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You know what happens nowadays when you get find yourself on a list you didn’t ask to join. You feel your blood pressure rise and you send a restrained yet cutting message to the list-admin person asking to be removed immediately. Last year, I started getting messages from a list called [WAM!]. What the F*&&*^%&*?? I seethed. Until I started reading the subject lines, and then the mails, and that was it, I was hooked. WAM! has become the one list that I now stop work to read when a new post comes in. And now Erika from the APC women’s programme and myself are off to our first ever WAM! conference. We’ll be blogging live (we hope!).
You know what happens nowadays when you get find yourself on a list you didn’t ask to join. You feel your blood pressure rise and you send a restrained yet cutting message to the list-admin person asking to be removed immediately. Last year, I started getting messages from a list called [WAM!]. What the F*&&*^%&*?? I seethed. Until I started reading the subject lines, and then the mails, and that was it, I was hooked. WAM! has become the one list that I now stop work to read when a new post comes in. And now Erika from the APC women’s programme and myself are off to our first ever WAM! conference. We’ll be blogging live (we hope!).
This is the third WAM! conference.
I’ve been part of the WAM! mailing list since early 2005 and have been impressed at the diversity and dynamism of the list members who tend to be journalists writing for progressive media (including mainstream) in the USA. Conversations on the list regularly form the basis of articles that appear all over the internet and in mainstream press.
For me, as the person leading APC’s communications team, the event is a chance to network with journalists who are likely to be open to our message. Erika and I plan to attend several practical workshops on communications which we can then feedback to the APC team, and exchange experiences with communications people from other progressive organisations. We’re also hoping to make contacts so that APC/APC WNSP has the chance to present at WAM! in 2007.
What kind of networking? With influential women journalists from progressive mainstream (New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, Salon) as well as alternative media, and also PR professionals who specialise in working with non-profits.
WAM! is also a chance to touch-base with other non-profit colleagues.
What kind of workshops? Tons such as:
>> Interviewing: An Essential Skill for Journalists Making the News:
>> Media Skills and Strategies The Art of the Press Release (Web)sites of Resistance: Why Our Blogs Matter
What do people say about previous WAM!s?
“WAM! was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in a long time… It brought together women who are political and progressive, and women who are working journalists. It engaged with the media instead of just sniping at it from the margins, taking the attitude that change can be made. It was especially useful for me as an editor who makes it a priority to cultivate women’s voices; I connected with people there whom I might not have otherwise.” -Betsy Reed, senior editor, The Nation
“The connections we made at WAM! weren’t limited to that weekend. Conversations that began during keynotes were fleshed out in break-out sessions, continued informally in small groups that talked well past midnight, and, most important, kept going on the listserv and in professional, academic, and personal projects and alliances, weeks and months later.” – Jennifer Pozner, founder/director, Women In Media & News (WIMN)
