Dan’s Session Notes
Leadership Session
Social Media Workshop
How to make writing interesting
Controversial sources
How to get people to work
Thinking of stories
Survival of the Fittest - Making deadlines and the overall staff more efficient
Editorials
Surveys
Before Seattle, I wasn’t very excited. I was intrigued by the idea of seeing a new city and people from all over the nation, but not by the conference itself. I honestly thought I knew all I needed to know about writing for a school newspaper. This trip, however, showed me that I was completely wrong.
On day 1, Tommy and I did a 3 hour session on leadership at the bright-and-early time of 9 am. I thought this would be just a standard powerpoint session that I would try not to fall asleep in, but it did not turn out that way. When we sat at our seats, the woman running the session shocked me. She told us to get up and talk to the person next to us for 1 minute. “Oh god,” I said in my head. “This conference is not going to be fun.” But although I had a painfully awkward conversation with a 30 year-old-man from Hawaii, it wasn’t that bad. It set me up to get outside of my comfort zone for the next 3 days.
Later that day, Tommy, Eric, Mike and I went to a long, four hour session on Social Media.The speaker was hilarious and had us do things like instagramming a photo and caption of a random person and create a Spotify playlist that described our school (ours was a weird mishmash of No Nay Never, Shipping up to Boston, and Chance the Rapper). I gained so many new ideas that I never would have thought of myself. Our social media definitely needs to get an upgrade, so I’m glad I could learn about it to use next year.
The next day, Friday, was a whirlwind of sessions. My hand hurt from all the notes I was taking. I was amazed at how great the speakers were and how many practical ideas they gave us. There was also a “Swap Shop” session where I got to talk to other publications and how they operate which was very helpful.
The next day, we had our Quiz bowl competition. Our squad did much better than expected, making it to the Final Four. Admittedly, I never actually answered a question correctly, but no one needs to know that.
Next was our presentation. I think doing more preparation beforehand would have been beneficial for me, but nonetheless it went well. The Space Needle was also another highlight of the day.
Overall, I learned a ton (which is recorded in my 4 pages worth of notes) that can be applied to next year. However, I also had a great time with all the guys. It was a trip I won’t soon forget.









