In this guest blog post by Wayne Jones, co-author of Great Parenting Skills for Navigating Your Kid’s Personality, shares with us his reflections on presenting at the APTi conference with wife, and co-author Kate Jones. The APTi conference held every two years attracts Personality Type professionals from around the world, and features well-known and respected speakers from the field.
Reflections: APTi Conference in Miami
Kate and I had the honour of being invited to the Association for Psychological Type International (APTi) Biennial Conference in Miami Florida, to speak about our recently published book, Great Parenting Skills for Navigating Your Kid’s Personality. The conference theme was “Growing Type Expertise”, and there certainly was a wide range of workshop options to address that topic. For me, it was initially a bit overwhelming – you see, Kate is trained in the 16 Personality Types and knows it and Personality Dimensions®, but I am a relative newcomer to this field and certainly don’t profess to know much about the world of the 16 Types. That said, we made up our minds to get the most out of this event and enjoy the heat and sunshine of Miami as well.
Our journey began with a delayed flight, a very slow airport shuttle and lost luggage, but we made it just in time to register and attend a keynote by Linda Berens, a reviewer of our book. She brought us some of the latest research and set the tone for what was to follow. A highlight of the conference took place the same evening when Kate and I attended a reception and had a wonderful chat with Kathy Myers and Linda Berens. Kathy (Katherine) is the daughter-in-law of MBTI co-creator Isabel Myers and her leadership led to the creation of APTi. Linda is a past president of APTi and a leading practitioner and author. That inspiration propelled us through the next four days of workshops and seminars.
From my perspective, this conference covered everything you ever wanted to know (and then some!) about the 16 Types. There was a great variety of content and approach; the learning curve for me was steep but interesting. By the time we were delivering our workshop, I was even beginning to “speak type” to fellow delegates. We found everyone to be positive and supportive, always ready to share ideas and talk about furthering practice. The organization of the conference was superb – conference chair Fay Roseman and executive director Stephanie Polakiewicz ensured that sessions were on time and speakers were accommodated well.
The conference facility was the beautiful Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Miami. When not attending sessions, we were in the pool or strolling beside the Miami River. On our fourth day, we presented our workshop, highlighting how our book evolved from Kate’s Personality Dimensions®-based workshops for parents. It was a challenge presenting to an audience of Personality Type practitioners; however, we found them to be keen to learn and responsive to our ideas. The workshop was well attended and we met many fascinating participants from the U.S., England and Australia.
As we bid farewell on the final day, we found ourselves reflecting on how much we had learned, how pleased we were to participate as speakers and how we might incorporate this new-found knowledge into future directions for our practice. While we focus on temperament, it was refreshing to see how open APTi was to our work and we will be considering returning to the next conference in two years.
Wayne Jones is an experienced educator, having taught students from Kindergarten through secondary school as well as adult education. Wayne has been a principal in the Peel District School Board as well as for a faculty advisor for Nipissing University. He currently does contract position work for the Peel DSB.
Wayne has excellent oral and written communication skills, incorporating a dry sense of humour in his presentation style. As an Educational Consultant and Personality Dimensions® Level 1 facilitator, as well as co-author of Great Parenting Skills for Navigating Your Kid’s Personality, Wayne Jones draws on over 30 years educational practice and numerous life experiences to enrich his writing and presentations. http://skills4people.com/
