The Lewis B. O’Donnell Media Summit is a highly anticipated event for Oswego State’s School of Communications, Media and the Arts each fall.
The 12th installment will return to Waterman Theatre in Tyler Hall after a two-year renovation of the building. The Summit will make its way back to the campus’ arts building as the event team takes a crack at better including each branch in the SCMA.
Organizers decided to focus on strengthening the tie between the media summit and students and faculty in Tyler Hall by trying to find a topic where the collective arts and media intersect. They found these disciplines overlap constantly due to technology.
“You’d be hard pressed to find a television broadcast or television program that didn’t utilize graphic artists,” said Michael Riecke, faculty director of the Media Summit. “Obviously theater comes into the television world, performance comes into the television world, that’s an easy one.”
The title for this year’s summit is “Digital, Social, Mobile: How Media Trends Impact Music and Art.” The panel will feature three alumni, George Gianopoulos ‘07, Michael Yoon ‘00 and Diana Priesler ‘96, now working in the industries of music, visual arts and performing arts, respectively, as well as Oswego State theater department visiting assistant professor Mya Brown. The only headlining guest not within the arts is moderator Sean McAllister, a 2001 graduate of Oswego State’s journalism program.
“Students were starting to say, ‘Hey, we’re not all interested in the same particular area of the media, let’s branch it out a little bit,’” Riecke said. “That was already kind of under development when I came in and right after I started [teaching] dean Pretzat took over and she was very interested in making the media summit extend beyond just the communication studies department.”
One of the most impactful changes is the promotion of mobile devices and social media to enhance the Media Summit, set in motion by SCMA Dean Julie Pretzat. Beginning on Thursday and running through Oct. 28, students will be able to submit questions to the event’s page on Twitter using the tag #OzMediaSummit. Riecke and the executive board encourage students to post their reactions during the discussion, but they do not want the audience neglecting the program itself as a result.
“We wanted to keep it minimal during the event, just because we want people’s focus on the event,” said sophomore Boni Quatroche, co-event director of the Media Summit. “Including the e-board too, we don’t want to make them miss out worrying about what [people] are posting.”
They will not be without social media perks though, according senior Kalie Hudson, the other co-event director.
There will be a social media coordinator live-tweeting the conversation and a Snapchat filter for the event, Hudson said.
This ties directly into Brown’s mentality. Brown sees social media as an asset for the performing arts, Riecke said. During her shows, she would often encourage the audience to respond to cast members’ performances on social media, providing a unique level of interaction.
Priesler is also a professional within the performing arts, serving as a member of the a cappella group Blue Jupiter, but this is far from the only thing she is involved with. She also plays host to Lifetime’s “Pitch Slapped” and co-produces the international music charity, SingSong.
Gianopoulos, the youngest panelist, is currently based out of Los Angeles as the composer-in-residence for the Symbiosis Ensemble, as well as the concert series “Music @ MiMoDa.”
Yoon, the former marketing and communications coordinator for Campus Life at Oswego State, is the communications manager for university services at Princeton University and serves as a design consultant for several departments at Princeton.
McAllister, the lone graduate from the communication making his way to Nevada, McAllister spent time as the producer for Rochester’s CBS affiliate.
The e-board actively looked for candidates with an “Oswego connection,” Hudson said. That, coupled with a new direction toward using the full scope of SCMA, make for one of the most professionally diverse panels to grace the Media Summit.
