Heartland Certified Public Manager® Annual Conference
Call for Proposals- open now!
2026 Conference Overview
Public trust is not built through messaging alone—it is built through systems. In today’s fragmented, fast-moving, and often polarized communication environment, public sector leaders face a fundamental challenge: how to design communication approaches that not only inform, but also listen, connect, and sustain trust over time.
The 2026 CPM Conference, Communication as Infrastructure: Rebuilding Trust in a Fragmented World, builds on last year’s focus on narrative leadership. If 2025 emphasized gathering to tell—using storytelling to uphold democratic values—this year shifts our focus to gathering to learn. As the National Academy of Public Administration stresses in its 12 Grand Challenges, public administrators must strive to “build our system’s capacity to meet complex public needs by broadly engaging the public, helping facilitate ongoing intergovernmental dialogues, providing flexibility, and encouraging innovation.”
While much of this work happens in public-facing spaces, trust is also built—or undermined—internally. The ways teams communicate across silos, how information flows within organizations, and how employees are invited to share insight and feedback all shape an organization’s ability to serve the public effectively. Gathering to learn, therefore, applies not only to community engagement, but also to how we listen within our own teams and institutions.
In an era where residents and employees alike receive information through diffuse networks, the idea of a single, unified audience has given way to many. Rebuilding trust requires new approaches: listening at scale, engaging authentically, and creating communication that people—both inside and outside government—find valuable enough to engage with.
This conference will explore how public sector leaders can:
- Design community engagement systems that prioritize listening, not just outreach;
- Strengthen internal communication practices to better understand staff perspectives and improve organizational alignment;
- Understand how residents and employees access and evaluate information in a fragmented landscape;
- Develop communication approaches that earn attention, convey value, and build credibility; and
- Navigate the risks and opportunities of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.
Through keynote presentations, interactive sessions, and practitioner-led discussions, we will focus on actionable strategies that CPM participants and alumni can apply in their daily work—whether they serve in highly public-facing roles or primarily operate within their organizations.
Call for Proposals (CFP)
We invite Certified Public Manager (CPM) alumni, current participants, and friends of the program to submit proposals for breakout sessions at the 2026 CPM Conference. Submissions are due by July 1, 2026.
As practitioners, you are navigating communication challenges in a wide range of roles—some directly public-facing, others primarily internal. This conference prioritizes real-world experience, practical tools, and lessons learned across that full spectrum.
We are especially interested in sessions that demonstrate how you are gathering to learn—whether from your community, your colleagues, or both—and how that learning shapes better decisions, stronger organizations, and more trustworthy public service.
Priority Topic Areas
Proposals should align with one or more of the following themes:
- Moving beyond one-way outreach to ongoing, multidirectional engagement
- Creating systems to regularly gather and use community input
- Reaching underrepresented, disengaged, or hard-to-reach populations
- Creating systems to gather and act on employee feedback
- Improving communication across departments or silos
- Building cultures where staff feel heard, informed, and aligned
- Using internal insights to strengthen external service delivery
- Understanding how your community or workforce consumes information
- Adapting to decentralized, niche, or informal communication networks
- Partnering with community voices or internal influencers
- Determining tone in complex or polarized environments
- Conveying value: helping people understand “why this matters”
- Using plain language, human-centered design, or behavioral insights
- Using AI responsibly in public or internal communication
- Addressing risks related to misinformation or loss of authenticity
- Understanding the limitations of AI, especially as relates to decision making involving community values
- Increasing transparency in how communication is created and shared
Strong proposals will be:
Be grounded in real-world practice within a public sector context
Include specific examples, tools, or frameworks others can apply
Reflect honest insights, including challenges or lessons learned
Address communication as it relates to communities, internal teams, or both
Clearly connect to building or rebuilding trust
Breakout logistics
Breakout sessions will be 45 minutes. Sessions can be led by a single presenter or a panel. Presenters will be able to share slides, etc. While traditional presentations are welcome, we encourage submitters to consider ways to engage their audience.
This might include interactive discussions, live demonstrations, small group activities, or opportunities for Q&A throughout the session rather than only at the end.