The Agora - Our Live Events
Register Now for our 1st Agora — Tuesday, May 26 from 12-1 pm ET — Open to all subscribers. The Agora is a TED-style presentation followed by an active networking session.
Title: From Identity to Infrastructure: Building “Miner Nation” at UTEP with alumni storytellers
Speaker: Sydney Bertram, Assistant Vice President, Strategic Communications and Engagement
Description
Our first Agora session explores how The University of Texas at El Paso built Miner Nation as a unifying engagement framework that connects students, alumni, and supporters through shared pride and purpose. Sydney Bertram unpacks how alumni “contributors,” operating as freelancers, have strengthened Advancement communications by expanding digital touchpoints and content creation. The session also highlights how scalable participation models — and Miner Nation Contributors (MNCs) with donor experience — are turning affinity into sustained engagement, and ultimately, into pipeline.
What the Agora Is
The Agora is our live, member-only gathering space.
Each month, we bring the community together for a one-hour session designed to do two things:
Surface a bold idea
Create meaningful connection around it
Each session begins with a 15-20-minute talk. Think of it as a focused, high-signal perspective from someone doing interesting work in engagement, advancement, or community building.
The remaining 40-45 minutes are dedicated to small-group conversations. No panels. No passive listening. You’ll be placed into rotating groups where the goal is simple: talk, react, challenge, and connect.
Before there were conference centers, before there were webinars, before there were Slack channels and listservs, there was the Agora.
In ancient Greece, the Agora was the central gathering place of the city. It was where ideas were exchanged, debates unfolded, relationships were built, and decisions that shaped society were made.