DWKC MiniCon 2026: What We Bring Into the Room
Updated: Oct 12
By LaRee Durden / AVIA AREE
AVIA AREE was an editorial sponsor of DWKC MiniCon 2026. This feature draws on firsthand event coverage, original recordings and the organizer’s published program.
This is AVIA AREE’s field report from the daylong MiniCon, with original photography and recordings from throughout the event.
At a conference about digital identity, one of the most memorable objects was something you could hold in your hand.
ClickFun Events Co. transformed guests’ photographs into superhero portraits, printed them and placed them inside protective cases, like collectible trading cards. The effect was playful. The premise was more interesting than an ordinary conference souvenir: here was a professional gathering inviting people to see themselves as something other than a job title.
A résumé asks us to account for our experience. A profile asks us to summarize it. A trading card allows a little more imagination.
That felt appropriate for Digital Women Kansas City’s MiniCon, held September 16 at the KU Edwards Campus BEST Conference Center in Overland Park. The theme was “No Algorithm Can Define You.” Across a program spanning leadership, artificial intelligence, creative practice, careers and connection, the larger subject was what remains ours to decide.
What kind of work do we want to make? How do we recognize our own value? What deserves our attention? And what changes when we stop trying to answer every professional question alone?
The room behind the profile
The photographs tell part of the story: round tables, notebooks, paper cups, water bottles, hands raised across the room. People turned toward one another rather than arranged exclusively to face a stage.
Graphic designers, marketers, recruiters, digital creatives and entrepreneurs brought different kinds of experience to the same day. Conversations continued over breakfast, lunch and snacks. There was room for frustrations alongside accomplishments, and for ideas that had not yet been worked into a convincing presentation.
That last part mattered to me.
As the founder and editor of an independent magazine, I am interested in the distance between having a vision and getting the work made. There are questions about voice and audience, certainly. There are also questions about time, tools, money, judgment and the practical business of finishing something worth putting your name on.
In a room full of accomplished people, admitting that something is not working can feel like revealing more than you intended. At MiniCon, those conversations felt safe. I left with new connections, practical ideas and the feeling of having been seen.
A professional community becomes useful when competence does not require a performance of certainty.
Someone can know a great deal and still need help. Someone can be beginning again without beginning from nothing.
Influence does not wait for a title
Opening keynote speaker Chelsea Berry approached leadership through the influence a person already has. Her background includes building and selling a financial-planning practice before concentrating on leadership development, communication and emotional intelligence.
In our recording of her keynote, Berry asks participants to consider the effect of their presence and their choices—even when they are not the most vocal person in a meeting. The question is not simply whether someone has influence, but whether the influence they exert matches what they intend.
That is a more demanding proposition than encouragement alone. It takes leadership out of the future tense. You do not have to wait for a promotion to consider how you respond to a colleague, what you tolerate, or whether you follow through.
The wider program put professional confidence beside the realities of earning a living. Julie Cortés, a copywriter, freelance-business coach and founder of The Freelance Exchange of Kansas City, brings years of independent creative work to that conversation.
For a freelancer, confidence eventually has to survive an estimate, a negotiation and an invoice. Believing in the work is one thing. Giving it a sustainable business structure is another.
Alissa Menke, founder and CEO of cohort.digital, appeared on the program with a session about confidence beyond platform validation. Sally McCutcheon brought the question of what comes next into the day’s career-development program.
Placed together, those subjects suggest a useful distinction: being visible, being valued and knowing where you are going are related, but they are not interchangeable. A larger audience cannot make every decision for you. Neither can a title you have outgrown.
Faster is not the same as better
The AI conversation was not confined to a list of applications. The most useful question running through the material was what a person is asking a tool to accomplish in the first place.
Career and executive coach Diana Alt brings a technology-industry background to that question. Her work has included development, testing, business analysis and product management; at MiniCon, her subject was AI-assisted job searching.
In the session transcript, the warning is straightforward: increasing the speed of a familiar activity does not make that activity the right one. Producing more applications is not the same as clarifying the work you want to do or the environment in which you can do it well.
For anyone navigating a transition, that distinction has consequences. An efficient search can still be pointed in the wrong direction. Better language on a résumé cannot settle every question about fit.
Carrie Mayfield, founder of ScalEfficient Consulting, offered a different measure of usefulness. In our recording, she describes delegating repetitive tasks and decisions to recover mental capacity—not merely minutes on a clock.
Her examples move through the small decisions surrounding work: remembering what happened in a meeting, returning to a task after an interruption, carrying the next step in your head. She also distinguishes between work a system can support and judgment she still needs to own.
For a small-business owner, that is an especially recognizable subject. A task can be brief and still occupy an unreasonable amount of attention. The expense is not always the time spent doing it. Sometimes it is the obligation to keep remembering it.
Cynamon Graves-Gilyard presented The Operator’s AI Toolkit, a session centered on exact tools and practical AI workflows for running a business.
Maliha Khan, founder of Khanect the Dots and Khancepts Studio, presented Take the Wheel: How to Harness AI Without Handing Over Your Voice—placing useful automation beside the need to retain strategy, voice and judgment.
That question has particular force for an independent publication. A sentence can be polished and still belong to nobody in particular.
The program also included Paige Lockhart on recognizing AI’s blind spots and retaining judgment, and Kelly Stanze on search and discovery across conventional and AI-driven systems.
Taken together, these subjects resist a simple choice between embracing technology and refusing it. The harder work is deciding where it belongs, how its output will be checked, and who remains accountable when something goes wrong.
A crayon is also a working tool
In Elizabeth Burt’s session, the materials included crayons.
The recording captures an exercise built around a story, sensory prompts and participants’ own responses. Burt emphasized individual interpretation rather than looking to a neighbor for the correct answer. People were being asked to participate in a creative process, not merely hear creativity described.
There is something revealing about putting an uncomplicated tool in the hands of accomplished adults. A crayon does not offer the protection of a polished slide deck. It makes a mark. You have to decide what the mark will be.
For work that depends on original thinking, the willingness to make that first imperfect decision is not a decorative skill. It is part of how an idea gets started.
Mary-Catherine “M-C” Reinert, founder of Fortissima, brought a background in design, branding and customer experience to the program. Her professional work examines how a business is experienced, extending the conversation beyond its visual identity.
For an editor covering local businesses, that distinction is essential. The story a business tells about itself has to meet the experience a customer actually has. A beautiful identity cannot do every job on its own.
Tricia Keightley introduced another angle through a session that used the nervous system as a metaphor for a professional operating system.
Its place on the schedule widened the frame. A conversation about work can consider more than output: attention, pace, and the person doing the work also belong in it. The person is not an inconvenience to be engineered out of the process.
Trust happens between people
Jennifer “Jen” Spencer and Kimberly Spencer brought recruiting and career-development experience to their shared session about human judgment, trust and leadership.
Their perspectives are complementary. Jennifer founded The Spencer Group, which specializes in marketing, advertising and creative talent. Kimberly’s work includes career coaching and helping people communicate their professional value.
In the recording identified as Jennifer’s presentation, trust is described as something built through repeated behavior: keeping commitments, delivering what was promised and giving people reason to believe you will do so again.
That is a useful standard for a workplace, a client relationship or a publication. Trust cannot be reduced to the language a business uses about itself. It has to survive the experience of dealing with that business.
Later, Michelle Keller, Ph.D., brought the room into a networking session designed for people who would rather avoid networking. Keller directs professional graduate studies at KU’s journalism school and oversees its Digital Integrated Marketing Communications master’s program.
The premise made room for a familiar professional contradiction: wanting meaningful connections while disliking the rituals used to initiate them.
There is a difference between meeting people and performing the act of meeting people. One allows curiosity. The other can feel like a sequence of introductions in search of an exit. A useful gathering gives people a reason to talk beyond the exchange of credentials.
Who gets to tell the story?
Andie Rea appeared on the program with a session about the continuing value of human stories as AI-generated material becomes more prevalent.
For AVIA AREE, that subject reaches the center of the work. A person is not simply an example that makes an article more effective. There are choices to make about what to ask, what to leave out, how to preserve context and whether the finished work gives the subject room to remain complicated.
Original reporting is not just the act of collecting material. It is the responsibility of deciding what the material can honestly support.
The closing presentation belonged to Stefani Conway and Drew Conway, whose shared public platform connects autism awareness, inclusion and digital relationships. Their MiniCon session brought lived experience into a program concerned with how people connect through technology.
Both names belong in the credit. Both people belong in the story.
Their place in the program prompts a question worth carrying into any creative project: who is helping shape the representation, and who is merely being represented? A platform can make someone visible without giving them much say. Thoughtful storytelling should aim for more.
Voices from the day
Voices from MiniCon.
When we claim what we want, we build our lives around that, we have the influence we want to have and the impact we want to see. As you're leaving today and going into these other amazing sessions on the agenda, there are cards on your table. Carry this thought with you today: How are you going to shake the world?
Chelsea Berry, opening keynote
Like, I can walk up to any person and say hello because I know that I matter. I know that I have purpose. I know that I'm supposed to be here.
Chelsea Berry
It gave me permission in that moment to let myself be seen—vulnerable and fully by someone.
Chelsea Berry
Because you are not neutral. You're an epicenter.
Chelsea Berry
The nervous system is the true operating system—the whole idea of why we're in this room today.
Tricia Keightley
And for me, my experience has been that AI has given me more of that mental energy back.
Carrie Mayfield
There were tasks that I was able to delegate to it that allowed me more mental capacity back.
Carrie Mayfield
But what do we want them to feel? In their bones, in their chest? If you can't answer this about your content, your content can't answer this for you. This starts from intentionality. And lastly, what will they remember? Not the logo, but the actual feeling. The feeling of being physically, emotionally, completely present, like at an event. That's sensorial by design.
Mary-Catherine “M-C” Reinert
Be curious about the person you're speaking with. Ask those deeper questions. Don't think of that as salesy; think of it as getting to know the person so I can help them and make better connections. Be the most interested person, not the most interesting. It's a subtle difference. Be the person people feel good about because they feel you're genuinely interested in what they have to say.
Michelle Keller, Ph.D.
My name is Maggie, and I love Drew and Embrace Your Badassery.
Maggie, attendee
ClickFun, and a souvenir with a point of view
Which brings us back to the trading cards.
ClickFun’s contribution deserves more than a passing mention as an event extra. At MiniCon, the company made something specific to the people in the room: their own photographs, transformed into superhero portraits and returned as physical keepsakes.
The format did some of the storytelling. A trading card is designed to make its subject collectible. It gives a person a place in a series without making everyone the same.
For a day concerned with identity, confidence and human value, that was a well-chosen form. It also allowed the event to have some fun with its own serious subjects. Professional development does not have to remain solemn to be worthwhile.
The company’s own beginnings fit AVIA AREE’s interest in the businesses behind an experience. According to its founder story, ClickFun grew from Jennifer’s love of photography, supported by her husband’s technology expertise. What began as Click Fun Photo Booth in Kansas City developed into ClickFun Events Co., with interactive photo and video experiences among its offerings.
There is a small-business story in that evolution: a creative interest becoming a service, and a service becoming a more distinctive way to contribute to an event.
At MiniCon, the physical print mattered. So much professional life is stored somewhere else—in an account, a platform, a folder, a feed. A card in a protective case asks for a different kind of attention. You can turn it over. Keep it on a desk. Show it to someone without finding a link.
The superhero portrait was an imaginative transformation, not documentary photography. Its appeal was in the play. The person it started with was real.
Explore ClickFun Events Co. and follow @clickfunevents for more of its work.
The work of making room
A gathering like this depends on people whose work is not contained in a presentation.
My thanks to Angela and the DWKC team for welcoming AVIA AREE into the day, and to the speakers, volunteers and attendees who made the gathering more than its schedule.
DWKC is led by a volunteer board and leadership team. Because those roles can change, readers can find current names and responsibilities in DWKC’s leadership directory.
The organizer’s sponsor roster recognizes VML, Lovegrass Creative, AVIA AREE, Digilant, BoardSpark, the KU School of Journalism, LandaJob, OzCon, muse IRL, The Freelance Exchange, JamLoop and The Spencer Group.
And to ClickFun Events Co., a separate thank-you for giving the day a keepsake with a sense of humor.
MiniCon speakers
The MiniCon program brought together speakers working across leadership, technology, creativity and careers.
Chelsea Berry
Diana Alt
Elizabeth Burt
Stefani Conway
Drew Conway
Julie Cortés
Cynamon Graves-Gilyard
Tricia Keightley
Michelle Keller, Ph.D.
Maliha Khan
Paige Lockhart
Carrie Mayfield
Sally McCutcheon
Alissa Menke
Andie Rea
Mary-Catherine “M-C” Reinert
Jennifer “Jen” Spencer
Kimberly Spencer
Kelly Stanze
Bring the unfinished idea
DWKC describes a community built around professional development, mentorship, learning and collaboration. Membership is free; individual events have their own registration arrangements. Its members work across technology, marketing, design, entrepreneurship and organizations of different sizes.
For women in Kansas City working in digital fields—or finding their way toward them—that is an invitation worth considering.
Bring the question that does not fit neatly into your introduction. Bring the part of the project that keeps resisting a solution. Bring the idea before you have learned to make it sound inevitable.
What stayed with me after MiniCon was the usefulness of being among people who make things, solve problems and are still willing to learn from someone else. There was expertise in the room. There was also room to need something.
A professional profile can tell someone where you have worked. A day together can reveal what you bring.
Join DWKC
DWKC membership is free and offers opportunities to network and collaborate, monthly meetups, speaker events and career-growth resources. Individual events may have registration fees. The separate mentorship program costs $25 for mentors and mentees. See membership details and join, explore the mentorship program or contact DWKC with questions.
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