Our Georgetown University Sports Industry Management program hosted a two-day SEME (Sports Event Marketing Experience) at Nationals Park this past Friday and Saturday.   We bill this as the premier sports career and networking conference.

We’re now in our 7th year and I think this year’s conference was the best one ever!  The conference was sold out for the third straight year — we had approximately 300 attendees and over 80 sports executives serve as panelists and moderators.

Our keynote speakers / guest speakers included Sunil Gulati, the President of the US Soccer Federation; Glenn Chinn, VP – Global Brand Management, EA Sports; Ahmad Nassar, Allison Tucker and Steve Goodman from the NFL Players Association and a host of other esteemed executives.

I had the good fortune of serving as a moderator for the three panel sessions — “Sports 2.0 – The Effect of the Economic Crisis,” “Breaking Into the Sports Industry” and “New Technologies: Impacting the Way We View and Market Sports.”   Each panel session went well, primarily due to the excellence and experience of the panelists.   A list of the agenda and panelists can be found at http://www.seme-now.com.

I told the students and attendees throughout the two days that I thought it was an extremely wise use of their time to come to the conference to listen and learn from the panelists and speakers as well as to network with the dozens of sports executives in attendance.

Many of the vets, such as myself, didn’t have these types of conferences and networking opportunities when we were graduating from undergrad and graduate school and trying to enter the hyper-competitive sports industry.  I think that’s why so many of come to “give back” and to help the younger generations.   My email box has been slammed the past couple of days from conference attendees — I’ll do my best to help each and every one of them in one way or another.

Kudos to Matt Winkler, Kristen Consolo and the hard-working staff and volunteers that helped make this a terrific conference.