Convention

The loudest theme. Smaller-school and non-D-I members say the panels solve problems they don't have. When most of the speakers on stage are from Power 4 schools, the advice lands as out of reach. NIL comes up as over-represented even in sessions that weren't billed as NIL.

• "It would be helpful if things were split up by the size of your school. Bigger schools do things smaller schools don't have the resources for."
• "A lot of the panels had 2 P4 schools and one G6. A lot of the advice was out of touch for smaller schools with smaller budgets."
• "Programming seemed very heavy towards a few select topics and a lot of that was only applied for larger schools."

Breakouts and professional-development sessions were stacked at the same time, so attendees had to pick 2 out of 6 things they wanted to see. Repeating popular sessions or spacing them out better came up more than once.

• "The breakouts felt grouped in a way where I was unable to go to all of the sessions I was most interested in — they were all at the same time."
• "If there is a way to add more breakout and programming sessions that repeat or find a way to break them up better, that would be helpful."
• "More programming on the final day of Convention and the return of segmented programming on day one."

Multiple young-professional attendees asked for the small-group Young Professional, Mid-Level, and Senior cohorts that ran at Orlando 2025 — by name. They rated it the highest-value networking format of that convention.

• "Bring back the round table small group discussion for the YP, Mid Level, and Senior Level cohorts, like there was in Orlando 2025. As a YP, I found it immensely beneficial."
• "A panel of seasoned vets sharing advice or even full-time employees who've only been in their role for 1-3 years who can also share tips."
• "I think more for folks that are new to the industry, maybe like an intro session before the event starts."

When attendees describe what convention gave them, they almost never name a specific session — they name a conversation. That matches the row-level data: 95% of attendees rate the peer network Critical or Very important.

• "The network opportunities are extremely powerful."
• "Everyone is struggling on their campuses and need support. Peers stepped up to support one another with best practices."
• "I always leave NACMA with new relationships and ideas."

The specific asks: fan-experience deep-dives, digital marketing measurement, an AI workshop (not another talk), mid-major revenue playbooks, and a career session on moving from a smaller school to a bigger one.

• "I would like to see more speakers from G6 / mid-major schools."
• "A session specifically devoted to optimizing digital marketing from start to finish, including tracking open rates and ROI."
• "I thought the AI session was good. I would have loved it in a workshop format so we could follow along."