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The entire female conservative
population at JWU |
Ahh, finally time to sit down and blog after CPAC. I spent this past week in DC with 4 other lovely JWU conservatives volunteering at the 38th Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Rae and I had such an incredible experience last year volunteering, we brought 3 more with us this year: Alison, Katy, and Dara. It is always such a great learning experience for everyone to go but it is even more special to us because of all of our backgrounds in the event and hospitality industry. It is a perfect merge between the two things we are passionate about. Although I am leaning further away from event management and closer to advertising and media, this was also an incredible experience for me as well. There is the RNC and DNC conferences and then there is CPAC. It is the 3rd most news covered political conference in the nation. This year I had the opportunity to assist the Director of Communications at CPAC, Ian Walters. There was an expected 11,000 people attending this conference and over 400 different media outlets registered to cover the conference.
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| w/ Griff Jenkins from FOX News |
My experiences as the media assistant was different from my experience as a volunteer last year. While I technically had more responsibility this year, I spent a significantly less amount of time in the ballroom listening to speakers and more time out and about helping Ian put out fires here and there. I didn't get to meet as many speakers this year but I did get to interact with the press more and meet reporters from major news networks like FOX, CNN, The Washington Post, and the list goes on and on. I spent some time backstage with the production team as well as time down in Radio Row confirming interviews with different politicians and radio shows. During my down time I got to sit at media registration and chat with people in the public affairs and public relations profession. I discovered that there is a small niche of people who are interested in media strategy and politics. I shook lots of hands and collected business cards. I also learned more about how CPAC is run, and got to see a whole different behind the scenes of the conference.
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| The whole CPAC Crew |
It saddens me every time I have to leave DC. I am confident that I will end up there at some point in my life, hopefully sooner than later!
Until next time...
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