Thank you!

If we haven’t said it enough, thanks for doing this. Below are your session details...

Floor maps

Your session can be found on the master schedule, which we’ll post in late August. All sessions happen in the convention center downstairs from the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Washington…

Times

Each session begins on the hour and ends 50 minutes later… 

• Transition: Those 10 minutes between sessions allow the previous speaker to pack up and you to set up. Please be mindful of your time and courteous to the next speaker.
• Arrival: Early is good. You can pick up your name badge at the Registration Desk in the Exhibit Hall in the Constitution Ballroom.
• Afterward: Students will often ask you questions when you’re done. There are empty tables on each floor expressly for this purpose. So feel free to tell those students, “Let me make way for the next speaker, and we can meet at the tables outside.”

Room AV

Each room has a screen and projector with an HDMI hookup. And that’s all…

• No laptops are provided. Please bring your own. As you can imagine, when we provided laptops, that created more problems than they solved.
• Neither are audio speakers. The hotel charges us $100 for tinny 10-year-old desktop speakers. Even the smallest bluetooth speaker sounds better. So please bring your own.
• Bring your dongle, too. If your computer requires a device like this to hook up to an HDMI cable, please don’t forget it. We have a couple of spares, but they go fast because dongles are the Devil’s work.
• There are few microphones. Only the four largest meeting rooms will have microphones. The other rooms seat 40-80 and have good acoustics. We’ve hosted MediaFest three years ago in this same hotel, and even the closest talkers have been heard in the back.
• There’s wifi, but only sorta. While we’ll have wifi on our floors, it’s always slow with hundreds college students on their phones. So we urge you to screenshot any web pages you need for your presentation. Otherwise, half your 50 minutes could be waiting for URLs to load.

Convention app

A few weeks before the convention, we’ll load the master schedule into MediaFest’s mobile app. We’ll notify you so you can set up your speaker profile. You can add a photo, bio, and social links.

Diversity, inclusion, accessibility

Please review CMA’s Diversity & Inclusion Code before presenting.

If you’re new at presenting or haven’t done so in a while, there’s a renewed emphasis on ensuring slide decks are accessible. If you use PowerPoint, Microsoft has both good advice and an Accessibility Tracker.

If you use Keynote, Apple sadly doesn’t offer something similar. But Canva does: Using Design Accessibility.

There’s equally good advice from a company called accessiBe, whose leadership is “an amazing group of individuals from different parts of the disability community.” Check out Slide into Inclusion with Accessible Presentation Decks.

If you have any questions or need any help, just email us at the address below.

Questions?

Contact us. Oh, and did we say thanks for doing this?