Thursday morning did arrive faster than I believed in New York, however I was ready for it!  I was somehow able to get up way before 7:00 AM, around 6:30 AM, spent a good hour perfecting some details for this morning’s workshop, Moving Up, and was able to get out of the hostel, stop at Oren’s for the usual morning fix, and into Hamilton Room 517 with plenty of time to spare.  In today’s case, we were using the medium of     since we have already used Trello as a medium for presentation, then used Google docs as a tool, then moved onto today using a blog to further explain how various different tools can be used to get the information out and across to many!   I thought it was great to see familiar faces in the audience form previous workshops, and I realized, tomorrow’s workshop would have last year’s magian staffer, Nina here for our workshop – YEAH!   it had been a year since I had seen her!

The workshop breezed through without a hitch, and again, this time we had close to 55+ attendees, and tons of emails left behind for further info to be shared from the various presentations – so it seems by choosing the topic of PR this was a great choice for our magazine at this year’s workshops!

Looking for the next workshop and returning as an attendee, I spied Magazine Mania March 19 2015, Room 417 of the International Affairs Building.  Yep – across the street from the main campus and I was there!  Many cool tips of what to do start the year but also, the comparison between yearbooks and magazines helped put into perspective what we are trying to do as a magazine.  Having been a yearbook advisor, I realized always has helped to differentiate goals and attempts at what to do between two different publications.

Looking at the time leading to the 11:00, it was great to see this workshop, The Art Of Suggestion:  Visual and Literary Metaphors Working Together, which featured a student magazine, Agape, from Oyster Bay High School, and how they made decisions on the art that went into their magazine!  I think it is important that we go to as many other magazines that do workshops to get perspectives outside of ourselves, and this was truly the case and helpful.  One of the interactive workshops here (yes!) they handed out art and asked attendees to write about the picture using a choice of various forms, (Haiku or other forms) and then read aloud, having the audience decide which art piece it was about.  I was thinking this was a good exercise to do with the staff as well, in order to have the decisions be more constructive and a win win on both side, the art department gets to write their own pieces while judging a piece – I love this approach to maybe deciding on art going into the magazine!

At noon was one of my favorite parts of Columbia, the Adviser’s Luncheon.  Despite getting some great food as an advisor, the Dow Jones National Journalism Teacher of the Year is always recognized, and this year it was Chris Waugaman, whose topic was “Telling Great Stories.”  The notes from his questions, (March 19 12-00 Edmund Sullivan and Chris Dow Jones of the Year) answers, and insights do let you see how much journalism, the arts, expression, and working and encouraging students towards a common goal can cover so many areas needed for students to go on and face the world and the possibilities that exist behind the classroom.

Moving into the 1:30 – 2:15 time slot, I need a small break to take in all this information, collect my notes from sessions, and just organize my thoughts!  However, at the 2:30 time slot, I did want to see the CSPA Crown Award and Overview for Magazines and Yearbooks.  I had a hunch, since we had submitted spreads for this DVD, we would be in there.  I have to say, there is something exhilarating seeing our Repentino. put up on the big screen

in front of so many magazines, and yes, the thrill was there for me seeing them!  Seeing the trends of the magazines as well as the things we can improve upon as well as what others do, this is everything in learning what there are doing in publication!

After quite a complete day of workshops and information, wow.  We still had one big day tomorrow, the Awards Ceremony, a morning workshop where Nina from last year’s staff in Mexico would be coming in! – and a denouement to the week experience.  As I walked off campus I just wanted to walk and see some of the local places in and around Broadway.  Also, I happened to flip through my papers and in fact did see that Friday, at Barnes & Noble, no less that SCOTT WESTERFELD would be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble – (it still amazes me how often authors come to New York and it seems so natural to just appear at bookstores).  What was even great was Mr. Westerfeld would be coming to ASF on March 20th!  In doing so, I thought, I HAVE TO GO SEE HIM, coincidences abound!  I would not be disappointed, and either will you when you read what occurred.  🙂

I was able to spend a great rest of the day wrapping up items for the workshop tomorrow, titled, Powerful PR – and ate at a Great Diner known as the Metro Diner.  It was perfect for a getting colder evening, with the Matzoh Ball soup, hot chocolate, and the Hot Open Turkey Sandwich – whoa.  It was G R E A T.  As I was back at the hostel and knocked of another 150 pages of Afterworlds – I felt the pace, the amount of activity, the people, the overall connections that were being made – this was one heck of a New York experience!