Lineup
Speakers
Nick Saban
October 27
Sylvia Acevedo
October 29
Breakout Sessions
This year's breakouts are next level. Get ready for more peer insights, more experts, more tools, and more training to boost your business goals.
How to secure your spot in breakouts
We're so excited to launch this incredible lineup of breakouts!
To add sessions to your agenda and guarantee your spot, make sure you're registered for the conference first. Click Register for Breakout Sessions to get started.
If you're not registered, you can browse sessions by clicking View Breakout Sessions below, but you won't be able to add them to your agenda.
Educational content highlights
- Dive into the latest on-trend CE sessions
- Back by popular demand: Executive-led Super Breakouts
- Gain key insights from thriving Osaic Financial Professionals and peers
- Master Osaic tech training on OneHub, eQuipt, and WMP
- Discover Osaic tools, resources, and experts to enhance your business
- Amplify your marketing with branding, metrics, video & podcasting tips
- Meet compliance requirements with Annual Meeting and Firm Element sessions
- Empower Support Staff with targeted development sessions
- Customized content for RIAs and Osaic Institutions
Evening Events
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Welcome Reception:
Get ConnectEDJoin us right after the opening General Session featuring Legendary College Football Coach Nick Saban for dinner and conversation that kickstarts an outstanding conference experience. We're excited to welcome you and set the stage for an unforgettable event.
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Strength through Belonging:
Join us for Communities Happy HourConnect with your peers to inspire, challenge, and empower each other. Don't miss this chance to greet old friends and make new connections in a vibrant setting designed for community and collaboration. Cheers to forging meaningful bonds that elevate us all!
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All-Star Jam & Backlot Street Fest
We're going bigger than ever for our final night - get ready for not just one, but four legendary acts! Watch Collective Soul's Ed Roland, Gin Blossom's Robin Wilson and Jesse Valenzuela, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Johnny Van Zant, and The Band Perry's Kimberly Perry perform their greatest hits.
After the concert, dive into the ultimate block party at our Backlot Street Fest. Enjoy themed zones with food trucks, pop-up bars, cabanas, and the Urban Biergarten's pub-style brews. With DJ RoonieG back by popular demand from ConnectED 2023 in Phoenix, the energy will stay high as the party rolls into a festival-style celebration you won’t want to miss!
All-Star Acts
Ed Roland
lead singer of Collective Soul
Ed Roland could never be accused of resting on his laurels. Besides his top-shelf duties as frontman and chief songwriter for Collective Soul ("Shine," "December," "The World I Know," "Right as Rain"), Roland also spearheads a number of solo-driven projects and performs solo gigs whenever he can because, well, music is his life. "Making music is all I ever want to do," he declares.
Not too long ago, Roland was able to, as he puts it, "fulfill my dream of recording and playing songs in the Americana vein" with the refreshing, down-home sounds of The Sweet Tea Project. More recently, Roland got by with a little help from some of his friends during the pandemic by laying down more than a few energizing and somewhat experimental tunes under Alien Attitude moniker that resulted in The Living Room EP, a direct homage to the sounds and sensibilities of one of his absolute favorite bands growing up. "I wanted to make a record like The Cars," Roland readily admits, "and that's exactly what we did." All signposts point to a second Alien Attitude release on the horizon, so keep your ears peeled accordingly.
In the meantime, Roland plans to continue venturing out on his own whenever the mood strikes. "Doing solo projects like these really helps cleanse the palate," he believes. All of it serves to ultimately make him a stronger, more well-rounded artist overall. Come one, come all, and see Ed Roland flex his creative muscles the only way he knows how — by constructing and performing new music that soothes the soul, collectively or otherwise.
Johnny Van Zant
lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd
For three decades, Johnny Van Zant has carried out the legacy of his late brother, Ronnie Van Zant, as the lead singer of legendary rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd and one half of duo Van Zant alongside his brother, Donnie Van Zant of .38 Special.
As a band name, Van Zant first appeared in 1985, when Johnny headed an AOR-styled quintet on an album also titled Van Zant. The group disbanded, however, when Van Zant joined Lynyrd Skynyrd two years later. The Van Zant group name was revived in 1998, when Johnny and Donnie joined forces on what was slated to be a one-off collaboration, titled Brother to Brother and released on CMC International. Reaction to the record was positive enough to convince the duo to continue pursuing the project; hence, a follow-up, Van Zant II, was issued in early 2001. The duo's first country album, Get Right with the Man, arrived in May 2005, followed by My Kind of Country in 2007.
In 2018, Southern Rock icons, Lynyrd Skynyrd, announced that, after a career that has spanned more than 40 years and includes a catalog of more than 60 albums with more than 30 million units sold, they would embark on their Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour. Produced by Live Nation, the career-concluding farewell tour logged over 50 stops by the end of 2018.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's are best known for the RIAA Platinum-certified "Sweet Home Alabama" and self-proclaimed signature song, "Free Bird," that Rolling Stone said was "easily the most requested live song in existence." With everlasting hits such as "Simple Man," "Gimme Three Steps," "What's Your Name," "Call Me The Breeze," "You Got that Right," and more, it is easy to see why Rolling Stone named Lynyrd Skynyrd one of its 100 Greatest Bands of All Time.
Kimberly Perry
The Band Perry
As one-third of the Grammy® Award-winning superstar sibling trio The Band Perry, Kimberly Perry has racked up sales of over two and a half million albums, thirteen million singles, and over 2 billion combined streams. As a songwriter, her groundbreaking crossover #1 single "If I Die Young" (with its current 9x platinum status and over 200 million video views) helped Kimberly burst on to the world stage. As an entertainer, she's performed on TV's biggest shows, from late night's most influential (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Late Late Show With James Corden, The Late Show with David Letterman) to daytime's most popular (Ellen, Good Morning America, The Today Show), as well as performing and presenting on multiple CMA and ACM award shows and specials. After touring the globe and playing on some of its biggest stages, her first love is songwriting and it remains the force that drives her today. After inking a global publishing deal with Warner Chappell and Songs & Daughters, Perry released "Bloom" her first EP as a solo artist and is gearing up to embark on this new chapter.
Robin Wilson and Jesse Valenzuela
Gin Blossoms
In the late 80's, Gin Blossoms started to grow a huge following as the #1 local music draw in Phoenix and certainly were the hometown heroes of their favorite hang, Tempe, Arizona.
Gin Blossoms indelible jangle-pop sound was evolving during radio's diverse mix of hair bands and grunge music superstars. They qualified to perform at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin Texas in 1989. That same year College Music Journal dubbed them "The Best Unsigned Band In America" and added an invitation to perform on MTV's New Music Awards in New York City. Their breakout record New Miserable Experience was where their rise to fame began. This album kept the band on the chart for almost 3 years with singles "Hey Jealousy," "Allison Road," Until I Fall Away," "Mrs. Rita," and "Found Out About You." The crossover hits on New Miserable Experience played on 4 radio formats and, to date, have sold over 5 million records.
Those hits were followed up by "Til I Hear It From You" which rocketed to #1 and moved the Empire Records smash soundtrack to platinum status. The track also became Canada's longest-running #1 hit of 1995, its #1 tenure lasting six weeks. This song was co-written with the great Marshall Crenshaw and Billboard described it as "the closest thing to a perfect pop song to hit radio in recent memory." Their next gem "Follow You Down" spent ten weeks in the top 10, and "As Long As It Matters" earned the band a Grammy nomination for "Best Performance by a Duo or Group" making their Congratulations I'm Sorry record another multi radio format favorite and multi-platinum success.
Having dominated radio and MTV playlists for most of the 90s, Gin Blossoms took a brief turn of the century hiatus, a provisional parting of the ways that singer Robin Wilson chalks up to "personal dissatisfaction and the mistaken impression that we could perform at that same level with another group." The brief break allowed guitarist Jesse Valenzuela and Wilson to re-energize via solo recordings, new combos, and production credits for an array of local Arizona acts. However, Gin Blossoms' idiosyncratic magic proved impossible to ignore for long, and on New Years Eve 2001 in their hometown of Tempe, the band reconvened and never looked back.
"There's a certain civility among us now," Valenzuela says. "None of us are as brusque as we once were. We're too old to have shouting matches."
The revivified band hit the road hard, earning a well-deserved reputation as one of the busiest touring acts in the world, playing close to 150 shows a year. Those chops were readily apparent on 2006's Major Lodge Victory – Gin Blossoms' long awaited fourth album and first new recording in almost a decade. Rave reviews followed, as did a top 10 Triple A smash in the album's lead single, "Learning The Hard Way." The album's second single, "Long Time Gone," quickly became another favorite among both fans and the critics and Major Lodge Victory made Billboards Top 10 Independent Albums. Next, Gin Blossoms recorded "No Chocolate Cake" and released the single "Miss Disarray" which is now one of the most requested songs in the band's live set and the album reached #1 on Amazon's sales chart.
These talented tunesmiths promise the inevitable arrival of new material and as they approach their third decade, Gin Blossoms remain a rare breed – rock 'n' roll lifers, destined to continue creating, crafting, and performing for audiences ever rapt by their glorious catalog of material. "We're entertaining and we have chops," says Wilson, "but it really comes down to the songs. The reason we're still here is that we have good songs. When young musicians ask me for advice, what's the best thing to do to further my career, I always say, 'Write good songs.' It always comes down to that."
The band's fusion of Pop, Melodic Rock, Folk and Country elements took the airwaves by siege, making the band an MTV playlist hostage for almost a decade and the group a natural 90's mainstay. From their breakout album through today, Robin, Jesse, Bill and Scotty have sold over 10 million records and are one of the most in demand 90's live artists who began at the end of the grunge era. In 2017 the band went back in the studio recording a new album. Fans will get a taste of the new album as it works its way into their live set.
