A few thoughts on Sunday at the College Media Advisors Spring 2010 National Convention. A lot more multimedia stuff this time around, a few great folks, but are we changing?

I’ve only done the CMA National Convention once before, about two years ago. At that CMA, it was mostly old-school sessions, very little relevant multimedia, a whole bunch of professors and professionals moaning about the way it used to be. There was one stand out session then, Sean Blanda’s presentation on WordPress. It wasn’t apparent at the time, but as I look back and after listening to some of the folks from CoPress, it has become apparent that this was a game-changer. His session inspired a wave of student media adoption of WordPress and other open platforms.

This year, the overall feel of the conference is much better. In the sessions I’ve been attending, there’s been a sea change from my last CMA convention, most people are really really excited to move forward into the online and new media world. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much the presenters are excited about online journalism and that is great. I’ve learned some stuff as well, which is always appreciated.

Image via Wikipedia
Unlike this statue, the newspaper industry is not set in stone.

Of course, not everyone is perfect, some of the sessions I thought would be the most dynamic turned out to be the most disappointing. A session on “Advice on working in new media” was delivered by Men’s Life’s Girl Next Door Carolyn Kylstra in what was practically a monotone. The Washington Post was set to do a presentation on merging online and print news desks, but they were more talking about what they had done, and not much that was practically useful to college media outlets without their huge resources.

There’s also the continual lack of internet. I’ve brought my phone and charger with me this time, so I can get continual internet via Verizon, but to have this many sessions about software and online content and not have free wi-fi is ridiculous.

While the tone and feel of the convention thus far has been much better than my last experience, I can’t help but feel that we’re still lagging behind. I heard from students without websites for their papers and people who have no idea how to even start adopting social media. I think that, as great as some of the advisors are who are running workshops, we should see more speakers and panels with students talking about how other students can succeed.

Some of the best presentations by college media folks were about what their students or other students were doing and I can’t help but think it would have been much better to have just heard from the students themselves. It seems to me that college media online is led by students who are innovating and experimenting with support from their advisors (case in point: #collegejourn). The conference should reflect this. I don’t think we are going to get a revolution from professors and advisors, if we want to move college media forward (and we desperately need to), the students are the ones who will be doing it.

Also, I need to put this out there, the CMA really needs a new website. It’s cool that you’re using Drupal and all, but the 90s are over, ok? I’m pretty sure you just used “mad skills” without irony.

Join me at the Tweetup and check out the hashtag archive up on the UPIU blog.

EDIT: All this is not to say that #cmanyc10 is bad, I think it’s great. It just could be better.

No related posts.

Check out my video presentation on how to use free web tools for better journalism.

A little while back, UPIU scheduled me to present a workshop at the Southeast Journalism Conference this year. Unfortunately, due to all the snow here in the DC area, I wasn’t able to escape to Louisiana. However, I did make the presentation using a set of remote tools to livestream to SEJC2010. Here’s the poster advertising the event:

Research to Release Poster

As you can see the topic was how to use freely available web tools and software to create a better process for journalism, from research, to writing, to publishing. From what I’ve heard, people seemed to like it. So for your viewing pleasure, I’m embedding it here. Following is my screencast (length about 1 hour 45 min) Research to Release for SEJC2010 on behalf of UPIU.

Link package: http://bit.ly/sejclinks2010

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Hello all,

Since there hasn’t been much content up on this blog lately, I figured I’d point out what I have been working on. Over the last week, the Office of Student Media has re-launched Connect2Mason, a website built to cover breaking news and converge content from all of our various Student Media outlets. The new site is up and it has some pretty cool features.

For one thing, the new C2M has been upgraded from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, which brings its own share of problems. The biggest stumbling block we encountered was the change from Views 1 to Views 2, an essential module we use in C2M. However we’ve been able to solve most of the issues. I think the new site looks pretty good, and I’d love to hear feedback. The old site is visible at http://drupaltest.masonstudentmedia.com/ (though it doesn’t really work, you can just see it). The new site is in place at http://connect2mason.com.

Some of the nifty new features include Facebook and Twitter integration and a very cool content slider.

Check out what I’ve been working on and tell me what you think.

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