About the pre-conference conversation process:
As part of conference preparation, we’ve paired participants to start the conversation. The idea is to be in touch with one other person, learn about their expertise, mission and intentions, and then write about it. This gives everyone a head start on the idea-generating process — and a reason to meet someone new.
Documenting & Posting Notes of your call
Summarize your conversation using these questions, or whatever questions seem appropriate to you:
1. What meaning did you take from the conversation?
2. Share a standout story or quote for each of you.
3. What surprised, challenged, inspired, and/or delighted you about the conversation?
What’s the point?
The purpose of the conversation is threefold:
- To arrive having established a new relationship;
- To begin to grasp both diverse and common perspectives; and
- To orient yourself to the meeting’s themes using an activity fundamental to journalism: storytelling.
How conversation partner assignments were made
There’s always a certain amount of randomness taking a group this size and pairing people. Here are some of the overall considerations we used:
- We pair people from different disciplines and perspectives to stimulate an interesting exchange
- We look for synergies based on responses to the registration questions
- We avoid pairing individuals who might already be in the same professional orbit
Suggested Questions
Our main suggestion: to talk about who they are, what they’re doing, and what they hope to get out of the conference. The questions below are stimulus for the conversation.
1. Tell me about your work and how it led to saying “yes” to attending this event?
2. What outcomes would you like for yourself and your organization/work from this event?
3. Tell me about an experience you’ve had in which engaging a diverse mix of perspectives made a positive difference in a story that mattered.
- a. What did the experience teach you about what it takes to involve diverse voices?
- b. What difference did doing so make?
- c. What do you believe is essential to the relationship between journalism and the public for meeting the news and information needs of all communities?
4. Without being humble, what do you value most about yourself? What do you see yourself bringing to this conference?
5. The year is 2016 and a vibrant media landscape exists that engages all people and communities. What’s happening? What steps did we take at this event and immediately thereafter to bring this about?
