Feature
The last June Summit, from the woman who has run every one since 2014
Director of Meetings and Events Rosalind Kettering reflects on the 2026 Summit, the final edition held in June before the move to December.
Rosalind Kettering has run every NANA Summit since 2014. This week's 2026 Summit in Washington, DC, is the last one that will happen in June.
Twelve years of ballrooms
Kettering, NANA's Director of Meetings and Events, walked the general session ballroom two days before doors opened, checking rigging points and counting rows of chairs the way she has before every Summit for over a decade. She said the venue changes and the attendee counts change, but the week before is always the same week.
"You learn a room by walking it empty. By the time it's full, you already know where the sightlines break down."
— Rosalind Kettering, Director of Meetings and Events
Why December, starting next year
The board voted in November 2025 to move the Summit to early December beginning in 2027, a decision Kettering helped shape. December dates land after the Fall Policy Forum and ahead of the CAE winter testing window, and DC hotel rates run lower than in June.
The 2026 Summit is the last held in spring
The 2027 Summit moves to December 2–4
The gap between the two editions will run 18 months, the longest in the Summit's history
Kettering has now run twelve editions of the Summit, from a 2014 gathering a fraction of this week's size to an event expected to draw more than 1,100 attendees.
What twelve years teaches you
Kettering said the biggest change isn't attendance, it's expectations. Attendees who once tolerated a single track of general sessions now expect concurrent programming, on-demand recordings, and a mobile schedule app. The fundamentals, she said, haven't moved: a room people can find, a schedule that starts on time, and enough chairs.
"The technology around the Summit has changed completely. What makes someone feel like the week was worth the trip hasn't changed at all."
— Rosalind Kettering, Director of Meetings and Events
Moving a Summit that size
Kettering's team began planning the logistics of the move to December roughly eighteen months before this year's June edition, working backward from hotel contracts that had to be renegotiated years in advance. December carries its own complications a June date doesn't: shorter daylight for outdoor programming, holiday-season competition for hotel blocks in some markets, and a compressed run-up from the Fall Policy Forum in early November.
"December buys us lower room rates and a calendar that doesn't compete with summer vacations. It costs us daylight and a few weeks less runway to finalize the program after the Policy Forum wraps."
— Rosalind Kettering, Director of Meetings and Events
The 2027 walkthrough starts early
With the 2026 Summit closed, Kettering said her team turns almost immediately to the December 2027 dates, this time with an 18-month runway instead of the usual twelve months between editions. She expects to use the extra months to expand the number of concurrent session rooms and to build in more recorded-session capacity for members who can't travel in winter.
Kettering has trained two members of her events team on the full Summit run-of-show over the past three years, a step she said reflects how much institutional knowledge sits in a single role after twelve editions. She was not, however, ready to say when she expects to hand the Summit off entirely.
A ballroom that keeps changing size
The 2014 Summit Kettering ran filled a fraction of the space this week's edition needs. She said the biggest operational shift across twelve years wasn't the headcount itself but the number of concurrent rooms required to hold it: what once fit in a single ballroom with breakout space now spans an entire conference center floor, with staff radios replacing the single walkie-talkie she carried in 2014.