ROOM: GRAND E

Communicating the Joy of the Gospel

ROOM: GRAND H

Session-Communication

Strategic Planning for Communications

The communications department has a major role in setting the strategic plan and holding the entire organization accountable for that plan.  Do you know what the difference between strategic objectives versus operational objectives? What is the forgotten part of executing a strategic plan? How does your department’s strategic plan align with the master plan?  Is it the right plan? Is our only concern digital communication?  Communication is always listed as one of the top issues in any organization which means that you have the opportunity to be one of the top reasons for the success of the organization.

ROOM: GRAND A

Session-Parish/School

Are Your Communications Integrated? – Creating a Mix of Owned, Earned and Paid Strategies for Maximum Reach

Websites, bulletins, Facebook, Twitter, direct mail, radio spots, digital advertising, media relations, direct mail…oh, my! Communicating throughout your diocese, parish or school is more challenging than ever, especially given how diverse and varied preferences are among target audiences. With limited resources, professional communicators need to use an integrated approach of owned, earned and paid strategies to get the most out of every opportunity. In this session, we will provide the information you need to understand your balance of owned, earned and paid media and the tools to create a roadmap that integrates your efforts and maximizes your reach.

Emily Hartzog is Vice President with Chartwell Agency, an integrated marketing communications firm in Rockford, IL. She has more than 18 years of experience in sales, marketing and public relations as well as a strong background in strategic planning, training, and crisis communications. In her position at Chartwell Agency, Emily leads the training and strategic planning service line while enjoying her roots in marketing with a variety of branding, websites and marketing campaign projects for clients.  Emily was named to Rockford’s inaugural class of Rockford’s 40 Leaders Under 40 and serves on multiple community boards. She also is an owner, instructor and a performer with the Aloha Hula Girls Polynesian Dance Group.

Chartwell Agency (www.chartwell-agency.com) is an integrated communications agency with a breadth and depth of experience across five lines of business including strategic facilitation and training, marketing, public relations, social media and events. Its customized services ensure that its clients’ programs are implemented in a professional and timely manner and that their messages are proactively and effectively communicated. Chartwell Agency has earned the Rockford Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year Award and its owner has been named Woman Business Owner of the Year and among the People You Should Know. Chartwell Agency has offices in Rockford, IL, Quad Cities and Madison, WI.

Karli Smith is Vice President with Chartwell Agency, an integrated marketing communications firm in Rockford, IL. She has nearly 15 years of experience in marketing and communications with an expertise in public relations, management, training and donor development. As a Vice President at Chartwell Agency, she is responsible for assisting clients with strategic planning; media relations at a local, regional and national level; social media strategy and execution; as well as team management. She works with a variety of clients ranging in industries from healthcare to not-for-profits. Karli is active in the community and serves as a mentor to young women through KFACT – a non-profit youth development organization.

Chartwell Agency (www.chartwell-agency.com) is an integrated communications agency with a breadth and depth of experience across five lines of business including strategic facilitation and training, marketing, public relations, social media and events. Its customized services ensure that its clients’ programs are implemented in a professional and timely manner and that their messages are proactively and effectively communicated. Chartwell Agency has earned the Rockford Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year Award and its owner has been named Woman Business Owner of the Year and among the People You Should Know. Chartwell Agency has offices in Rockford, IL, Quad Cities and Madison, WI.

ROOM: RIVERVIEW 2

Movie Screening

Movies: A Pathway To Grace, the SIGNIS way

The Academy-Award nominated film 3 Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, will be screened, followed by facilitated discussion among the attendees.  The methodology used will be in the long tradition of SIGNIS and its predecessor, the International Catholic Organization for Cinema, which seats awards juries in some 40 international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, and Berlin.  This is not a lecture or panel discussion, but participant conversation.

Dr. Frank Frost is an award-winning television producer (Bernardin, The Other Holy Land), founder of Movie Moments of Grace and co-founder of the National Film Retreat.  He is Senior Producer at Frank Frost Productions, LLC, and is director of The Teilhard de Chardin Project www.teilhardproject.com.  He serves as President of SIGNIS Catholic Communicators Forum and President of SIGNIS North America.  He and his wife Mary are currently producing a television biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Evolution of Teilhard de Chardin, slated to appear on PBS in 2020.

Rose Pacatte, FSP, is the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Culver City, CA, and an award-winning film reviewer for St. Anthony Messenger and the National Catholic Reporter and author and co-author of books on media literacy education and scripture and film. Her two most recent books are biographies of actor Martin Sheen and the artist Corita Kent (both for Liturgical Press.) Rose has An MEd in Media Studies and just received a Doctorate in Ministry in Pastoral Communications.

ROOM: GRAND H

Session-Communications

Roundtable | Communication Directors Only

David Hains will moderate a discussion on whatever is on the minds of communication directors. Bring your questions and comments and receive valuable feedback from your peers in Catholic Media.

David Hains has been involved in communication since 1975 when he moved to Charlotte to begin a 15-year stint in broadcast journalism as a television and radio journalist. After leaving journalism David served as spokesman for Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools for three years. He has also been involved in crisis communications consulting, video production and acting where he has played a TV newsman in a half dozen made for TV and feature film roles.  David currently serves as the director of communication for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. In his role as spokesman for the diocese David works with Church leaders to faithfully communicate the teaching of the Catholic Church through the news media to an audience of Catholics and non-Catholics in Western North Carolina. David was the last president of the Catholic Academy of Communications Professionals. In 2017 he helped to merge that group with the Catholic Press Association.

ROOM: GRAND D

Session-Panel Presentation

Engaging Hispanic Population

This session will discuss how the Hispanic population in the United States live out their faith and assimilate the new faith culture. You will learn to understand the richness of the Hispanic faith, beyond the church. In addition, we will answer the question, “Are all Hispanics Mexican or are all Mexican Hispanics?”

Jorge I. Domínguez-López has been the editor of Nuestra Voz, the Spanish-language newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, since 2015. He co-hosts the TV show “Al pan, pan” on NET TV, the TV channel of the Diocese of Brooklyn. He studied Cybernetics and Mathematics at the University of Havana and received a BA degree in History from St. John’s University, Queens, NY. He was the founding editor of Béisbol Mundial magazine of New York. He was founder and editorial board member of the Catholic magazine Vivarium in Havana, Cuba.

Margarita Mendoza serves the Diocese of Rockford as translator and editor for El Observador Newspaper.

Margarita is also the director of the Latino Film Festival Elgin and an author of volume four of Today’s Inspired Latina.

She has studied Social Communication, Journalism and  Organizational Communication.

Born in Colombia and married to Enrique, they are proud parents of three daughters.

ROOM: GRAND A

Session-Parish/School

VIEW PRESENTATION

Practical Ways to Improve Parish Communication

Free photo sites: www.unsplash.com, www.pixabay.com, www.flickr.com, www.pexels.com, www.videos.pexels.com.

Join communication expert Mike DiCosola in a fast-paced session providing practical takeaways that will help you instantly improve your parish communications. Based on the popular Practical Parish Communication Workshop hosted across the US in 2017, you will discover easy-to-implement tips for everything from your bulletin and website to Facebook and your parish App. Throughout this session be inspired to recall your mission and heed the words of the Holy Father to “use wisely the means at your disposal” in engaging the faithful of your parish.

Mike DiCosola is the Director of Mobile Services for myParish App at Diocesan. He previously acted as a CTO in print communications for almost 20-years. He has been actively involved in lay ministry for more than 15-years with experience in early childhood, middle school, teen and adult formation. Mike recently served as Communication Coordinator at Our Lady of Consolation Parish in Rockford, Michigan, where he resides with his wife Heather and five children. Mike has been a featured speaker at retreats, conferences and missions across the globe. He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, his iPhone, AppleWatch, iPad, Laptop, Kindle and sometimes juggling – not always at the same time. His greatest blessing is being a father of five and a child of the one God. His goal in life is to give this all up and see everyone in Heaven.

Session-Design

Dealing with Data: Key Tips for Turning Numbers into Stories

Many media professionals consider themselves “word people,” not “number people.” But publication staff and communications directors all need, from time to time, to make sense of data for various audiences.
This session will provide an overview on how to
1) Select the right story form for the data you have;
2) Create the right graphics to illustrate the data; and
3) Present data details and vocabulary clearly and simply.

Sharon Boehlefeld is the features and multimedia editor at The Observer in the Rockford Diocese. She has worked in diocesan and community newspapers since the early days of computerized publishing. She also has a master’s degree and additional post-graduate study in sociology, giving her a background in statistical analysis and both qualitative and quantitative research methods. She’s been an adjunct faculty member and a guest lecturer in college journalism and sociology classes. “Translating” the language of numbers into the language of words and graphics was a routine part of her job as a reporter and an editor in the secular press.

ROOM: GRAND D

Session-General Interest

A Jesuit’s Vision of the World

As a photographer, I see the world through the lens of who I am and the life I’ve lived. I can’t help but photograph from the life of faith that I’ve grown into as a priest over the past 50 years.

Often I am asked if being a priest effects my photography. My answer is always, “Yes, it has everything to do with it.” For me it’s hard to separate the creative process of seeing from prayer. Both can be contemplative acts. Both involve an openness to the Spirit — a willingness to let go of one’s presuppositions and go with the hunches and intuitions that arise deep within one’s heart where I believe the Spirit speaks within each of us.

I try to live a quote from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation:

“HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO REACH YOUR OWN PERFECTION BY LEADING SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE. . . . YOU MUST HAVE THE HUMILITY TO WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION IN A DARKNESS WHERE YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY ALONE. . . . IT TAKES HEROIC HUMILITY TO BE YOURSELF AND TO BE NOBODY BUT THE MAN OR ARTIST GOD INTENDED YOU TO BE.”
Jesuits have a mission — “Faith doing Justice.” I photograph to tell the stories of people who have no voice. Hopefully I can help others understand and work to change unjust social structures.

Don Doll, S.J. is a Jesuit priest and well-known photographer whose work has been featured in National Geographic, [Hunters of the Bering Sea, June 1984, and The Athabascans along the Yukon, February, 1990] and a number of the Day in the Life of… books, including America, California, Italy, Ireland, Passage to Vietnam, and Christmas in America.

In September, 2012, Magis Productions with Creighton University Press published A Call to Vision: A Jesuit’s Perspective on the World, a 224 page coffee table book with 188 of his photographs from his fifty year career as a photographer.

Doll recently received the International Understanding Through Photography Award from the Photographic Society of America; in January of 2016, Doll judged the PSA 83rd International Photography Competition.

Since 1969 Doll has lived and worked at Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is Professor Emeritus of Journalism holding the Charles and Mary Heider Endowed Jesuit Chair.

Since 2005, Doll has photographed for the Jesuit Refugee Service in Uganda, SouthernSudan, Burundi, Rwanda, the Congo, Chad, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

His work can be seen on his website: http://magisproductions.org.

ROOM: GRAND D

General Interest Track

A Light Piercing the Darkness of Human Sex Trafficking: A Worldwide Epidemic

Human trafficking is a critical social concern that has garnered considerable recent media attention. Learn about this epidemic, contributing factors and what is being done or can be done to help the situation.

Sr. Celine Goessl, SCSC