CBAA Conference Summary, by Mark Rodriquez, President

We arrived on Thursday for the welcome BBQ, which was the beginning of some serious networking, where I personally spoke with the Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF) people about our chance to utilise a larger transmitter. We met people from a vast array of stations and office bearers from the CBAA. It was good to put faces to the names on websites and from emails. The food was excellent and as a vegetarian I was well catered for. In fact the food for the whole conference was abundant, varied and delicious. A big thank you to the organisers and caterers.

The Tour & Awards

On Friday night , the big event was a tour of CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) radio station and Imparja TV studios along with a BBQ (which was washed out) and a concert and certificate giving for cert 3 students from CAAMA.

Saturday night was the Gala Awards dinner. Once again the food and catering were excellent. The presentation of awards was staged throughout the dinner, with many comedic presentations. It was a light-hearted approach to what could have been a drag. We were highly commended for our “Tribute to Gary Neaves” entry in the Special Event Broadcast section. 3CR won this section with their live broadcast from Kevin Rudd’s National Apology. The other entrant in this category to be highly commended was 6DBY Larrkardi Radio for “Books in Homes” produced by none other than Miki Venn Brown (our ex vice president and station stalwart for many years). For the other results, click on this link to the CBAA site – http://www.cbaa.org.au/content.php/623.html.

Many Voices, Common Ground

The conference theme was “Many Voices, Common Ground” and workshops were structured around that theme. Mark Rodriquez, Sherry Corcoran, Harry M Miller and Sylvana Scannapiego attended. There was an extensive choice of sessions to attend, sometimes with difficult choices to be made as to which workshop NOT to attend, The sessions we covered between us were:

• Opening plenary session and panel;
• Greening your station ;
• War of the Worlds (Battling for the attention of young people) (audio to follow)
• Digital recording and editing;
• Money, that’s what I want;
• Meet ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) (audio to follow);
• DIY-FM: The new e-training toolbox;
• How to plant and grow ‘technologists’ at your station;
• High impact interviewing;
• Let’s review the grid (program review) (audio to follow);
• Online Innovations-station software for a changing media world;
• Surviving the small station;
• Get ‘em, keep ‘em (attracting and retaining volunteers) (audio to follow);
• Keeping the community at your station (further involving your local community);
• Beyond sponsorship;
• Triumphs, tribulations and the technical standing committee;
• Copyright;
• The closing plenary.

The CBAA site will also be putting up summaries of the sessions , so make sure to check it out.

New Codes of Practice

The ACMA session presented the revised Codes Of Practice. These have been under revision for the past year with input from stations. They have been put in to plainer English and provide examples of policies required. They can be downloaded from the CBAA website and there are a few copies available at the station.

The Responsibility of Community Media

The highlight of the conference for me was the opening plenary talk given by Geoff McMullen (ABC news journalist). He talked about the responsibility of media and community media, the power of those who direct the media, keeping Community Radio relevant and accessible, representing many voices with common ground for the common good and content vs entertainment.

Click “play” to listen to the whole speech. It’s an inspiring 15 minutes.

Download mp3 here

Mother Nature

We decided to stay on for a couple of days after the conference to see the sights and visit Uluru. Mother Nature had other plans for us. It rained so much that we were treated to a rare sight. The Todd River flowed, cutting our access to Uluru. We changed our car hire plans from a station wagon with swags (we were going to sleep under the stars) to a sedan and rebooked our rooms for our last 2 nights. From there we just poked around locally, as access to many places was restricted by the water on the roads.

Coming Home

We all made it safely back, having flown 4 times on Qantas, with no maintenance issues.

I fully recommend that more of us attend these conferences as they are so valuable from an information and networking perspective. Next year’s conference will be in Brisbane, making it ideal for us to send a representative contingent.

Mark Rodriquez. President

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