Community

areas: society: sig

Director of Conference Programming

Related ARContent: AMA Conferences

William Diamond (2006-2008)

Conference Programming Position Description

This Director will be responsible for arranging special sessions including MAS SIG-sponsored sessions, business meetings, and social functions at the Winter AMA, Summer AMA, and the Marketing & Public Policy Conferences. In addition this position will require interfacing with the AMA conference co-chairs and MAS SIG coordinators for these conferences. This also includes communicating with Lynn Brown (lbrown@ama.org) at AMA to coordinate the above special sessions and other conference programming. It also involves coordinating receptions and business meetings at the AMA and MPPC conferences.

The Conference Programming director, in collaboration with the MAS SIG board will recommend two to three special sessions to the president of the Academic Council, who will make decisions on all SIG special sessions. Other sessions related to Marketing and Society can be directed to the conference co-chairs. Submitting more than this was deemed counterproductive by the president of the academic council. Additional proposals can be forwarded to the SIG Special Sessions chair. These are some of the criteria used for evaluating these proposals may include the following:

• Leading edge contributions to the field of marketing
• Contribution to academic professional development
• Multiple interest group appeal/broad based support (anticipated numbers of participants)
• Practitioner involvement/sponsorship
• Consistent with that Summer/Winter Educators’ Conference theme
• In the event the proposal states a SIG affiliation evidence of SIG(s) endorsement
• Budget that is fully articulated and within reasonable limits of typical AMA events of similar structure. For budgets that require additional subsidy, a proposed fee structure for attendees must be provided.
• Offering at least one special session during the regular schedule of the Summer/Winter conference building on the theme of the pre conference event.

Proposals are to be no longer than 5 pages in length, double-spaced in 12 point font including references, tables and figures. In order for proposals to get early feedback from the SIG board members (with the possibility of revision), proposals should be submitted to the SIG board about 10 days earlier than the conference deadlines, which occur in early January for the Summer Conference and early July for the Winter Conference..

It is recommended that recruitment of special sessions begin early in the academic semester preceding the conference deadlines. Because there is some attrition in the number of special sessions submitted, the Programming Director should initially try to recruit five or six sessions for each conference. Some ideas for potential special session topics includes the following:

• Panel of scholars that were involved in the pre-conference workshop or Risk Workshop held prior to MPPC.
• Panel based on special issues in JPPM.
• Special session topics that were “hot issues” at MPPC can be turned into multiple special session ideas.
• Some examples of past special session topics for Winter and Summer AMA conferences include:
  • De-Marketing Obesity: Win-win Strategies for Industry and Consumers
  • Marketing’s Contributions to Dealing with Disasters
  • The "Lurking Marketer": Ethical, Policy, and Theoretical Issues
  • Surrounding Covert Marketing Activities
  • Consumer Vulnerability as a Socially Constructed Phenomenon

The special session topics should reflect the breadth of research interests in our field as much as possible. Putting together a set of MAS SIG Special Sessions for the AMA conferences does not guarantee that they will all be included in the program.

Communicate with the MAS SIG (Chair-elect, Chair, or Past-chair) to make sure members of the Executive Board or of the MAS SIG Board are present at each of the AMA conferences including MAS SIG receptions and business meetings. This includes coordinating with the Vice Chair of Communications to have any flyers related to future special sessions, programming, etc. available at these meetings and receptions.

Communicating with the Vice Chair of Communications to ensure that these special sessions are included in MAS SIG’s newsletters and broadcast emails are also critical to maximizing attendance at these events. Provide all information to VC Chair of Communication concerning the timing, etc. of the business meetings and receptions so that a flyer and other communication can be coordinated prior to the respective conferences. All postings of announcements, etc. should be sent the MAS SIG’s webmaster for the massig.org website. It is the responsibility of the Director of Conference Programming to ensure that these announcements are made in a timely manner coordinating a communication strategy with both the Vice Chair of Communication and the webmaster.