Consumer Electronics Show

Well, I'm just back from the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The only gambling I did was my various choices of places to eat, mostly less than satisfactory. It was great having the chance to visit with former student Dan Landson, who is a producer for the CBS affiliate there, and it was again an enlightening experience to see all the developments going on in the industry.

Last year, on my flight home from CES, I sat on the plane beside a rep from Misubishi Electronics, who told me all about their big roll-out of the 'next best thing in home TVs--their new laser technology.' I saw none of those in the stores this year and no sign of them at CES (I could have easily just missed them--the exhibits cover an extraordinary amount of space in multiple locations). The big thing I noticed this year for flat screen TVs is Samsung's LED technology--that is super thin and uses less energy than LCDs. I wasn't impressed that the Samsung people were running around rudely stopping people like me from taking pictures of their items they were marketing. I take a camera and get pictures so I can remember some of the stuff--as do many people. So, I stepped outside their booth space, zoomed in, and got the pictures I wanted, as is perfectly legitimate to do. And I'll remember this when I buy another TV brand this year instead of a Samsung. Maybe next year they'll put up walls so no one can come in and see what they have.

AEJMC Winter Planning

Well, I'm a little late posting this, but I'll go ahead and do a summary of the Winter Planning Meeting for AEJMC that took place the first weekend of December in Louisville. I've done several of these now, and I really like this aspect of AEJMC. I was there this time as the Head of the Internships and Careers Interest Group (ICIG). This planning meeting takes place every year on the first weekend of December to plan the AEJMC Convention that will take place the following August--in this case, August 2009 in Boston.

ICIG did pretty well in scheduling sessions for Boston. As it stands right now, we have a pre-conference session on Tuesday, August 4 from 1-5 p.m. that will be led by ICIG member John Chapin from Penn State. It's scheduled to be a round-table discussion of best practices and challenges in integrating internship and career skills into the curriculum in Journalism and Mass Communication programs. Panelists represent internship coordinators, department heads and faculty in large and small communications programs, and it will be a good --and free to attend -- pre-conference workshop for any JMC educator. We have two panels on Wednesday, 8/5--one co-sponsored with the Small Programs Interest Group and the other with the Radio Television Journalism Division; Thursday we have a panel at 11:45 a.m. and our Scholar to Scholar slot is at 1:30 p.m.; Friday we have a panel at 1:45, our Peer Reviewed Research Session at 5:15 p.m., then our Business Meeting at 7:00 p.m.; then Saturday we have a session co-sponsored by the International Communication Division at 10:00 a.m.

The Winter Meeting is all about planning, and I once again thoroughly enjoyed seeing how well structured the upcoming AEJMC Convention will be. Find out more at www.aejmc.org.

Now, I'm about to head out to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Maybe I'll find some time to write about it this year; I attended CES for the first time last year and was overwhelmed, but never found the time to write about it.