The Annual Conference is Successful as a Two Day Webinar!

According to survey results, the 2020 Annual Conference sponsored by Wisconsin Community Media and the Midwest Region of the Alliance for Community Media is officially a success!  On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being most satisfied, attendees gave the conference and fest held on October 1 and 2 an overall rating of 4.2. 

The theme of the conference was “Focus on New Horizons” and the conference did that not only in the way it was delivered, but also in the topics covered.  Typically a two-day in-person conference, the annual event went virtual using Zoom, but stuck pretty closely to the standard format.

Two-thirds of conference registrants filled out the feedback survey that asked them to rank various aspects of the conference.  The technical delivery of the conference was highly rated, rating a 4.4 out of 5.  One participant said,  “I thought it was very well put together and enjoyed just being transferred automatically to the next session I signed up for!  That was pretty darn cool.”   Would attendees participate in a Zoom conference again?  With an average rating of 4.4 to that question, the answer is definitely yes.

With nearly thirty speakers sharing their expertise, conference goers had an enriching experience. The presentations and workshops planned by the conferences committee rated a 4.4 out of 5. The three general sessions highlighted marketing, designing an easy to use app for media centers, and technical issues related to cable television carriage. 

Steve Noll, an instructor at Madison College presented the keynote speech on Adapting and Marketing Your Brand to Multiple Social Media Platforms.  Steve explained that social media requires “getting into a conversation with your audience.”  He encouraged attendees to think about any brand as a “person first, product second.”  And he made four key points: 1) Your business needs to have a personality.  He urged the audience to spend time “creating a fictional persona” for their brand and to do the same for the audience they are trying to reach. 2) Remember that social media consumers invite your brand into their lives so try to answer this question, “Why would someone keep inviting you back to their party?” What do you have to offer?  3) The answer should be some version of, “I enjoy this brand.”  4) First impressions count. 

On Friday morning, Jeff Robbins, director of Sun Prairie Media Center along with his app developers from Croatia described the process of creating a custom app for smart phones that would make all of SPMC’s media – cable channels, OTT, LPFM radio, and VOD – easily accessible to their audience. 

The closing session featured Dr. Jonathan Kramer, Esq., a long-time expert on cable engineering and legal issues, and Matt Sluga, Video Network Manager for Tri-County Communications Cooperative in Strum, Wisconsin talking about technical issues related to cable carriage and focused on how well cable operators are positioned to offer HD PEG channels. 

The biggest change to the conference format was that instead of a choice of three preconference sessions, our seven exhibitors gave half-hour presentations on Thursday morning.  Overall, attendees rated the exhibitor presentations a 4.1.  The top three presentations were Municipal Captioning’s “The Cares Act and Your Channel,” which also featured John Kelly of Trempealeau County Community Television; Cablecast TV’s “One Button Publishing:  Workflows from Ingest to Distribution;” and CASTUS’s talk on its cloud services.  The other exhibitors taking part in the conference were Alpha Video, Leightronix, Comrex and Key Code.  One participant said, “I was apprehensive about the two day/all day format, but I found it worked really well.  The vendor presentations were also good.  I do not always attend the vendor seminars, but I got a lot out of these.  Thank you!”

Over the two days, twelve workshops were offered and attendees were able to attend six of them live.  All workshops were shortened to 40 minutes due to the webinar environment.  The average rating for the twelve workshops was 4.1 and the top-scoring workshop was Your Distribution Workflow: Livestreaming From the Studio and the Field and Inserting Recorded Content on Websites and Social Media Platforms with a rating of 4.71.  Two other workshops scored higher than a 4.3 --  Two Ideas for Fundraising and Revenue Generation” and “Your Distribution Flow:  Getting on OTT.

The Best of the Midwest Media Fest was held on Thursday evening with award winners accepting their awards live through the Zoom environment, and the audience watching a livestream of the event provided by Castus from their homes.  Alan Luckett hosted the live event and Deb Brunett announced the awards in a show produced by Nathan Meyer of Merrill Area Public Schools.  One viewer said, “The fest show went much better than I thought it would…I was very pleased.”  During the fest, WCM honored Plymouth Community Television and volunteers Wendy and Richard Baumann for their donation of WCM’s program sharing service, Mediafire.  Jim Walsh, former director of River Cities Community Access, was inducted into the Hall of Fame.  Overall, attendees rated the event a 4.2.

While the number of registrations was down from previous years, it’s very clear that those who did come -- the forty registrants, the ten or so company representatives, and our many experts, thought the conference was a great experience.  The conference rated a 4.35 in terms of value for price.  But there are more intangible benefits from attending WCM conferences.  One survey respondent remarked, “The other thing I got out of the conference was energy.  There is a certain enthusiasm (euphoria?) gained at these conferences.  I had to go into work at the end of the conference and I was talkative about it for hours later.  I have understanding coworkers!”

The conference was a long time in coming.  The conference planning committee composed of Ross Rowe from EGTV, Elk Grove Village; Jim Knightwright from CAN-TV Chicago; Andy Radig from Oshkosh Media; Lisa Wolf from Columbus Cable and chair Mary Cardona, WCM executive director, began planning an in-person conference for May last November.  When the pandemic necessitated a change in format and date, this committee worked to keep the programmatic content together. The conference committee composed of Deb Brunett, Merrill, chair; Alan Luckett, JATV Media Services Janesville, Boyce Johnson, City Channel Madison; Tom Loppnow, City Channel 25, Milwaukee; Scott Mealiff, WSCS Sheboygan; Nathan Meyer, Merrill Area Public Schools; and Jim Knightwright, ACM Midwest Chair, met frequently over many months first to plan then to adjust the plan and figure out how to do a webinar-based conference. Deb Brunett, who was the Zoom host, saved the conference on day two.  After the Internet went down in her neighborhood, she drove six miles to a friend’s house to continue hosting the Zoom event.  The fiasco only knocked the conference off schedule 20 minutes because of Deb’s decisive action. A big shout-out to Alan Luckett, who learned how to master the use of OBS to merge the Zoom environment with recorded material and integrate it into the CASTUS streaming environment to create the Fest event while at the same time appearing relaxed.  Jake Timm from Oshkosh Media and WCM’s board president, created a brief orientation video to explain to participants how to interact with Zoom from sign on to sign off, which provided to be extremely helpful as well as entertaining. 

If you missed the conference, you can still benefit from it.  All but one of the workshops were recorded.  Go to this page on the WCM website to see all of the workshop offerings. WCM will be making the recordings available on October 22, 2020. If you did not attend the conference live, there is a small fee to gain access to the recordings.

Wisconsin Community Media and the Midwest Region of the Alliance of Community Media are already starting to think about their next conference on Wednesday and Thursday May 19 and 20, 2021 fingers-crossed in Milwaukee!