Oof it was a crazy week. From Friday to Friday I put in over 80 hours of work and travel for our annual show and I’m ready for some sleep! 

This was my second NATE UNITE show and one of my coworkers joked with me before we left that they took it easy on me last year, and this year would be crazier. It definitely was!! 

It was a full week of meetings, educational sessions, the expo hall, presentations, and golf. And while I won’t bore you with every detail, I do want to share the highlights. 

On Sunday, we had all of our committee meetings and me being in charge of our Wireless Industry Network (WIN) meant I was in charge of running that committee meeting. I still get pretty nervous running these meetings because I know I’m far from being in expert in the telecommunications industry. I’ve learned a lot since I started a year and a half ago, but I’ve still got a lot to learn! 

Our WIN Network consists of roughly 60 individuals, and it can be a little intimidating getting in front of all of them to facilitate our meetings. Not to mention this is the one time a year we meet in person, so it’s even more intimidating compared to doing it via Teams. But it went very, very well and we had some great discussions this week. I’m also getting to know these individuals a lot better, and I really enjoy working with them. Only about half of the people in the WIN Network were able to make it to the show, but we came up with a lot of great ideas to get them more involved with NATE all around. 

Another highlight for me was the Women of NATE 5K that took place Tuesday morning. It was a beautiful morning in Memphis. A sunny 36 degrees with no wind. The perfect morning for a run! I finished only a couple of seconds off my best time and I got first place overall female which was pretty awesome. The race was out and back, so on the way back I ran past all the people behind me. There were tons of people I knew who were also running the race and the whole way back, I was giving out high fives and people were yelling at me, “Megan, you’re the first girl, keep crushing it!!” It felt so good, I’m not going to lie! It may be the one and only time I’ll ever get to be the overall female winner, so it will definitely be a memory I will cherish. 

That same day, we had our Keynote Speaker, Kevin Lacz, come speak during our Keynote Luncheon. I was lucky to snag a spot at our President’s table close to the front, so I had a great view for the presentation. And Kevin was sitting at the table right next to me which was pretty cool too! 

If you’ve never heard of him, he is a best-selling author and former Marine. He was on the same Navy SEAL’s team as Chris Kyle, the inspiration behind the movie, American Sniper. He played himself in the movie and was also the SEAL technical advisor for the movie as well. He talked about his time in the Marines and the real life people behind the characters who played them in the movie. You could hear a pin drop in the room as everyone was so captivated by what he was saying. It was so moving to hear about the real life story and I’m really glad I was able to hear. 

The last thing I want to highlight is our Tower Family Foundation Golf Event on the last day. This was the first year I was the staff liaison to the golf event and a lot of the responsibility fell on me. The committee was a huge help and I couldn’t have successfully put it together without them. But since it’s my job to work on it, I felt if anything went wrong it was ultimately on me and was my responsibility to fix it. 

Overall, the event was a success. We raised over $130,000 for the Tower Family Foundation. Everyone had a great time, and while it was very windy, the rain held off and the temps were above freezing. I was stressing about it all week, and while I’d say it went well, there were some hiccups throughout the day. I wish it had gone just a touch smoother, but I learned from it and we’ll change it up next year and make it even better.

Oh, and we got half a day on Saturday last weekend to do whatever we wanted, and the Memphis CVB office gave us free tickets to Graceland, so we were able to check that out too. It was super cool and I’m glad we were able to see a little bit of what Memphis has to offer outside of the convention center. 

Overall, it was a great week. A very long, exhausting week, but it was still great. I love meeting up with all the people we usually work virtually with all year and catching up with them outside of business as well. I like visiting new places, and while I’ll admit Memphis wasn’t the BEST place I’ve ever been, it was still exciting to see a new city. And I marked another state off my list as this was my first time to Tennessee as well. 🙂 

I’m ready to sleep for a a very long time and then gear up to do it all over again! 

Until next time! 🙂 

Megan Reiffenberger