The annual Be the Media! Mini-Conference helps participants understand the link between strategic communications and organizing strategies as well as learn essential communications tools and techniques.
Date: Thursday, December 2
Time: 9am – 5:30pm (lunch provided)
Location: Third Sector New England’s NonProfit Center, 89 South Street in Boston (close to South Station, click here for directions.)
Cost: $15 - $35 sliding scale, includes lunch
The theme of the fifth annual Be the Media! Mini-Conference is: Be the Media 5: Envisioning Social Change Communication for 2015
Register to secure a place and choose your workshop options. Following our opening panel we will have two sessions of workshops including:
Morning Workshops
Workshop 1: Strategic Communications For Social Change
Workshop 2: Guerilla Marketing
Workshop 3: Adapting Strategies in a Rapidly Changing World
Afternoon Workshops
Workshop 4: Think Before You Speak! Learning Effective Message Development for Your Organization
Workshop 5: Using the Arts for Creative Messaging
Workshop 6: Going Viral
On-line registration is now closed. To check if any slots remain for walk in registration, call Carolyn at 413-426-2893
The conference is designed to serve change makers at levels of communication experience including those who are doing communications work as part of their current positions, such as organizers, executive directors, or policy advocates.
Sponsored by: Progressive Communicators Network and Third Sector New England
Co-sponsored by: Amplify Me, Resist, and Press Pass TV.
OPENING PANEL
Making the Invisible Visible by 2015
Social justice advocates and communicators, working on critical issues affecting marginalized communities, often face the daunting task of getting community perspectives and voices into the mainstream.
As we envision social change communication into the future...
- What strategies do we have to help ensure these voices and perspectives are heard?
- What lessons have we learned from our current changing media environment?
- What will be the role of traditional media?
- How can we support the communications capacities of these communities?
- How do we challenge systemic disparities, including the existing media power structure?
Invited panelists will lead a moderated discussion on ideas and strategies addressing the challenging question of “making the invisible visible”.
Confirmed Panelists:
Kenneth Bailey, Principal, Design Studio for Social Intervention
Paige Carruthers, Teen Voices
Karen Jeffreys, Associate Director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless.
Member, "Da Force" aka Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Task Force on Racial Disparities
Monique Nguyen, Marta Hari
Moderated by: Amaad Rivera
MORNING WORKSHOPS
11:15am to 1pm
Workshop 1: Strategic Communications For Social Change
Communications 101 Track –
Combines well with Workshop 4
Communications is a crucial, but often overlooked component of our social justice work! While we are aware that the use of communications and public education tools are integral to raising public awareness and changing attitudes, we have not institutionalized within our organizations the ability to do effective communications and media advocacy.
This interactive, hands-on workshop will be an opportunity for participants to learn the key building blocks needed to plan for and implement strategic communications and media plans in their organizations.
Participants will learn how approaching media advocacy as a system and not as a quick fix for special events or crisis response can help organizations work collaboratively to implement communications plans, develop proactive media messages, and strategize more effectively in getting the message out about our issues.
Presented by: Karen Jeffreys
Workshop 2: Guerilla Marketing
Creative Approaches to Media Track –
Combines well with Workshop 5
Facing today’s tight budgets and the need to be everywhere, what’s a guerilla marketer to do? With the marriage of traditional media and social media, we are all guerilla marketers. We’ll examine effective guerilla marketing strategies, tactics and case studies in today’s exploding information age.
Presented by: Kelley Chunn
Workshop 3: Adapting Strategies in a Rapidly Changing World
Social Media Track –
Combines well with Workshop 6
With technology and access to information evolving and expanding at a breathtaking speed, how can small organizations – already stretched thin and running to keep up–be heard amongst the flood?
This workshop will help you work out a plan for regular assessment of your organization’s communications strategies so that you can be ready to adapt to the next big thing. Work out the questions your organization needs to ask itself over the next five years to navigate the shifting landscape and focus on the most effective tools and outlets for your audience given your time and resources.
Presented by: Dorie Clark
AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS
2:45pm to 4:30pm
Workshop 4: Think Before You Speak! Learning Effective Message Development for Your Organization
Communications 101 Track –
Combines well with Workshop 1
This interactive, hands-on workshop will be an opportunity for participants to learn how to get their messages across effectively to the media and to their desired audiences. This workshop will help participants create messages that work, understand sound bites, tell a good story and prepare successfully through the use of the tool of the media caucus.
Presented by: Karen Jeffreys
Workshop 5: Using the Arts for Creative Messaging
Creative Approaches to Media Track -
Combines well with Workshop 2
A panel of artists will share their unique experiences with producing innovative material that addresses issues affecting our communities and offers a social change perspective. Their affordable and creative mediums will suggest new ideas for amplifying social justice issues and messages to integrate into your organization’s communications and marketing strategies.
Presented by: Cara Lisa Berg Powers, Press Pass TV; Wesley Richardson, amplifyme; Denise "Farai" Williams, Actor/Educator.
Workshop 6: Going Viral
Social Media Track –
Combines well with Workshop 3
Strong communications relies on integrating traditional forms of marketing and PR with the new forms of social media. This workshop will explain how the web has expanded our marketing and PR toolbox, and how you can create an action plan for harnessing the power of these new tools. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Blogs, Flickr... social media seems to be popping up everywhere! But the key is to make sure that you are using social media tools in an effective and strategic way, in an effort to accomplish you communications goals and objectives.
The training will give a brief overview of the various social media tools: what they look like, how to use them, and how you can be strategic about the process. In addition this session will delve deeper into the best practices of building your network, engaging your audience, and tracking your success, ultimately taking your social media efforts to the next level.
Presented by: Nicole Lagace and Jennifer Leigh
On-line registration is now closed. To check if any slots remain for walk in registration, call Carolyn at 413-426-2893
PRESENTER BIOS
Kenneth Bailey, Principal, Design Studio for Social Intervention. Kenneth started his activism in the early eighties as a teenager, working in his neighborhood for tenants’ rights and decent housing, targeting the St. Louis Housing Authority. He went on to work for COOL, a national campus-based student organizing program, and then moved to Boston where he worked for the Ten Point Coalition, Interaction Institute for Social Change, and Third Sector New England, as well as being on the Board for Resource Generation. Most recently he has been a trainer and a consultant, primarily on issues of organizational development and community building. He first realized the need for a more “designerly” approach to community work while developing parts of the Boston Community Building Curriculum for The Boston Foundation. This workshop asked community activists and residents to think about creative ways to work with their community assets – existing social relationships, individual’s gifts and skills, and untapped local resources. Many community residents remained locked in conventional nonprofit approaches to working with community assets. They weren’t obliged to, they just knew no other way. He realized then that activists needed new tools to redesign approaches for community change, which led him to build a design studio for social
Paige Carruthers is a Teen Editor at Teen Voices, a non-profit organization dedicated to changing the world for girls through media. With a strong interest in writing, Paige was selected as a Teen Editor in Teen Voices’ journalism/mentoring program in 2007. Since then, Paige has had several articles published in our print and online magazine and was even elected as the Chair of the Teen Editorial Board. Her published features include “How Christians are Negatively Portrayed in the Media” and “Dealing With Addiction”. She is currently working on a feature on bullying. Paige is currently a senior at Boston Latin School where is most interested in English and writing. Paige plans to attend a women’s college and major in writing or journalism.
Dorie Clark, CEO of Clark Strategic Communications, is a marketing and strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, the National Park Service and the Ford Foundation.
Clark, who served as the New Hampshire communications director for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, is a former New England Press Association award-winning journalist, and has taught government and communications at Emerson College, Tufts University and Suffolk University.
Kelley Chunn has 25 years of communications experience locally, nationally and abroad. In Boston, one of the top ten media markets in the United States, she has worked as a TV news and public affairs writer/producer at all three-television network affiliates (WCVB, WHDH and WBZ). She wrote and produced newscasts, "liveshots" and special programming including a year long public service campaign called "Here's To Your Health" for WHDH-TV. She has served in the public sector as a communications specialist for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency (MHFA). There she worked as MHFA spokesperson, conducted community outreach, marketed affordable housing programs, planned special events and produced agency publications and videos.
Da Force" aka Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Task Force on Racial Disparities. The Task Force is a group of community stakeholders who have come together to demand unprecedented transparency and accountability from the juvenile justice system whose policies and practices have devastating outcomes for youth in our state, particularly youth of color. We are organizing for fair treatment of all youth and less reliance on detention in our state. With training and support from Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY), our group has been meeting regularly since 2008. Our group is comprised of members of Citizens for Juvenile Justice, City School, Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Project Hip Hop, and Reflect and Strengthen, and we welcome more partners.
Karen Jeffreys is Associate Director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless. She joined the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH) in October of 2007. Prior to joining RICH, Ms. Jeffreys worked at the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence (RICADV) as the Director of Communications, where, for ten years, she directed an integrated, innovative model of strategic communications. Under her direction, RICADV was successful in changing public attitudes, developing successful public awareness campaigns, using communications to change public policy and changing how the media covers the issue of domestic violence in the state of Rhode Island.
Ms. Jeffreys has been actively involved in fighting for social and economic justice for over twenty-five years. Through her hands-on experience with community organizations working on such issues as hunger, homelessness and housing, health care, welfare rights and domestic violence, she has developed expertise in organizing, public policy and public relations work.
Nicole Lagace is the Communications Director of HousingWorks RI. Nicole has over 15 years of experience in the private and non-profit. Prior to her current position at HousingWorks RI, Nicole was the Director of Public Relations for the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence where she worked to raise awareness about domestic and teen dating violence. She moved to Rhode Island in 2003 after working as a web producer and graphic designer for DotClick Corporation, a technology startup based in Boston. Nicole also worked for Co-Nect, Inc., a startup focused on improving performance in Title I-funded schools through project-based learning and web-based professional development.
Nicole graduated from St. Michael's College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism. In her spare time, she serves as a communications chair and bass instructor for Girls Rock! Rhode Island, a volunteer-run organization that works to empower girls and women through rock and roll.
Jennifer Leigh is the Communications Director of The Poverty Institute. She is responsible for press relations and communications strategy. Most recently, Jennifer was a marketing consultant for several nonprofits throughout the region, including affordable housing, healthcare and homeless advocacy organizations. Prior to her consulting work, she was part of the team at The Link Agency, a full service integrated marketing firm in Providence, Rhode Island. Her marketing and communications experience ranges from strategic planning and public relations to broadcast production and consumer research. Jennifer received her undergraduate degree in Communications from Muhlenberg College.
Monique Nguyen is part of MataHari (eyeoftheday.org), Media Justice Working Group and Resist the Raids! Network.
Cara Lisa Berg Powers is Co-Director of Press Pass TV, an organization that works with middle, high school, and college aged youth to create powerful solution oriented videos to build strong communities. In addition to her work at Press Pass TV, Cara is currently a candidate for her Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Change and the author of By Any Media Necessary. She has presented workshops at several conferences, and guest lectured at Simmons College, Worcester State University, MIT, UMASS Boston, and Amherst College, as well as running trainings for non-profit leaders such as Facing History and Ourselves and Oxfam. Currently, Cara resides in her hometown of Worcester, MA with her husband and their two cats, Dora and Presley, where she is a Commissioner on the Human Rights Commission.
Amaad Rivera is the lead author of "State of the Dream 2009: The Silent Depression" and "State of the Dream 2008: Foreclosed". He served as Director of the Racial Wealth Divide Initiative for United for a Fair Economy where his articles and publications have been featured in major media outlets such as the Washington Post, Black Agenda Report, Huffington Post, National Public Radio, Democracy Now, Too Much, BET.com, numerous local radio stations, CSPAN and Boston Neighborhood Network News. From founding the KidsVote Initiative in Holyoke, MA to to running as the first openly gay City Councilor in Springfield, Ma, Amaad has been deeply involved in the community. Amaad served as AmeriCorps Program Officer for the Massachusetts Service Alliance, co-managing a portfolio of organizations dedicated to addressing issues of poverty, health care disparities, environmental disasters, education inequity, civic engagement, volunteerism and youth development. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Policy at Brandeis University.
Denise "Farai" Williams is an Actor/Educator. Farai is a native Bostonian and a "creative activist," she is thrilled to lend her talents and passion for young people to her work. Having studied at Moscow Theatre Art School and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University where she received her MFA, Denise left for NYC where she made her Broadway debut in "The Lion King." She also has several regional and international credits to date. Since her return to Boston she has focused her energy towards teaching and sharing her wealth of training and experience to create positive change in her community and beyond. Focused on utilizing the arts for social and political change, Denise launched her own project this past summer, "The Testimony Project", which utilizes the techniques of Augusto Boals', Theatre of the Oppressed to create interactive theatre games, exercises and presentations.
On-line registration is now closed. To check if any slots remain for walk in registration, call Carolyn at 413-426-2893
If you need further information, send an e-mail to Tom Louie at t.louie@progressivecommunicators.net or call 857-540-1316.
