AIIP 2025 – Proudly Independent and Globally Connected
The theme for AIIP 2025 – Proudly Independent and Globally Connected – set the tone for the Association’s virtual Symposium held April 8-10, 2025.
AIIP 2025 was hosted on Whova and seamlessly synced with Zoom. AIIP attendees always want plenty of time to meet and chat.
Each day started with an online Coffee Catch Up meeting, and as usual Day 1 featured each attendee making an introduction and describing his or her business.
Other opportunities to globally connect included online speed networking and topic takedowns for small groups to share tips and ideas.
One of the best events I have joined in the past 25 years. The AIIP “gang” provides value, support, and community on a very high level. Proud to belong to it!
Udo Hohlfeld, INO+DATEN, Germany
[AIIP 2025 Coffee Catch Up – Photo by Kelly Berry]
In line with the theme of “proudly independent and globally connected”, AIIP 2025 featured a lineup of five speakers from the US, Canada, Australia, and Britain, all distinguished information professionals or self-employed individuals.
Karen Wickre, founder of Knox Media and author of Taking the work out of networking, opened AIIP 2025 with an engaging session offering practical tips to resolve the ongoing challenge of making and keeping great connections. That is an ongoing challenge for many attendees, particularly as longtime client contacts move on and new contacts need to be developed.
Each year, the Past Presidents fund the Roger Summit Lecture Award to bring an inspiring and stimulating speaker to AIIP’s annual Symposium.
For AIIP 2025, Emily Green, Entrepreneur and founder of Grace Communications and Emily Green LLC, delivered the opening lecture and shared tips on the secret ingredients to build long-lasting client relationships.
On Day 2, Megumi Miki, based in Melbourne, Australia, and author of Quietly Powerful: How your quiet nature is your hidden leadership strength, delivered an interactive session for attendees engaging with her from US, Canada, UK, Europe, and Australia.
Megumi shared helpful tips on how to be known for what others find useful about what you do so that you can be of service and share your unique perspective.
Her strategies to reframe your perspective, appreciate yourself, and help to connect with others resonated and inspired our not so quiet as well as quiet attendees.
The tips from Megumi Miki were especially helpful and inspirational as I work to become more visible to my audience in a way that is comfortable to me.
AIIP 2025 attendee feedback
Sarah Townsend, UK based copywriter and author of several books including Survival Skills for Freelancers, presented an engaging session on Freelance Confidence and shared proven strategies to help you grow in confidence and show self-employment who’s boss.
She stressed that while experts claim the future is freelance, there are some reality bite statistics regarding freelance life:
- 90% of freelancers experience isolation
- 37% took less than 14 days off during 2024
- 70% don’t feel they have adequate support for their mental health
Sarah shared tips to help with wellbeing, resilience, and confidence – all essential if you are going to survive as a freelancer.
She started by highlighting the very important step that all AIIP members must undertake – realize that you’re not alone, and find your community and make connections with people who understand freelance life.
Dr Michael Ridley, Librarian Emeritus, University of Guelph, based in Canada has a strong research interest in Explainable AI. His publications can be found on his website michaelridley.ca.
Mike started his presentation with a good question to ponder – if artificial intelligence is so smart, why doesn’t it explain itself?
Explainable AI (also known as XAI) Is “concerned with developing approaches to … make artificial systems understandable to human stakeholders” (Langer et al, 2021).
In reality, XAI is focused on “opening the black box” and shining a light on the opaque nature of AI.
Great speakers and fun networking.
AIIP 2025 attendee feedback
Attendees who missed any of these events may catch them all on the Whova platform until October 7, 2025.
Heather Carine is Principal of Carine Research, a specialist market intelligence research service for companies wanting to connect the dots in their market.
She is a seasoned market intelligence specialist with over fifteen years of commercial world experience in investigative research for major corporations, investment bankers, law firms, and commercial advisers.
Heather served on the AIIP 2025 Symposium Committee.
