Two ICONs as a student, one year on the outside, and what I’m still carrying forward.
PRSA ICON, the Public Relations Society of America’s annual conference, wraps up today in Orlando. I’m not there.
I attended ICON in Anaheim in 2024 as an undergraduate and in Washington, D.C., in 2025 as a graduate student. Both times, I came home with a full notebook and a head full of ideas I was still working through weeks later.
This year, I’ve been reading the agenda from the outside. That distance has made me think more carefully about what those two conferences gave me, what I’m missing this year, and what I’m still carrying forward.
What I carried home
It took me longer than it should have to understand that the value of a professional conference isn’t primarily in the sessions.
The sessions matter. There are always at least two or three that offer a useful framework, a compelling case study, or a piece of research that changes how you think about something you thought you already understood.
But the sessions are scheduled. The real learning happens in the margins.
I mean the conversation over coffee or tea with someone doing communications work in a field you don’t know well. The panel question that opens a disagreement between practitioners and reveals something honest about where the profession actually is, as opposed to where it says it is. The hallway exchange that turns into a two-hour conversation about a problem you’ve both been trying to solve alone.
Those moments can’t be added to an agenda. They require showing up, staying present, and resisting the urge to plan your schedule so tightly that you leave no room for the unexpected.
Here is what ICON confirmed for me across both years: the national conversation about where public relations is heading isn’t always the conversation that matters most for the clients I serve.
The profession is moving toward more data, more measurement, and greater integration with digital marketing and content strategy. Those trends are real, and they have value. But they also reflect a particular kind of communications work, often the kind done by large organizations with teams dedicated to tracking metrics.
The boutique practice, the one-person nonprofit communications department, and the small Black-owned business trying to build credibility in a market that wasn’t built with them in mind are present at ICON, but they aren’t always centered.
That isn’t a criticism. It simply means the frameworks I bring home have to be translated. The real skill is knowing when that translation is simple and when it requires meaningful adaptation.
Attending the 2025 conference in Washington, D.C., carried a distinct weight given the national climate at the time. Communications professionals across every sector were grappling with ethical stewardship in an information environment where misinformation moves significantly faster than newsroom corrections.
Because PRSA Ethics Month takes place in September, I arrived in D.C. having already spent weeks thinking about ethics through the lens of my own practice. What the national gathering gave me was a clearer sense of scale. I saw how many colleagues across the country were facing the same challenges and discovering that standard agency playbooks were not always enough.
What I keep coming back to from both national gatherings is simple: our profession is filled with people who care deeply about doing this work with integrity.
That may sound self-evident, but it isn’t always obvious when you work inside a focused practice where the daily strategic work can feel isolating.
PRSA ICON reminds me that our professional community is much larger than our immediate client list. The narrative questions we wrestle with every day are also being worked through by peers across the country, people who chose this field for many of the same reasons we did.
That realization alone is worth the trip.
What I’m missing this year
I’ve read this year’s agenda more than once. Here is what I would have been in the room for, and why.
Storytelling and AI
The Saturday keynote, “Burned Out to Bought In,” explores how storytelling reconnected a physician to his purpose and how it can do the same for communicators.
On Tuesday, “Everyone Has AI, Not Everyone Has YOUR Story” and “From Zero to Sold Out” take storytelling into conversations about community and brand equity.
I would have been in all of those rooms because my work, from media relations to family history, rests on one belief: when everyone has access to the same tools, the story is what remains.
Careers and burnout
“There Is No Perfect Career Path” would have felt written for me.
My career has moved through publishing, university administration, and city government, and I’m building Vysyons on top of all of it.
“Lead Without Limits,” which addresses perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and burnout, speaks to something solo practice rarely names: when you work alone, no one tells you whether you’re doing well. Eventually, you have to learn how to tell yourself.
“Where Good Ideas Grow” also would have given me practical habits to work on.
Belonging and culture
The PRSA Black Affinity Group Reception and Fireside Chat is the event I would have circled first.
I wrote earlier that the small Black-owned business and the boutique practice are present at ICON but not always centered. I imagine a gathering like this is where they are centered.
“The Power of Presence: Women Defining the Future of PR” and “Cultural Intelligence Under Fire: Leading DEI in a Political Climate” approach the same broader question from different angles. The ICON Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Celebration appears to be where those conversations become community.
Belief, behavior, and entertainment
“When Belief Shapes Behavior” gets to the core of messaging: what people already believe influences what they do with what we tell them.
“Lights, Camera, Communication: Inside Entertainment PR with NBCUniversal” matters to me because some of the clients I’ve served work in music and entertainment.
I would also have wanted to hear Tyler Gillum during the opening general session. As someone who designs events, I’m curious about what a head coach known for turning a baseball game into a show would say to a room full of communicators.
Still, the sessions aren’t what I would miss most.
In Anaheim, I was an undergraduate in a room full of working professionals. In Washington, I was a graduate student with one conference behind me and even more questions ahead of me.
Both times, the people mattered more than any slide.
I had planned to see some of those people again this year and to meet others for the first time. You can read the agenda, follow the hashtag, and watch recordings. You can’t be introduced through a screen.
An agenda is a record, too. Read together, this year’s program shows a profession putting storytelling forward as an answer to AI, acknowledging that burnout and perfectionism are part of the work, and continuing to work out what belonging looks like in a difficult political climate.
It is good to see those questions on the main stage.
What I’m carrying forward
Distance turns out to be useful.
When you’re in the room, you collect. When you’re outside it, you have to decide what you actually kept.
So I’ve been asking three questions about what I carried home from ICON and what I’m reading in this year’s agenda:
What applies to my work as it exists today?
What needs to be adapted for my audiences and resources?
What sounds promising but doesn’t fit?
My work crosses four areas: communications, heritage and legacy research, events, and editorial work. What connects them is the same responsibility: understand the story, respect the people connected to it, and make deliberate choices about how that story is told and kept.
A conference gives me ideas. That responsibility helps me decide which ones to keep.
I’ve also learned that professional growth isn’t measured only by the events we attend. It shows up in the relationships we maintain between them, the questions we continue asking, and what we do with a lesson months after we first heard it.
What I hope for next
ICON 2027 is scheduled for Chicago, October 24–26. I hope to be there, not only to collect what the profession knows, but to walk in with something of my own to put on the table.
I hope the agenda continues moving toward the solo practitioner, the one-person nonprofit communications department, and the small Black-owned business.
I also hope the people I met in Anaheim and Washington are in the room, because the conversation over coffee or tea can’t be streamed.
CLOSING TAKEAWAY
The biggest stages in this profession are still catching up with work some of us have been doing quietly for years.
Show up when you can, and bring what you know into the room. When you can’t be there, keep the conversation going wherever you are.
WORTH NOTING
If you are an independent practitioner, agency owner, or communications strategist who has not yet attended PRSA ICON, I recommend planning for a future conference.
That recommendation is especially strong if you rarely have the opportunity to sit in a room with peers navigating similar operational and narrative realities.