Making Media Connections 2009

Photos are here! Click on “2009 photos” over on the far right (or what the heck, click here) — pictures by Bob Black, Olga Lopez and Jonathan Werve.

Plus, read all about it–not from us–check out what folks said in the Making Media Connections surveys:

Demographics
Wednesday workshops
Thursday conference

There you have it! Lots of highlights from the event, hard to believe it was just a couple weeks ago.

Some at the conference learned the art of making a video by interviewing other attendees, in a session led by Stacy Laiderman of See3 (photo by Jonathan Werve)

Another Making Media Connections conference: from the South Shore Drill Team to the statewide Campaign for Better Health Care to the Great Lakes Urban Exchange to … well there was a pretty diverse group of folks learning to make videos, think strategically, and use social media more effectively today. Nonprofit communicators are a sort of motley crew but that’s how we roll, I guess.

The food was good, the conference energy was great, and we’re looking forward to another great day tomorrow! I was in and out of the workshops today, the takeaways seemed useful. Some examples:

Stacy Laiderman from See3 Communications led a session on how to make a video (the participants learned how to frame a story, shot their videos, and got an orientation to post-production by learning a bit about editing in FinalCut Pro):

• interviewing 2 people at once—have them sit uncomfortably close together, so you can frame them nicely in one shot.
• Shooting one person interviewing another? Use two cameras, one trained on each person, so you can cut back and forth between the interviewer and interviewee in the final product. Of course!

I’m always glad to see Beth Kanter (because she’s good people and she almost singlehandedly has helped to create the field of nonprofit social medi-ologist), even if I can’t always keep up with her. I walked into her session and had a useful gem within 5 minutes, about how to read and comment on blogs (this is straight off her powerpoint):

• Think before you respond!
• What did they say well?
• What did they miss?
• Answer questions
• What are other people saying
• How does it apply to you
• Look forward
• Look backward
• Ask what if?

More tomorrow!

If you’re in Chicago but can’t make it to the conference in the morning, come out for our free roundtable discussion on Social Media, the News, and Us, from 3 to 5 p.m.

A stellar team of volunteers will be live-blogging a number of Thursday’s break-out sessions.  Since we cannot physically be two places at once, our live bloggers will make sure we can “virtually” be two places at once.  So bring your laptop to the Conference and follow along with what’s happening in that session you can’t attend.

The following sessions on Thursday will be live-blogged:

9 to 9:30 a.m., Keynote Speaker Monica Davey, New York Times Midwest Bureau Chief

9:45 to 10:45 a.m., Global Chicago

11 to Noon, Cause Marketing

1 to 1:45 p.m., Keynote Speaker Colonel Tribune, Chicago Tribune

2 to 3 p.m., Funding Communications in an Age of Austerity

3:15 to 5 p.m., Social Media, News & Us

We’d also like to thank all our live bloggers for helping us put the Conference online.

The tools of journalism have changed, but the strongest methods for gathering news are constant, Chicago Sun Times editor-in-chief Don Hayner said in his speech at the Lisagor awards banquet (Jane Hirt, Tribune editor, spoke as well).

“Even though bloggers and citizen journalists can piss me off, I certainly see their value,” Hayner said. “Of course we have to embrace the many ‘platform’ changes we’ve seen. But a lot of those changes are about delivery of news, not the finding of it.”

The former metro editor said the best way to gather news was still to assign full time reporters to the primary listening posts such as local government (He praised Sun Times city hall reporter Fran Spielman, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the event). Journalists cultivate sources daily and work with experienced editors coordinating the information, Hayner said.

“Think of it, platoons of reporters all marching to the tune of news,” Hayner said. “This, of course, is the newspaper model. And in varying ways it’s the TV and radio model. And you know what? IT’S MAGNIFICENT.”

Hear more from Don at CMW’s Making Media Connections conference this June.

report by Workshop intern Christopher Brinckerhoff from Hayner’s comments

As we get ready for the 2009 Making Media Connections conference, we’d like to hear from you on how we can make this year the best we can. Email us at cmw@newstips.org.

If you are interested in sponsoring or tabling at the conference, please contact Diana Pando at diana@newstips.org or call 312-369-6400.