Our state affiliates in the Northeast were each offered one scholarship to our recent regional conference in Falmouth, Massachusetts. One of the requirements for the scholarship is an essay. Sandra Austin Goldstein was the scholarship recipient from Connecticut ACM; the following is just one paragraph from her letter to that board:
I found it difficult to choose which seminars I wanted to attend in the conference, because there were so many different and exciting offerings to select from. I tried to choose the ones that would be most valuable to learn about, that would bring benefit to our station. I think I was most inspired from the Youth Media in the 21st Century: Building a Successful Youth Media Program and Creating a Public Narrative through Storytelling seminars. While it was impressive to see what could be done on a large budget with paid staff, it was also valuable to be exposed to the concepts which could be scaled down to work in our station. They opened my eyes to the possibilities and to new ideas and ways of thinking.
Sandra was one of three attendees from Newington Community Television, located near West Hartford and Farmington, off I-84. NCTV is completely volunteer-staffed and runs two channels for its town of 31,000 people (estimated, of course). You can read more excerpts on the CTacm website and her full letter here → Goldstein-ltr
Funds are only part of what make it possible to attend conferences. Consider your schedule in 2018 and whether you can make time to attend the next national ACM conference in Baltimore, July 11-13. If you can’t do that, consider the regional Northeast conference, coming to Schenectady in the second week of October, ahead of the anticipated crush of mid-term elections. If you are open to one of those dates and need some financial aid, ACM-NE and the state chapters can probably help you. Don’t wait until the last minute!