The Fall 2022 Media Fest in Washington, D.C. featured two speakers leading creativity sessions among other notable highlights during the Oct. 27-30 convention.
Kevin Fullerton began the “Supercharge Your Creativity” session on the 29th by announcing that creativity is sparked by “creativity juices” in the form of candy and promptly started passing around a bag of candy. Students, advisors, professors and professionals grinned while taking the candy they wanted and continued listening to Fullerton’s introduction.
He continued the presentation with Co-speaker Linda Puntney, providing the audience with practical ways to increase the power of creativity in the workplace. One method he mentioned was walking away from new ideas after producing them the first time.
“It’s not good to judge the ideas at the time you came up with them, because you won’t recognize the best ideas and you’ll have emotional attachment to some of the ideas,” Puntney explained.
Fullerton is the principal and creative director at Springboard Creative, and Puntney is a retired assistant professor from Kansas State University. They went on to conduct the “Launching Your Creative Career” session, also on the 29th.
During this second session, Puntney and Fullerton emphasized the importance of attending networking events ready with professional materials for media creatives who want to win job interviews. Their prime examples were the Media Fest rooms reserved for exhibitors, where many media and journalism organizations set up their tables to network with other attendees.
These back-to-back sessions were conducted in a reserved conference room at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, where multiple other sessions were being held each day in different rooms. Scheduled sessions occurred in 50-minute timeframes starting at 9 a.m., continuing each day into the mid-afternoon and the last morning.
Before, during and after these daily sessions, some rooms were reserved by different organizations and groups to hold ongoing networking sessions, critiques, exhibits, meetings and meals. Some receptions and award ceremonies were held in other Washington locations, and a keynote event was held at 11 a.m. each day.
The Society of Professional Journalists hosted a lively opening night reception on a ferry boat cruising the Potomac River, and also hosted the SPJ Student Summit Awards Program at The National Press Club.
One keynote featured an exciting interview with famed investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, conducted by Claire Regan on the 28th. Woodward and Bernstein stayed after the event to sign autographs and give quotes to reporters. Regan went on to become the new president of SPJ the next evening at the SPJ President’s Awards Banquet.
The Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Association and SPJ were hosts of the convention and main contributors to the daily sessions and other events. Next year, Media Fest will be held in Las Vegas.
