So we never got to eat Mickey Mouse Pancakes. But that’s not to say our trip to Orlando wasn’t a success. In fact, I’m quite pleased with everything our group ate (especially Colin’s Birthday Flan). And even more important than the food, we learned a great amount that we’ve already started applying at our news organization (note: not newspaper).

As I talked about here, the awards we walk or don’t walk away with from the convention is probably the least important part of the trip. I already know that my friends at The Pendulum are doing phenomenal work, and we’ll continue to grow, adapt and change. As the semester winds down, we’re still in the office every day preparing some awesome things for our readers:

We’re getting ready to start our four-issue-long social media campaign this week and I’m excited to increase engagement on these new platforms. We’re going to be hiring for the 2012 year in the next couple of weeks and our new Editor-in-Chief will be announced today. There are changes abound at The Pendulum, and I’m glad I can be in the middle of them all.

One last thing I’m certain of: Next year’s ACP convention is in Chicago and I know, whether I’m in attendance or not, if deep dish pizza is not eaten I will be greatly disappointed.

-Jeff Stern

So with a full week now to think about my experience in Orlando, I’ve got a few observations.

1. I really enjoyed hanging out with the other Pendulum staff members that went to Orlando with us. I got to hang out outside of the hotel with all of them and built relationships that will hopefully last for a long time.
2. I came back with a list of ways to improve the sports section. More multimedia, better filler content, better stories, better everything.
3. I learned how my faith can shape my professional attitude and how much it can influence me.

I literally have one month left as a staff member of The Pendulum. For the three seniors who attended the convention this year, coming back has been crazy. We just attended our last convention, but more importantly we have limited time to implement what we learned into the organization. In the last two weeks we have sat down and implemented a social media policy, started a social media campaign and already started rethinking how to work the magazine insert of The Pendulum, Elon Edge.

Orlando was amazing. Yes, it is a magical place. Yes, it was nice to go to city walk and downtown disney, but most importantly it was great to get to reflect on how far the three of us have come as people and in the organization. It also was really important for me to see the younger representatives and see how excited they were for the future. Everyone brought home so many great ideas for the paper, for research papers and for their futures. It was sad realizing that I was never going to go on another Pendulum trip again, and in one month I will no longer be attending production on Mondays and budget on Wednesdays, but seeing how eager the six sophomores and juniors were on the trip made me realize how important these conventions are and how deserving the future staff is.

I cannot really say much about my future. I have no idea where I will be in 6 months. Hopefully the magazine sessions I attended will lead me to New York City and the glossy pages of a magazine. If not, at least I know that six months from now The Pendulum will still be strong. And in one month the new staff will be starting on an amazing journey. They will make their best friends. They will feel more at home in their office then in their home. And not too long from now they will be wondering what they are going to do without budget and production. For me Orlando was really about passing on the torch.

-Rebecca Smith

Now that I’m home, though, I can see exactly what I took from it, which was a lot.

Most of my sessions were about social media, and I was able to bring a lot of good ideas back to The Pendulum. We’ve already begun introducing a lot of them, with the creation of a social media policy and the plans for a social media campaign. It’s exciting to see ideas turn into reality, and I’m interested to see how all of this takes off. I know I only have a few more weeks on staff, but it will be cool to see how the knowledge we’ve gained from this conference and have already begun implementing will evolve into another part of who The Pendulum is becoming.

- Sam Calvert

I attended some great sessions while in Orlando. I attended a few sessions that get the wheels in my head turning when I think about what I can contribute to The Pendulum over the next year. But overall, I felt like so many of the topics being covered and advice being given to the student journalists in attendance at the conference were things we have ingrained in us from being at Elon. Advice about using social media, trying certain writing techniques, impressing a potential employer with your interview and resume and being relentless when trying to get important information from university administration are all important parts of being  a successful journalism major. But I felt like Elon has prepared us well by teaching us many of these things already – things that some students in the session seemed to be ingesting as new information. So though we have a lot (really, a lot) of growing to do and some of the sessions I attended pointed out some of those problem areas and how we could grow and improve them, I did get the sense that we are being taught a lot of the right things back at little ol’ Elon. And that gives me confidence about my future in the industry and makes me want to help push The Pendulum to have even more of a distinguished name among college newspapers.

-Natalie Allison

I hadn’t had a lot of time to actually reflect on what I gained from Orlando, and then the other day I caught myself brainstorming a staff member at a magazine I could send a letter and kick off the “informational interview” process, a job search technique I learned in a session. That’s when you know a conference, or any learning experience has been a success, I think. You don’t have to dig down to process or evaluate. The new information is just there, along with all the old stuff, mashing together to increase your intelligence or abilities. So, apparently, I got some learnin’ in Orlando, and that’s always good to know.

The other thing I wanted to mention in this final reflection is that this fall, I’ve had the chance to head to two separate conventions, one that was student-based and geared for undergrads (this one), and Excellence in Journalism, a joint SPJ/RTDNA venture geared towards professionals, with some student attendance. It was very interesting to see the differences between the two, and the similarities. What conclusions can I make? Well several….

• Social media is a hot topic for everyone, young and more experienced. Everyone wants to talk about and everyone’s got new ways to use it
• Students are very concerned about fighting for jobs, while professionals are less panicky about it. But no matter what, everyone wants to stand out
• Professional standards are apparently implemented in people’s brains at graduation. Suits were the standard uniform at the professional level, and at the student level, I saw everything from suits and heels to gym shorts and ratty flip-flops. I’m not sure if it’s a generational thing or not; maybe I’m just an old soul, but I come from the “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” frame of mind.
• EVERYONE is concerned with protecting that most sacred of journalistic principles: the First Amendment. And there are a zillion ways it can come under attack and we all must rally to preserve it.

So, in closing, we were all merry in Orlando, although it’s always nice to be “home” at Elon. Thanks for reading…

-Rachel Southmayd

After experiencing ACP/CMA in Louisville last year, I arrived in Orlando confident in what the schedule for the conference would look like – I had scoped out what sessions to attend, prepared my resume to hand out and had my notebook ready to be filled with pages of notes and insight from speakers at the conference. And the conference did not disappoint. While there were certainly dud sessions, the overall feeling I had when I left Orlando was inspiration. The Pendulum is an award-winning student newspaper, but that does not mean we don’t have areas in which we can improve. It was thrilling to learn advice in sessions, talk to other student journalists and even gain tips from looking at other publications. There are so many things we could be doing better or even just start doing that I am so excited to share with the rest of the staff and them implement  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — journalism is not dying. If the energy and passion from the students and professionals at the conference is any evidence, the industry has a long and glorious life ahead of it.

-Caitlin O’Donnell

Attending ACP/CMA was a chance for me to not only learn as an individual journalist, but to learn on behalf of The Pendulum. Although my tenure as features editor is coming to a close soon, I learned many valuable lessons about feature writing and what it takes to be a good editor, lessons I will apply to the rest of the semester and that I will pass along to my successor. Attending this conference along with other members of The Pendulum was also a great experience, to simply be around them during the conference and casually after a day had concluded.

Although I was hoping for more networking opportunities at ACP/CMA, I had a great experience and I hope to attend future conferences, as a journalist student and as a professional.

-Ashley Fahey

So I went around looking for a session and found one called “What to Do When Things Go Wrong.” It was about covering traumatic events like deaths of students and car accidents and stuff. I was kinda scared silly. I’m a simple sports writer. Writing about stuff like that is not up my alley.

But in case I ever have to, I learned some good things:

• Be calm and avoid arguments. You need to remove the emotion of it and simply report without getting yourself in trouble.
• Try not to ask permission for anything. Avoid closed questions in a situation like this.
• Put on a professional mask. Have your emotional moments afterwards.
• Covering traumatic events is a chance for your staff to be together. Whoever sees it reports on it. That’s a situation I may face.

There were some great things said about social media, mostly by Sam and Jeff. The Daily Tar Heel person brought up a few good points, such as:

• Schedule Tweets. As the guy who is kind of in charge of the @pendulumsports Twitter account, I’m not good at scheduling things. I’m going to work on that.
• Doing a “Best of the Tweets” section for events. I would like that.
• Using Facebook. A lot of the Daily Tar Heel’s traffic comes through Facebook. I know we at The Pendulum use Facebook, but being more interactive and more open to student feedback through it.

Sam and Jeff kicked butt. Legitimately. They talked about @pendulumlive and sharing from the Facebook page and doing little things to get visibility and integrating newspaper stories with multimedia content.

They’re awesome.

Plus, at the end of the session, Jeff gave people his Twitter handle (@jeff_stern). Win.

- Zachary Horner