Thursday, March 12, 2020

STATUS OF 2020 PUBIC MEDIA CONFERENCES


Because of rapidly changing developments with the COVID-19 pandemic, Spark News will continue to monitor the status of several national conferences. We will update this information whenever changes are announced. Here is the status of conferences as of 3pm ET on Thursday, March 12:

• ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC RADIO ENGINEERS (APRE)  
CANCELED
Check here for more information

The April 2020 NAB conference and BEA annual meeting have also been canceled.

• 2020 NON-COMMvention

May 12-15 in Philadelpha
CONFERENCE IS STILL ON
Check here for more information

• PUBLIC MEDIA BUSINESS ASSOCIATION (PMBA)
May 26-29 in National Harbor, Maryland
CONFERENCE IS STILL ON
Check here for more information

• PUBLIC MEDIA JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION (PMJA)
June 25-27 in Seattle
CONFERENCE IS STILL ON
Check here for more information

Statement from PMJA Executive Director Terry Gildea (3.12.20):
  
We are exploring our options and you will hear soon if there are plans to postpone or cancel our 2020 conference. In the event we do cancel our conference, we will issue full refunds to those who have registered and offer refunds to our sponsors as well. 

If your employer or station licensing organization has banned or restricted non-essential travel for the immediate future,  If the answer is please email Terry Gildea at Terry@PMJA.org.
 
• CONCLAVE LEARNING CONFERENCE
July 16-17 in Minneapolis
CONFERENCE IS STILL ON
Check here for more information

• PUBLIC MEDIA DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING CONFERENCE (PMDMC)
July 21-24 in Atlanta
CONFERENCE IS STILL ON
Check here for more information

• PRPD CONTENT CONFERENCE
September 14-17 in New Orleans
CONFERENCE IS STILL ON
Check here for more information


2 comments:

  1. A small but important distinction: as of 4:30pm on 3/12/2020, neither the NAB conference nor the PREC conference are just "cancelled". They are "cancelled for April" (PREC is following NAB's lead, as they essentially have to).

    What, exactly, that means is vague. At a minimum, the conferences won't be happening in April. In theory, they could happen in May. Or June. Or whenever. Or not at all. Realistically I don't see how NAB will merely "postpone" to a later date - there's too many people, too much logistics in play. But so long as the NAB merely says it's "cancelled for April" instead of flat-out "cancelled", then they can play legal games about whether or not they have to issue refunds to everyone, especially the vendors who pay princely sums to lease floorspace in the LVCC.

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