I sensed the difference as soon as I walked into the room.  It was dark.  Everyone was seated at computers, staring intently at the screens.  The vibe was different than I had seen before.  These people were on a mission.  And the passivity I had seen before in gatherings like this in years past was gone from the room.  Replacing it was an active, involved spirit at a level seldom seen at a professional convention.

Yep, the scene I’m describing was at the RTNDA@NAB 09 convention just wrapped up last week in Las Vegas. The attendees were part of a day-long boot camp conducted by Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute. Thanks to the help of the people at the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Al, along with Lynn French, Regina McCombs, and Les Rose, ran convention-goers through full days of shooting, writing, and editing stories as video journalists.  The boot camp “recruits” were working professionals—not students—each looking to gain some new skills in an area into which they see our business heading.  And they were not alone.

The halls of the Las Vegas Hilton were filled—well, half-filled—with people looking for some specific skill set with which they could make themselves more valuable to current and potential employers (more on just how filled the halls were later).  Or they were those employers themselves, trying to figure out a way to get caught up on changing tech trends that never seem to take a day off.  Either way, the convention has this vibe of active participation this year, rather than the passive, sitting around a room listening feeling so many conventions have.

I’m happy that was the sense we all got there this year because that’s the way, frankly, that I planned it.  Over the last year as RTNDA Chairman-elect, my main job had been to plan and execute this convention.  I knew going into the job that I wanted to change it up and make it something no one had ever attended before.  So the RTNDA staff, the convention planning committee, and I all worked to add content we had never programmed before.  We had the boot camp running three days with three separate groups of recruits.  We made “Twitter” and “tweeting” the most common words heard around the convention.  We sat people down at our computers and took them through the values—and liabilities—of making social media part of their media outlet’s product.  And we brought in the top people at the cutting edge of mixing old media with new—people like Amy Webb of Webbmedia and the instructors from the BBC College of Journalism—to make the convention all about new skills and new directions.

Now, let’s talk about those numbers.  The official RTNDA attendee count topped 550 people.  Add in those who registered for NAB or BEA badges and we were certainly over 600—probably more like 700.  Those official numbers are off 20-25 percent from last year.  But that didn’t come as a surprise.  The economy has taken its toll on TV and radio station budgets, and we knew travel budgets were being cut left and right.  Many of our regular attendees were telling us there was no budget to come this year.  So my expectations were actually lower than that 550 number we achieved in person in Vegas.  Knowing the numbers would be lower, we faced the dilemma of programming what all of us felt was a forward-looking and important convention, but facing the fact that a smaller than usual group of attendees would actually see it in person.  Working from the assumption our physical attendance would be down, we decided to up our virtual attendance, giving members and non-members alike their first chance to get full convention coverage in real time.  RTNDA board member Lane Beauchamp was our managing editor, marshalling an army of volunteers to write stories, live blog, tweet, FlipCam, and do everything else they could to share what was happening in Las Vegas with any of you sitting in Los Angeles, Long Island, or Little Rock.  And if you didn’t watch the convention roll out on the RTNDA.org site live, you can still look at it now to catch up on what you missed in person.  With no hard numbers on web visits as I write this, I’m still sure the traffic to our web site took our physical and virtual attendance total up far above our total annual convention exposure for the last five years or more.

Now, while this convention was about looking forward, we did so in more than just the professional skill sets of our attendees.  Members at this convention (and voting online) approved a change in our bylaws to give educator members working with student media outlets full voting privileges and rights.  That means educators—some of whom are our most active and involved members—can now vote in RTNDA elections and assist in the governance of the association, including serving on the board as at-large directors.  We think this change helps underscore the important role we know these educators play in supporting RTNDA and helping prepare new employees for our members all over the country.   I’m now working with the staff to see if we can develop some membership incentives for our educator members to see if we can get even more of them to take full advantage of their new membership status.

With the help of educators and all of our other members and friends, we have already begun the process of planning RTNDA@NAB for 2010.  New chairman-elect Mark Kraham of WHAG-TV in Hagerstown, Maryland will chair the convention, which will once again be held in Las Vegas from April 10-14 next year.  Mark and I know we’ll focus on the hands-on aspect of training and development next year, while trying to work more with our NAB partners to bring in the biggest names and tackle the biggest issues in our industry.  If you could not make this year’s convention in person, I hope you’ll be able to make plans to make the trip next year to get more of the innovation and training we had this year—and more.  And if tight travel times still keep you from attending next year, you can be sure the coverage of the convention on RTNDA.org will expand even more in 2010.

Also in the works for the future are more partnerships to help bring RTNDA’s training and professional development resources closer to you.  You may have seen an announcement last week from SPJ announcing its plans to work with us on a joint conference in the fall of 2011.  RTNDA staff members and I will soon be working with our counterparts at SPJ to find this new opportunity to reach members in the fall, building on the national gathering we already offer each spring in Las Vegas.  The leaders of RTNDA and SPJ intend to try to bring more partners into this enterprise, working to build nothing less than the largest gathering of journalists in the country.  Many details are yet to be worked out, but my talks with SPJ president Dave Aeikens have both of us excited about bringing together journalists from so many different disciplines to share ideas and work through more rewarding training efforts.  

These plans are just part of what will be a spring and summer of change for RTNDA.  One of those first changes is in our name itself.  As first released in March, the Radio-Television News Directors Association is becoming the Radio-Television-Digital News Association, or RTDNA.  That little letter swap stresses the importance of our on-line presence, the strengthening of our efforts—at the convention and around the country—to train the industry on important digital media trends, the awarding of Murrow awards for on-line content and innovation, and partnerships with SPJ and other journalism groups show the time is far past when this association was just about radio and TV managers.  We haven’t been that in a very long time and our name needs to reflect that fact.  After the “soft launch” of the name in March, look for a “grand opening” of the new moniker some time later this year.  Look as well for the all-online Communicator magazine, the changeover in RTNDA leadership as Barbara Cochran retires in June, and a renewed effort to show our relevance to members and the entire journalism industry.

Look, too, for these blog entries to continue.  I promise they won’t deal just with the business of running RTNDA (or RTDNA).  Those topics are important and I’ll address those as the need arises.  But I also want to use this space on the RTNDA.org site to highlight issues in our industry we should all be thinking about.  Some of my blogs will be interviews with key newsroom leaders and innovators, some will be heads-ups about important happenings you might have missed, and some may just be my opinion on what’s going on around me.  In any case, I’ll do my best to keep them interesting and to get you talking—like I hope this maiden voyage has done.