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Impact of Recent Events & Tools to Manage It All

April 9, 2025

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University of Minnesota

Budget deficit; Hiring freezes

Antisemitism lawsuit

ICE detains a student

Digital Accessibility

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State Level

PFAS

Ticket transparency

Salary transparency

University/Fairview/Essentia

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Federal Government

DOGE, & Funding Cuts

Tariffs

DEI & Immigration

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So we have to go dark again for a minute to get a brief idea of some of the recent events that have impacted the way that we do our work and that happens at various levels. This is definitely not everything either.

On a federal level we’ve seen immediate impact of the new presidential administration in a variety of ways. I’m highlighting just a few that have impacted the way that I personally work, and I expect that you may feel similarly, but this is certainly not all encompassing.

DOGE (Dept of Gov Efficiency) and slashing of governmental departments and funding

Including potentially units that you work with, directly or indirectly

Tariffs will drive up expenses for many things that we use at events

And overall will impact budgets and spending

Rollback of DEI initiatives which also impacts funding for many of us in academia and changes the way we may produce our events if government funding is tied to any part of the work.
Immigration and labor force considerations which not only is a personal concern for many people in the University community, but impacts vendors and labor forces we use for events in rentals, catering, swag, etc.

This also includes international travel and visas which may impact speakers and attendees of our events

Price Transparency as of December 2024 from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to include transparency in prices. This is good but may impact how we negotiate contracts.

Recent laws passed will ban PFAS or “forever chemicals” - while this is great from a human perspective, it may also impact products we purchase and their costs. A full ban on these chemicals begins in 2032, so it will be a softer transition.
Concert ticket fee transparency. Similar to the FTC transparency, this is probably a good thing, but may impact pricing for tickets.
Also becoming more transparent is the salary on job postings. I don’t think it’s a secret that jobs at for-profit entities are probably paying better, but there is a possibility that this may impact staffing across industries.
At the state level there is a massive conversation about the healthcare system which involves the University, of course, but really pertains to the healthcare of ourselves and our communities. If you’re not part of the health sciences, I’ll give a quick recap:

The partnership between the University and M Health Fairview expires at the end of 2026 and discussions on how to dissolve or change that relationship have been complicated to say the least. Fairview doesn’t seem to want to engage but they technically own the buildings on campus making it tricky. The University wants to bring in Essentia Health but there have not been any major moves thus far while the clock keeps ticking.

And on campus we are also feeling a localized budget deficit with impacts for many departments including hiring freezes.

The University is also involved in an investigation of antisemitism. Without getting on a soapbox, there are also so many systemic and deep rooted history in mistreatment of indigenous communities and other minority groups. It’s not terribly surprising, but it’s impact is real and coupled with the federal government DEI changes that creates a more complex environment.

Not to mention if you host events for attendees in Greater MN or other parts of the country or world, you may know that there are also still strong feelings and history related to the murder of George Floyd nearly five years ago, so adding an investigation of this caliber isn’t necessarily painting a great picture of the University.

A couple of weeks ago ICE detained a graduate student of the University who is in off-campus housing.

This has personally impacted me. We had an exhibitor decline participation and cited this incident specifically. They noted that they do not want to engage with the University at this time because of that.

Now, that leads into a conversation about misinformation or not seeing the full picture, or reading Dr. Cunningham’s statement, but nevertheless we’re feeling the impact.

Last digital accessibility awareness and thoroughness for events

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Poll

Are you impacted by any of these levels of change?

What do you think will impact your role or events the most?

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Quick Check In

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Mental Health

1 in 3 event professionals experience stress, anxiety, depression, and/or burnout from their job alone

Resources

TOMORROW - Coping with Distressing Current Events webinar
Wellbeing Program offerings

Mindfulness
Get some endorphins

So the next question is how do we work through it all?

And there are some sorta tangible ways we can try to, but I want to take a moment to talk about mental health. Because first and foremost we are humans and taking care of our human needs should be the priority. I’m also not a mental health expert, but I’m a believer in mental health and consider myself a therapy cheerleader/advocate.

So, this is an important RECENT statistic. 1 in 3 event professionals polled recently indicated that they experience stress, anxiety, depression, and/or burnout from their job alone. That doesn’t include all of the personal impacts that federal, state, and local changes. It doesn’t include our personal lives. That’s a big problem.

I know I alone today can’t solve that problem, but if we’re aware of it we can hopefully make steps towards helping ourselves feel better.

So, I feel like I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but let me just say: Mental Health is Health. Take care of yourself. Depending on your classification at the U, you have some combination of ESST (earned sick and safe time), sick time, vacation time, comp time, etc. Take the time you’ve earned and the time you need to take care of yourself. Advocate for yourself.

Tomorrow there happens to be a Coping with Distressing Current Events webinar that I recommend.
There are also a ton of offerings through the Wellbeing Program - even if you don’t need the insurance perks these offerings are incredible. I highly recommend the mindfulness courses - there’s Mindful Mondays with the Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing (which also offers a million other great courses and webinars) and Mindful Mornings on Thursdays from the UMD Dept of Psychology
Get some endorphins - take a walk or walk in place, go outside, watch a funny video
Build in days off for no reason. Again, we have time earned, so don’t let it go to waste. Block off a random day and sleep in or read a book or watch a movie - go to the movies by yourself! Do something that brings you joy.

It boils my blood when people tell me they’ve stopped accruing PTO because it’s maxed out. Don’t do that! If that’s you, go take a day off. NOW! The work will always be there and we won’t. (Whoa getting dark again). But take the time. Don’t let your work rule your life.

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How to we work through it?

Align with University/Departmental Goals
Be genuinely curious
Brainstorm and collaborate

I also want to talk about tangible tools and things to help us do our best work despite so many uncertainties and changes.

So first, a few things that I wanted to shout out some core thoughts, but then I want to open it up for some discussion on tools.

First, align with the University and/or your departmental goals.

This sounds weird, but read your department’s website. There’s probably a mission statement and pieces of history of the department, information from other teams that you may not work closely with that will give you insights into what else is going on. Learn with genuine curiosity.

Talk to your colleagues about what’s happening in their work. Think about how your work may overlap or how you can compliment each other.

Ask your leadership. Ask frank questions - again be genuinely curious, but ask. Leaders are people too and honestly don’t always have the answers. They’re still figuring it out just like we are, but they surely have areas of priority. Knowing what those are may help streamline the way that you work.

For example, in the last several years my department has gotten more firm about inclusivity and formed an Employee Engagement Team, hired a DEI team. This tells me that this is a priority, whether or not the government changes things, my department did this first. So with that information I’m prioritizing networking components or ways to bring people together at events and I’m hiring local, minority owned vendors whenever possible.

And this is another radical idea, but brainstorm. I recently did a brainstorming session with my team about a new event and it was an incredibly productive hour. We actually went over our allotted time because the ideas were flowing and it was real, meaningful, and productive conversation. I think sometimes we get so bogged down in the work and task list that we gloss over some of those brainstorming sessions. But I think while there’s a lot of change, coming together to share ideas, opinions, perspectives, is so much more productive than accomplishing the task list. It also humanizes the work. At the end of the day, we are hosting events for people. Whether they’re learning something or networking professionally, they’re going to leave with the feeling that the event left them with. We can craft that feeling.

Think about things with a fresh set of eyes.

So now that we have these woo-woo ideas, how do you get the work done?

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What other tools or systems do you use?

Get Feedback
AI
Time Management

Google improvements

Zoom Events

Google Sites

Surveys

I think a lot of folks do this, but really use it. We do post-event surveys a lot and there’s no great way to guarantee accuracy or a good sample size, but any information you can get is helpful.

For some things we also use focus groups - usually this is pretty casual, but ask the person in line at the coffee table at your event if they thought the food was good, or what you’d improve about the agenda.

I think we all knew this was coming, but AI. Chat GPT can really help.

Get creative - I recently transcribed something using the free Google Translate app instead of paying for a transcribing software.
This can also be part of the brainstorm process.

Ask for dates or events that may conflict with your event; ask to suggest menus or meals; ask for music playlists or icebreakers; ask it to name a session

Also, take it with a grain of salt, it’s AI after all.

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What other tools or systems do you use?

Get Feedback
AI
Time Management

Google improvements

Zoom Events

Google Sites

Time management tools.

I’m old school and just block time off on my calendar. I like to plan my week by setting anticipated time for projects, plotting low key things to do over lunch or when I need a stretch break. I tend to leave the less pressing items for later in the week so they can float to the next week if they need to.
You can also utilize the Tasks part of your calendar, schedule focus time, make secondary calendars for personal or planning projects.

I also have a student worker so I can delegate tasks to her. I know it can be a hassle, but time spent training on a tool or process is so beneficial to be able to hand off similar projects to the student in the future.

If you’re more savvy than I am you may use another external source to have folks book time with you. We’ll get to other tools in a second too.

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Project Management Tools

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Project Management Tools

Asana
Smart Sheets
Trello
Google suite enhancements

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Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

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Sources

UMN Communicators Forum breakout on Thurs, 5/29

New one coming soon here