2026 Community Media Convening

October 27 - 29, 2026
Grand Rapids, MI

Hosted by the Grand Rapids Community Media Center

Registration is now open: Register Here

Schedule Overview
October 27: Evening Welcome Reception
October 28: Morning pre-conference activities, Lunch & Membership Meeting, Workshops, Philo Festival for Media Arts
October 29: Morning workshops, Plenary & Lunch

2025 Fall Conference Schedule (subject to change)    
Time Title Location  
 
       
Tuesday, October 27
5:00 PM Welcome Reception GRCMC, Bridge Street  
       
Wednesday, October 28
9:30 AM Pre-Conference Session    
  The Revenue Mix: Grants, Sponsorships & Underwriting for PEG Centers    
12:00 PM Welcome/Lunch/Membership Meeting Wealthy Theatre  
1:30 PM Breakout Sessions & Tech on the Floor    
  Building Discovery Engines: CMS and Community Archive Tools for your website    
  Local News Models That Scale: Lessons from The Rapidian, Documenters & WKTV    
2:30 PM Networking Break    
2:45 PM Breakout Sessions & Tech on the Floor    
  From Tape to Terabytes: A Practical Model for Video Archiving    
  From Studio to Street: Community Organizing as a Media Growth Strategy    
3:45 PM Network Break    
4:00 PM Breakout Sessions & Tech on the Floor    
  Beyond Cable: Designing Your Center's Next Distribution Frontier    
  Opening the Doors: Recruiting the Next Generation of Studio Talent    
5:00 PM Break    
6:00 PM Philo Festival Reception & Tech on the Floor    
7:00 PM Philo Media Festival Awards    
Thursday, October 29
9:30 AM Networking    
10:00 AM Breakout Sessions & Tech on the Floor    
  Accessible by Design: WCAG/ADA as a Growth Strategy    
  State by State: Building Your Legislative Playbook    
11:00 AM Neworking Break    
11:15 AM Breakout Sessions & Tech on the Floor    
  Doing More with Less: Small-Budget Production That Punches Above Its Weight    
  Telling the Impact Story: Communicating Value Beyond "So What?"    
12:15 PM Lunch & Plenary    
  Everyone's a Journalist: Community Media's Role in the Local News Ecosystem    
1:30 PM Event concludes  


Workshops Overview (subject to change)

Everyone's a Journalist: Community Media's Role in the Local News Ecosystem As local newsrooms across the country continue to shrink, community media centers have quietly become something bigger than a public access mandate ever anticipated: essential journalism infrastructure. This closing plenary makes the case for that role directly. As we mark 50 years of community media nationally, this session looks forward, not back — exploring how centers can formally embrace and expand their role in local news, train everyday community members to report credibly, and build the trust that traditional outlets are losing. Attendees will leave with a shared framing to carry home: community media isn't a backup plan for local news, it's a growth engine for it. This session sends the conference off with a challenge — and an invitation — for what the next chapter of the field can look like.
The Revenue Mix: Grants, Sponsorships & Underwriting for PEG Centers Sustainability is the question every PEG center is asking, and there's no single answer — which is exactly why this session runs long. This extended pre-workshop walks through the full revenue toolkit available to community media centers: grant writing and program development, building a sponsorship program from the ground up, and radio/broadcast underwriting strategy. Rather than treating these as separate silos, the session frames them as a portfolio — what to try first depending on your center's size and capacity, the pros and cons of each revenue stream, and honest talk about what hasn't worked. Attendees will leave with a practical first-steps framework they can take directly into their next budget cycle or board meeting.
Building Discovery Engines: CMS and Community Archive Tools for your website An inside look at the custom Content Management System built in-house by the Web Services Team at the Grand Rapids Community Media Center — designed for flexible metadata, public discoverability, and long-term platform stability. This session focuses on the tool itself: how it was built, what it makes possible for public access and discovery, and what other centers can learn from a system shaped by the real demands of local media centers, community journalism, and historical archives.
From Tape to Terabytes: A Practical Model for Video Archiving Following the rollout of the GRTV Media Preservation Suite, this session shares a replicable, tested model for offering video archiving and preservation as a community service — from procuring equipment to building sustainable workflows. This is a hands-on companion to Session 1, focused specifically on video preservation practice rather than the web platform: why centers should offer this service, what it takes to stand it up, and how to make the model work in communities of any size.
Local News Models That Scale: Lessons from The Rapidian, Documenters & WKTV This session walks through The Rapidian's community correspondent model, the Documenters Network's civic-meeting coverage approach, and WKTV's local news program — giving attendees concrete, adaptable models rather than a single prescriptive template.
Beyond Cable: Designing Your Center's Next Distribution Frontier Cable is one channel among many now. This session looks at streaming, podcasting, social platforms, and emerging distribution tools as an expanding toolkit rather than a response to cable's decline. Conference vendors will join to demo relevant distribution and streaming tools live, giving attendees a chance to see options in action alongside the strategic conversation.
From Studio to Street: Community Organizing as a Media Growth Strategy Community organizing tactics — relationship-building, door-knocking, coalition work — have a lot to teach media centers about building audience and participation. This session explores how organizing principles can be applied directly to studio engagement, content development, and community buy-in, positioning organizing as a growth strategy rather than just outreach.
Accessible by Design: WCAG/ADA as a Growth Strategy Accessibility compliance is often framed as a legal checkbox. This session reframes it as an audience-growth strategy — covering practical WCAG and ADA implementation across websites, captioning, and physical studio space. Vendors will be on hand to demo accessibility tools and services relevant to PEG centers.
Opening the Doors: Recruiting the Next Generation of Studio Talent Volunteers are the lifeblood of most community media centers, but recruitment can't be an afterthought. This session covers building a recruitment pipeline, onboarding design, and retention strategies that keep volunteers engaged long-term — treating volunteer development as ongoing pipeline-building rather than reactive backfilling.
Doing More with Less: Small-Budget Production That Punches Above Its Weight Budget constraints don't have to limit creative ambition. This session shares practical techniques, gear recommendations, and workflow shortcuts for producing high-quality content on a small-center budget — reframing limited resources as a creative constraint that sharpens the work rather than a barrier to it.
State by State: Building Your Legislative Playbook PEG legislation varies widely by state, and centers rarely get visibility into what's working elsewhere. This session surveys state-specific legislative landscapes and emerging legislative strategies from around the country, giving attendees a playbook of possible routes for their own state advocacy efforts.
Telling the Impact Story: Communicating Value Beyond "So What?" Impact reporting often stops at output metrics — number of volunteers trained, hours of programming aired — without connecting to why any of it matters. This session works through frameworks for communicating real community impact to donors, boards, and funders in language that moves past the numbers and answers the "so what?" directly.
   
Tech on the Floor: Hands-On with Tomorrow's Production Tools Equipment demos, vendor tech, hands-on stations