My First time in California at the ACM Conference
- Daniel Ward
- Mar 12
- 4 min read
With less than 3 hours of sleep I rolled out of bed at 2:40 am to meet with my boss (Candice) and two other co-workers to drive to Fresno California. She had been asked to speak as one of the board members for the Alliance for Community Media conference. Since she was a panelist for the Internship and Apprenticeship workshop, she brought us with us so we could learn from the workshops and set an example of how professional we are while volunteering at the registration table. I spent a lot of time greeting important people while taking their meal tickets at all the plenary sessions. I even got to shake hands with the Mayor of Fresno!
Later in the day, I attended a workshop on maintaining quality news coverage on our channels and it reminded me that our station has what it takes to start covering the important things going on in our community back in Albuquerque. Maybe it’s time I breakout my old journalism textbooks and notes from UNM and truly commit to responsibly sharing informative content the way I was originally taught in college. But that’s not the only thing I took away from the conference. I left Fresno with a newfound inspiration to do whatever it takes for our studio to operate at the same level as these bigger budget public access studios. It may take awhile to find the funding, but everyone has to start somewhere and the opportunities are out there waiting to be found.
One of the coolest places we got to see was the Community Media Access Center (CMAC) in downtown Fresno. It really puts into perspective how much you can do with a bigger budget. Think Studio 519, but on steroids, complete with conference rooms that double as computer labs, personal editing rooms and offices, podcast studios and studio sets all equipped with the sexiest equipment imaginable for a film nerd like me. Their cameras in the main studio had teleprompters even! Not to mention the stairway painted completely green so they can use it as a green screen when needed.
The most exciting thing they had was a fully equipped production van that they can live edit from inside and store all the gear they need for field projects. Eventually, we would like to have something like that for our studio, but in the form of a production airstream. In the past we have borrowed one for a travel tv show we filmed called Date Night, and it got us thinking about all the ways it could help us on future projects, which would be REALLY COOL… except all of these things require the indefinite nuisance known as funding. Securing the budget for the things I’d like to do in this studio has always been the biggest roadblock we are constantly trying to navigate around. In order to maintain the standard of quality that I set for myself, it usually requires a decent amount of time, or money, or both. But we rarely have either of those and still have to complete one project before moving on to the next, whether or not I'm satisfied with the result. On that note, it is getting close to the allowable time I have to write this blog, so I will leave you with my final thoughts before moving on to the next task.
Despite all the wonderful things I learned and the incredible inspiration I left with from the conference, the most valuable thing I took away from this trip was the time I got to spend with my co-workers, Shiloh and Joey. Throughout the trip we had various moments to steal away for lunch or just to rest after completing our responsibilities for the day. In those moments we were free to express ourselves playfully and openly in the city of Fresno. While walking downtown we would roleplay and improvise scenarios as if we were characters in a video game. In the hot-tub at the hotel we would pretend to have silly little business meetings that led to world catastrophes which were eventually resolved. And even as we sat waiting for our food, we would turn into crime scene investigators or lawyers picking apart Joey's week to determine why he needs to go to jail for an imaginary crime that Shiloh accused him of. I think moments like these are the most valuable around the chaos of working for a film studio because it fosters the creative minds we so naturally divert to anyway. It builds up stronger relationships between our team and provides brief moments of relief from the rough and bumble of the “real world”. Maybe that’s why we work for a film studio in the first place, but no matter where you work, I encourage everyone to take the time to “play pretend” again like we used to as kids. I’m no scientist, (unless I'm pretending) but I can definitely feel the positive benefits of those moments and it made a long and busy work conference ten times more enjoyable to be there with coworkers that I'm happy to also call my friends.
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-Daniel Ward
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