We held the Annual TACL Mid-Term Conference in Las Vegas, NV over the MLK weekend. We had 60+ leaders from throughout the US represented (Seattle, Atlanta, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C.) and we also held our first national youth camps Google hangout at the conference with the following camps represented: TACL-LYF, TACL-LID, TAF, TANG, and WMACS. What an incredible experience!

We held our conference in Las Vegas because we wanted to experience Taiwanese American (and Zappos CEO) Tony Hsieh’s Las Vegas Downtown Project, which is about building a community from scratch. Our chapters and programs are all building their own communities and trying to figure out what it takes to make them sustainable. We held the conference in the core of Downtown Las Vegas (away from the Vegas strip) at Las Vegas’s very own shared working space and start-up incubator lab “Work In Progress”.

The theme of the conference was #TBTaiwan. We want to remain relevant to the younger generation (a play on #TBT which stands for ThrowBackThursdays in Social Media) while still acknowledging our past and learning from our history, so we thought this would be a perfect marriage of the two.

There were too many great moments and learning opportunities to list, but here are the highlights from the 2014 Mid-Term Conference!

On Day 1, the highlight was welcoming everyone to Las Vegas at the MGM Skylofts. It was wonderful seeing old friends and meeting new friends as leaders from throughout the US were attending.

On Day 2, we started in earnest and wanted to highlight the theme “ThrowbackTaiwan”, so we invited former TACL President Rob Liu to speak. His message inspired many of the attendees as they did not know about the rich and long history of TACL. He talked about building relationships and visiting each and every TACL chapter on a nationwide driving tour (before there was widespread usage of emails and the internet). He spoke about the transition from the 1st generation of TACL leaders to the 2nd generation and the challenges as they stopped having official Senate proceedings board meetings and moved from Chinese language meetings to English.

In the evening, we then went to see the world famous DJ – Zedd – at one of the hottest, if not the hottest, club in Las Vegas – LIGHT at Mandalay Bay. Our Taiwanese American friends at Discotech app, were wonderful in arranging a very memorable night by all.

On Day 3, we really took advantage of our Down Town Las Vegas location by having Taiwanese American Maggie Hsu, who is in charge of strategy and operations for Tony Hsieh, speak to us and then giving us a tour of the newly opened container park. Attendees loved hearing first hand accounts of the challenges in creating a community from scratch. Attendees were originally skeptical of the conference location being in Down Town Vegas, but after her speech, attendees were truly excited about being there and experiencing it in its early stages.

On Day 4, the highlight was taking a tour of the Zappos HQ and learning about their culture. WOW. Another benefit of being in Down Town Las Vegas is being able to take advantage of the free tours offered by Zappos. Zappos has a world-renowned culture that people all over the world come to learn from. The culture emphasizes being weird and also having the best customer service on the face of the earth. TACL wanted some of that spirit as well!

Thank you to all the attendees for flying from all over the US to participate. We look forward to seeing everyone again soon at the TACL National Convention in the Fall on the East Coast!.