“Positive anything is better than negative nothing”.
(Elbert Hubbard)
My Walk into the Future provides multiple opportunities for me to network and expand my knowledge base.
I attended Ellucian Live 2025 in Orlando, Florida back in April. My current school is in the process of implementing Banner as our new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) student support system. We’re currently a Workday school and need to modernize the ERP for ease of use for everyone to include students, faculty, staff and administration.
The Ellucian Live event allowed space for us to network and explore available modules for the new system. This was an outstanding way to see how the modules interact and provide a better experience than our current ERP.
My overarching role in the switchover is to identify the modules that will provide us with the best capability for successful implementation. I sat in multiple sessions to hear from experts and other schools on their implementation of best practices. There are a lot of moving parts to successful implementation, and I wanted to ensure we didn’t miss any steps. Fun fact—it’s not my job to run the implementation but my area will be a huge consumer of the completed project.
There were several keynote speakers during the event from diverse backgrounds. There were university and college presidents, actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, the Ellucian CEO and Coach Prime (Deion Sanders). They all had specific messages, but Coach Prime was my favorite speaker.
Coach Prime has a message of positivity and making the world a better place. There are times this message gets lost because folks are not truly listening to what he is saying. He is a true family man and has deep religious beliefs. This is how he lives his life daily.
The Ellucian CEO sat down with Coach Prime to ask him questions during his session. I wish they would have given him a true keynote session and let him deliver his message. He was adept with his responses to her questions but the biggest takeaway I got from him was he never let other people’s issues cause him to have a bad day. He admitted he can and will have a bad moment but does not let that linger and cause a bad day. His message is to focus on the positive in life and shrug off bad moments.
Coach Prime shared, “Don’t drag the bad moments forward and let them mess up a good day” (Ellucian Live 2025).
I remember Coach Prime from his Florida State University and Atlanta Falcons playing days. He had a different nickname back then, Neon Deion. He was flashy, loud and brash—or so we thought. Turns out that was the image of his younger self that does not fit him now. He leverages past experiences to set an example for his children and players.
I love his no bad day message and work to integrate it into my daily endeavors. Bad moments by others will not impact my day or positive outlook.
How can you leverage this principle in your daily life?
Thanks Coach Prime!
Irie!
Calvin Williams
Walk Into the Future 