisa: Awesome. Thank you, Laura. That sounds great. Amanda, can you go ahead and tell us about your session?

Amanda: Yeah. And I was actually just going to add to Laura's. I think a cool part of the YP sessions this year, that is a little bit different in the past, is they're not specifically geared toward YPs, so the YPs are organizing them, and there's YP's moderating and on the panels in some cases. But we're hoping that people who are not YP's are also attending these sessions because they're definitely going to be applicable to everyone. And it's on topics like AI that YPs are probably a little bit more versed and then some of the older conference attendees. So hopefully that should be really cool to see. So, another session that we will be hosting is going to be transforming operational problem statements into technology solutions. So, this is interesting because it gives a little bit of a different spin on things. It's actually giving us real world examples of solutions that airports and consultants have developed for operational problems with technology. I'm not naming any names yet, but one of the topics that we're going to talk about is an airport that we'll be discussing an IT master plan that they developed. So, it's just a little bit of thinking outside of the box and learning the importance of data intelligence and how it is playing into our industry.

Kisa: Great. No, that sounds amazing. Abigail, we'd love to hear from you as well on your session.

Abigail: Yeah, thanks. I'm helping organize a session on YPs raising their professional profile on. While at a glance it might not seem like it's directly innovation and technology related as people would think in the traditional sense. It definitely falls under the innovation category because as we're seeing across the industry, a lot of these senior leadership are retiring and there's not necessarily an obvious or an easy way or path forward for leadership across all kinds of organizations. Be that public or private. So really, businesses are trying to, having to, innovate their younger staff, emerging leaders. And so this session is really focused on that group of people. People from all levels of experience who are looking towards helping develop their own organizations. So, we are having a YP moderate the session and it will be their first opportunity to moderate a session and participate. So, I think it's fantastic way to get YP's involved. You know it's on exactly what the session topic is about and we're looking to feature quite a few different panelists from federal, airport, and consulting firms. So we're looking to have a wide range of panelists speak about what that's like raising your professional profile across all different types of organization.

Max: That all sounds great. Something I think is interesting is that this is the innovation track. And when people say innovation, they typically talking about technology advancements. But half of the sessions that we just talked about are about the softer side of the workplace, about creating a more sustainable culture and raising your professional profiles, so.

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