BONUS EPISODE: SXSW National Park Recap

Yeehaw! Happy Tuesday! Our BONUS EPISODE recapping my experience at SXSW attending the National Park Service’s two panels is LIVE. I got to meet a lot of National Park Service and National Park Foundation people in person and was FREAKING out!!! Listen NOW on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts 🪩🎉 

What is SXSW?

SXSW is a week long conference in Austin, Texas with a huge variety of tracks from film, to music, tech, education and culture. I grew up in Austin & had never been to SXSW, so getting media passes for the two National Park Service Events was a dream come true.

I got to attend the two panels the National Park Service was a part of and also went the Creative Expo (L.L.Bean, the National Park Foundation & NPS had a huge booth), where I got to spend some time talking to National Park Service & Foundation folks and even a park ranger in person and it was SO AWESOME.

I talk about this in the episode, but being able to meet folks in the NPS & other partner orgs was so fun & opened up a lot of fun potential collaborations with park partner orgs 🤭. Listen to my recap of the events & SXSW in our BONUS episode here.

What Panels Was the National Park Service a part of?

• Young & In Gov, listen to my recap here

  • Panelists

    • Julie Crump, Executive Office of the President

    • Zac Barger, National Park Service (!!!)

    • Louisa Sholar, U.S. Digital Corps Fellow, Facing Financial Shock Team

    • Greg Shanahan, U.S. Agency for International Development

  • The goal of this panel was to address the challenge that only 7% of the 3M federal employees are under 30 (listen about the “retirement tsunami”). We need younger people in the government. They worked to break the stereotypes many hold of working for the government (myself honestly included)

    • The panel surprisingly got me intrigued to work for the government — the opportunities seem immense & the impact you can have is honorable — apply to the gov if this newsletter or the episode inspires you!!

• Reimagining America’s National Parks, listen to my recap here

  • Panelists

    • Will Shafroth, President & CEO, National Park Foundation

    • Lena McDowall, Deputy Director, Management and Administration, National Park Service

    • Amanda Hannah, Director, Brand Engagement & External Communications, L.L.Bean

  • Will shared some amazing facts - have I mentioned I LOVE THE PARK SERVICE 🤪

    • Last year 325 million people visited the National Parks, which is more than all sports (soccer, football, basketball, NASCAR, etc) COMBINED 🤯

    • The national parks supported 378K jobs and over $50B in economic activity 💰🤑 

  • This panel addressed how they are tackling challenges around increases in visitation, recruiting, employee housing and how they are working to create a more connected digital E2E experience for visitors.

All in all it was a FABULOUS experience & I have never before been to a conference where I was so engaged in the discussions and they so closely applied to my passions. Let me know your thoughts on this type of episode/newsletter as it diverges from our usual Superintendent interview format.

Maddie’s Outdoor Obsessions

This section highlight’s my favorite picks from the past week in the outdoor & adventure world

• NOLS: Probably my favorite organization EVER. I did a Wilderness First Aid Course with them and then went on an alumni trip to Japan to backcountry ski which was a DREAM & deeply inspired me to further commit to this podcast. If you are itching for adventure, I couldn’t recommend any organization more highly.

• Anonymous Donor Donates $40M to Meet Urgent Need for Yellowstone Employee Housing: The donation will fund over 70 modular units to address the critical shortage of employee housing at the park - in our interview with Cam Sholly, Yellowstone Superintendent, he mentioned how critical of a challenge this was, so it’s cool to see this need met in such a generous way. But the challenges of employee housing across the park service is not over yet!

• Uncommon Path: It shouldn’t surprise you all that I love REI. I recently came across their media publication, the Uncommon Path. From funny reasons people return their gear to encouraging people to try out camping in the cold, it is full of heartfelt and adventure-inspiring stories — check it out!

As always, thx for making it this far, love y’all — see you in two Tuesdays !!

Maddie

p.s. Get your friends to sign up for the newsletter at whorunsthispark.com/newsletter.