My colleague Laura Lane and I gave a presentation at the North Carolina Counseling Association 2010 conference last week, and I wanted to share with you some of the details of our presentation, as well as the output.

The theme of the conference was Advocating for Your Clients, Yourself and the Profession.  So, building off of the “advocating for the profession” idea, I came up with the idea to have a session in which participants undertake a brainstorming session about why they serve as career counselors.  Then, after categorizing the brainstorming session, each member would write a script and record a video of themselves attesting as to their motivations and passions as a counselor.  Each script would begin with the phrase “I am a career counselor because…”

In addition to providing a space to be reflective on their careers, along the way the participants would also learn how to use the 12seconds.tv platform.

Although our attendance was somewhat low (which I chalk up to the fact that our session was the final session on the final day of the conference, and there was an hour break prior to the start of our session — recipe for early departure!), we had a really spirited conversation and developed a really neat video library, which you can see on this 12seconds page.

It is my hope that others will contribute on an ongoing basis. So, if any career counselors out there read this post and are interested in adding your own 12 second video, please send me a note or leave a comment here and I’ll speak with you about how you can be added to the site.