Governor Ted Kulongoski is opening this year's convention with remarks highlighting his education policy and budget proposals for the 2009 legislative session. Under Governor Kulongoski's leadership the 2007 Legislature appropriated the first K-12 education reinvestment in a decade.

Next, popular trainer Greg Bell shares a secret: To succeed as a leader, continually sharpen your talents and skills and use them to enable rather than control people.

Your new challenge is to speed up your ability to find creative solutions, sell them to stakeholders, achieve results and demonstrate success. An action-based leader can deliver solutions before stakeholders even realize they're needed. Bell's keynote helps you recognize your own leadership gaps and break through limitations.

Bell earned a J.D. at University of Oregon - where he was repeatedly named Inspirational Player of the Year as a Duck basketball player. After serving as a corporate lawyer, Bell founded Coaches vs. Cancer, which raised millions of dollars for cancer research, and became a full-time trainer and consultant. He combines his education and experience as a lawyer and ball player with sprinklings of wisdom from his rural-Texas grandpa. He imparts eye-opening secrets about leadership with enthusiasm, humor and full-on engagement.

Bell will also present a workshop, Team your way to success, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m., Friday.

Entertainment during this session provided by: Parkrose Debonaires

James Steyer tackles the huge topic of digital media’s impact on kids and education.

Kids love MySpace, Facebook, texting, podcasts, et cetera – they’re what kids do to avoid doing what they’re supposed to do! Kids spend so much time absorbing media messages that Steyer contends the media has become “the other parent,” affecting children’s physical, social and emotional health and sexual behavior. In fact, he wrote a book about it: The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on Our Children.

Steyer tells us how we can help our kids fend off the sales pitches, avoid the negative and take advantage of the many “teachable moments” the media offers.

Steyer is founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, an organization dedicated to improving the media lives of kids and families. He began his career as an elementary school teacher and later became a law clerk for the California Supreme Court, a deputy district attorney, and a civil rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Steyer was also the chair and CEO of JP Kids, a family media company, and served as president of Children Now, an advocacy and media organization he founded in 1988.

Steyer teaches at Stanford University and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Oprah, CNN, The O’Reilly Factor, and Larry King.

Steyer will also present a workshop, Building “common sense” schools: integrating media tools, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m., Saturday.

Entertainment during this session provided by: Crossler Advanced Orchestra

Join OSBA staff and other experts to get the latest on burning issues from legal trends and new laws, to bargaining, policies and crisis management. You'll have an opportunity to participate in three round-table discussions with experts on the issues.

Breakfast buffet from 8-8:45 a.m. Student entertainment from 8:45 - 9:15 a.m.

Entertainment during this session provided by: Voices of Soul