Board Blog: Planning the NSEMC – How you can help shape it

At most schools, this is a very busy time of year. The same is true for CBI. CBI is now accepting entries for the National Student Production Awards and entry is free with your membership. Non-members pay $65 per entry category. If you are not already a member, you can join now for only $125 per year. In addition to free entries in the awards, you receive discounts on services from Broadcasters General Store and Communication Technologies, networking opportunities, answers to your questions through phone interactions with board members, and discounted convention registration.

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Will Robedee, CBI Executive Director

Speaking of the convention, CBI is busy planning for the 2016 National Student Media Electronic Media Convention which will be in Philadelphia this year, October 20-22 at the Sonesta Hotel. CBI is also taking session proposals. Sessions are all member generated.

How can you contribute? Do you do something well? Perhaps a fundraiser, remote broadcasts, interviews, or teach leadership? Share your success, but be sure to try to find another outlet to do the presentation with you. Why? When you bring more points of view to the presentation, the presentation is almost always more interesting for those in attendance and often you learn in the process as well.

Do you have former students working in the market? Would they be willing to speak for 50 minutes to current students about what it takes to get a job or how to succeed in media? What about professional contacts in the market?

Students often comment about how much value they thought they received from roundtable sessions as most are led by peers. Roundtables have included News Radio and Podcasting, Coverage of DII and DII Sports, Concert Planning, Covering News in a Small Town, Team Building at Small Radio Stations, Promotion and Community Service, Radio Station Managers, Sports for Radio, The Benefits of Converging College Media Outlets, Radio Production, Program Directors, Sports Directors Roundtable, Music Directors Roundtable, Radio News Roundtable, Low-Power FM Roundtable, Promoting the TV Station Roundtable, TV Sports Directors and Managers from D-II and D-III Schools Roundtable, Town/Gown Radio and TV News Director Roundtable, TV/Video Advisers Roundtable, Promotions Roundtable and many more. They happen because you make them happen. CBI needs you to propose your idea. It could be one of the above or a new one.

Roundtables do not need to be moderated by experts on the topic. The job of the moderator is to get the conversation started and to keep the conversation on topic and prevent someone from monopolizing the roundtable.

It takes a lot of work to bring all of these sessions (over 100), to the convention and we do it every year with your help. We also receive more session proposals that we accept, so make sure your session proposal is compelling and will want to make people attend your session. In your session proposal be sure to tell the attendees what they will learn (takeaways).

Session proposals can come from students, advisers, faculty/staff, media professionals, etc. Remember your session proposal should include more than one school and be diverse in other ways as well if possible. Since most sessions are 50 minutes long, this can be difficult, because CBI limits most session to three people, but do your best to be inclusive. CBI does accept proposals for double sessions (one hour and 50 minutes) where it may make sense to have more than three speakers.

CBI wants to make this the best convention yet and maintain our extremely high session approval rating and you can make that happen, have something to add to your resume, and gain additional experience with public speaking.

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