RMECC 2025: What to expect
by Shelby Mattingly, CEO, Denver’s Early Childhood Council
We are so excited to open registration for the Rocky Mountain Early Childhood Conference (RMECC) for 2025! The conference is going to be full of great sessions, time for connection and learning, and some new surprises. We look forward to gathering with ECE professionals from across the region and beyond to learn together.
There are several changes happening based on feedback from and conversations with the RMECC community, so we wanted to take a moment to share each of them.
Theme
We are excited to share our new brand and the 2025 theme of PLAY: Powerful Learning for Active Young Minds. RMECC 2025 will have highlighted focus areas of creative play in the classroom and outdoors. We will also highlight “tracks” for participants are specifically interested in certain types of sessions: like director focused tracks, advanced tracks, and more.
Early Registration
We are opening registration quite a bit earlier this year. This is intended to give you time to plan, budget, and grab your spots with early bird pricing much sooner in the year. You will be able to secure your spot without having to select your sessions, giving you more flexibility and planning time than in years past. Once you have registered, you will get an email when sessions become available for scheduling.
Location
Last year we held the conference at the Marriott Denver Tech Center for the first time ever. We told you that we would select the 2025 location based on feedback. We asked attendees, presenters, exhibitors, and sponsors what they preferred, and the results came back with a clear winner: across all groups, the majority of participants voted on returning to the Marriott.
Layout
We know that holding this big of an event at a new location will take some adjustments for everyone. Through conversations with participants and exhibitors, we heard clearly that we needed to make a few tweaks for 2025 to make the event flow more streamlined. Here are a few of the changes you will see in 2025:
- Exhibitor booths in the atrium and in Rocky Mountain Ballroom
- Breakfast and lunch stations in the Rocky Mountain Ballroom
- Improved and increased signage to help attendees find their way more easily
Lunch
We know that lunch is a busy time for everyone to grab food and get a chance to have conversations. To make the lunch process smoother and to expand access to seating during lunch, we are moving to a schedule with two lunch times which will run concurrent with breakout sessions. This will allow a steadier flow of people, more seating, and more flexibility for participants.
New Dates and Virtual Access
We are moving the 2025 conference from Friday-Saturday to Thursday-Friday. Over the years, we have seen a decline in interest in Saturday attendance while turning more and more people away for Friday. We are hoping with this change to two weekdays that we will create space for more people to attend during the week. We know that this will mean some attendees who preferred Saturday will no longer have that option. To make options for as many needs as possible, we will be offering a limited-time virtual pass for people who cannot come during the week to still have access to some RMECC sessions. The virtual pass will have bilingual session options and will offer access after the conference to a selection of recorded sessions. You will have access to the virtual sessions for 6 weeks. In-person attendees will also get access to virtual sessions.
Our goal is to make the conference as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.
We have a lot more to share with you in the coming months. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out! The conference is a special place because of each of you.
All the best,
Shelby Mattingly
CEO
Denver’s Early Childhood Council