We just wanted to say thank you very much to all who attended and participated in NASH 74. Despite its unfortunate ending, the conference was a huge success by all accounts. We appreciate your patience and support during the troubling times of Saturday night onwards. We are now upwards of 160 sick of the 360 delegates who attended. Hopefully you are all feeling better by now. Feel free to drop us a line anytime and let us know how you are doing.

We will also be sending out a NASH 74 survey soon for you to fill out.

Once again, thank you for attending NASH 74.

Jason Schreurs and Kristi Sipes, national conference co-coordinator

Oh, the wonders of Mail Chimp! All NASH74 delegates should now have a PDF link to the full Archipelago program and schedule in their email boxes.

If you did not get one, please email kristi@cup.ca immediately and it shall be corrected.

For any questions about the schedule, speakers, etc., feel free to hit me up (jason@cup.ca), and any questions about rooming, travel, logistics, etc, hit up Kristi (kristi@cup.ca), but please understand if you don’t get an immediate response from us. It’s gonna get realer than real between now and January 11, when we shall see all of your smiling, inquisitive faces in (hopefully sunny) Victoria, BC!

More blog posts coming soon….

Jason Schreurs, conference co-coordinator

Thursday, January 12

2-3 pm

James Bay Room, 2^nd floor

99% preparation, 1% pushing a button – Ryan Jackson

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and you make your own luck. Those are words that Ryan Jackson lives by. In this session Ryan will spill the beans on how he has captured and created dozens of award-winning images and videos over the years. You will leave the session inspired to find the stories and people around you that can help you build a stronger portfolio.

Bio: Ryan Jackson has worked at the Edmonton Sun, Canadian Press, the Ottawa Citizen and the Star Phoenix. Since 2007, he has been a staff multimedia photojournalist at the Edmonton Journal. He also teaches documentary photojournalism at MacEwan University in Edmonton. In his work, Ryan has made a 360-degree video of the world’s largest dodgeball game, shot a Gigapan photo of the 2010 Grey Cup game in Edmonton, and a Google-street-view-like camera rig to film the wildfire devastation in Slave Lake, Alberta. Last summer, Ryan was invited to Egypt to teach multimedia and for the past two months he has been on the road as director and videographer of the official music video for the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championship theme song, by Paul Brandt. He’s won many national and international pictures and video of the year awards.

Friday, January 13

3:15-4:15 pm

Saanich Room, 2^nd floor

Eating your words – Don Genova

BC-based veteran food journalist Don Genova will lead a fast-paced hour in which you will learn the ins and outs of being a food writer, including all the perks, and all the occupational hazards. Your descriptive skills will also be put to work as Don will hand out mystery ingredients to teams of writers. You’ll have to fully describe the food item without actually naming it. Are your taste buds up to the test?

Bio: Don Genova is a British Columbia-based award-winning freelance journalist, specializing in food and travel. He also teaches cooking classes, and courses in food and travel writing and sustainable gastronomy. Don is best known for his CBC Radio columns Pacific Palate, which ran on the Vancouver morning show, and Food for Thought, which aired on CBC radio stations across Canada and celebrated all aspects of food in Canada and around the world. His new column with CBC Victoria is called Food Matters, and delves into the world of sustainable eating in British Columbia.

Thursday, January 12

3:15-4:15 pm

East Harbour Ballroom, Salon B

Follow the money: how to read financial statements like a journalist – Kelly Toughill

This interactive workshop is a quick and dirty guide to finding news stories in the annual financial statements of publicly traded companies. Figure out if the company is profitable. Calculate ratios. Follow the money. The workshop is designed for reporters covering politics, sports, fashion, education and almost any beat other than business. It is not designed for those who are already familiar with the purpose and form of the balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement.

Bio: Kelly Toughill is director of the School of Journalism at the University of King’s College. Toughill spent 20 years as a writer and editor at the Toronto Star, where she was deputy executive editor until 2006. Toughill is the recipient of a National Newspaper Award for feature writing. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from San Francisco State University and an MBA from Queen’s University. She recently launched two new graduate degrees at King’s: the MJ in Investigative Reporting and the MJ in New Ventures. She writes about the business of journalism for several publications.

Friday, January 13

11:15 am-12:15 pm

East Harbour Ballroom, Salon A

Sports action – Cleve Dheensaw and Travis Paterson

Join a daily sports writer and a weekly sports writer as they discuss the challenges of both. How do you get the good sports stories on a daily deadline, and how do you find space for good sports stories when your paper comes out less frequently? Cleve and Travis will fill you in, plus provide some helpful tips on sports writing in general.

Bio: Cleve Dheensaw has been a sports writer for Times Colonist since 1981. A native of Victoria, he is a graduate of Victoria High School and the University of Victoria. In nearly three decades of writing about island athletes, Dheensaw has covered the 1996 Atlanta and 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 1998 Kuala Lumpur and 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. His range of stories – whether about Island World Cup soccer and Super Bowl winners to Silken Laumann, Steve Nash, Simon Whitfield, the Gait twins and the ECHL Salmon Kings – capture an era in Island sport. He is also the author of five about the Summer Olympics, Commonwealth Games, BC lacrosse and the history of sport on Vancouver Island.

Bio: Travis Paterson is a big fan of CUP and is excited to return for the first time in six years, this time as a presenter. Since 2008 he’s been the regional sports reporter for the Greater Victoria newspapers of the Black Press (Victoria News, Oak Bay News and Saanich News, Goldstream Gazette). His passion for Victoria’s rich sports history is strong; he even took up rugby as a 32-year-old rookie just to get a better understanding of the rules. He never did. Prior to joining the Vic News, Travis interned at Toro and The Hockey News magazines in Toronto and wrote for Douglas College’s The Other Press.

Thursday, January 12

11:15 am-12:15 pm

Saanich Room, 2^nd floor

PANEL: Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup – Gareth Gaudin, Ken Steacy, Joan Steacy

Comic artists are special, funny, and often wonderfully odd people. They make us laugh and they bring levity and an artistic flair to newspapers and magazines. In fact, some editors (and we’re sure most comic artists) would argue that comics are one of the most important parts of any publication. Join three established comic artists in an informal group discussion about how to make your comics the best they can be. (A second, hour-long session takes places immediately following this one, from 12:15-1:15 pm, featuring one-on-one comic critiques, so feel free to bring samples of your work).

Bio: Gareth Gaudin is a Victoria-based cartoonist, comic book shop co-owner and life-long comic art aficionado who committed himself to the project of drawing a page a day for the rest of his life of his on-going, serialized surreal autobiography. Eight years so far without missing a day.

Bio: Ken Steacy decided at age 11 to become a professional comic book writer/artist, a dream he realized in 1974. Since then, he has worked in the industry as author, artist, art director, editor, and publisher, chronicling the exploits of Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and the Star Wars gang, to name but a few. In addition to creating his own intellectual property, he has also collaborated with other writers, including Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, and Douglas Coupland. The recipient of an Eisner and an Inkpot award, Ken was inducted into the Joe Shuster Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, a lifetime achievement award honouring Canadian comic book creators for their contributions to the industry.

Bio: Joan Thornborrow Steacy grew up in southern Ontario, and is a graduate of Sheridan College, The Ontario College of Art & Design, and the University of Victoria. She is a visual artist who has worked in a variety of disciplines, including sculpture, traditional illustration, and digital imaging. She is the author/illustrator of So, That’s That!, a biography of her father, and Aurora Borealice, the first in a series of autobio/graphic novels, which had its debut at the Toronto Comic Art Festival in 2011. She has taught visual art in Victoria and Toronto, and is currently working on her second graphic novel.

Thursday, January 12

11:15 am-12:15 pm

East Harbour Ballroom, Salon A

Making Internets for fun and profit: Why you should become a digital journalist – Lucas Timmons

Lucas Timmons will show you how to find a great, high paying and fun job at a daily paper just by learning how to “make Internets.” This session will be part inspiration and part discussion about how you can get started, where to find jobs and what skills you will need to learn.

Bio: Lucas Timmons is a data journalist with the Edmonton Journal. He was named as one of three inaugural MJ Bear fellows by the Online News Association as one of the world’s top digital journalists under 30. Before Edmonton, he worked for the Ottawa Citizen and CBC Ottawa. In CUP, he was the editor-in-chief of the Athenaeum at Acadia University and the first ever Cupcast coordinator.

Thursday, January 12

3:15-4:15 pm

Saanich Room, 2^nd floor

Message et média – Annye Castonguay

De plus en plus, les limites du personnel et du public s’estompent. Toutefois, le/ la journaliste se doit de maintenir des standards d’écriture, d’information, et de perspective vis-à-vis du sujet ainsi que vis-à-vis du destinataire. Le/la journaliste se doit de choisir le media le plus propice à la communication de son message, puis le style et le ton. Les médias électroniques encouragent certaines mauvaises habitudes, l’une d’elle étant d’écrire comme on parle. Nous nous pencherons sur la spécificité du message, la subtilité du message et la façon de créer le maximum d’impact tout en adaptant le message au média qui le distribue.

Bio: Annye Castonguay est instructrice au département de français à l’université de Victoria où elle enseigne la langue et l’écriture. Elle s’adonne également au journalisme, à la réalisation et à la photographie. Dans la salle de classe, Annye utilise beaucoup la technologie comme véhicule d’écriture. Elle choisit l’approche journalistique lorsqu’elle enseigne l’écriture car écrire pour un public force les étudiants à préciser leur pensée, à diriger leur message vers un public ainsi qu’à faire des choix linguistiques, stylistiques et médiatiques qui visent à communiquer le message de la meilleure façon possible.

Friday, January 13

11:15 am-12:15 pm

East Harbour Ballroom, Salon B

Sustainable journalism: media models for a post-growth economy – Kai Nagata

Your friend’s know-it-all dad is right. You’re crazy to want to be a journalist these days. But while mainstream outlets are cutting staff and squeezing the survivors, a few smart rats are jumping ship, and figuring out new ways to swim. Bring your ideas for making journalism nimble and resilient, so we can keep telling stories that matter, forever.

Bio: Kai Nagata is based in Vancouver, where he writes for the Tyee and dreams up experimental media models. He’s one of the creators of Renaissance Man, an episodic online documentary about a blind lute player learning to jump a motorcycle. Until July 2011, Kai was CTV’s Quebec City Bureau Chief, reporting mostly on politics. He detailed his reasons for resigning in a controversial blog post. Before that he was CBC’s videojournalist in Montreal, where he also worked as a radio reporter. A former video instructor at the Pacific Cinémathèque, Kai is a graduate of UBC English and Concordia Journalism.