January - February Rundown

So, I haven't been posting regularly because I've been so caught up in managing the programming process over the past couple of months, and also because our schedule has not strayed away from the schedule that is already posted in the programming manual (search the manual for "Programming and Traffic Coordinator / Scheduler - Jonathan Mayo"). I will post below the minor changes that we have made over the past couple months and any additional notes as well.


JANUARY 2015

1/13: School Follow-Ups
- The Programming department sent out follow-up emails to schools this week in order to remind students of the upcoming deadlines. For the announcement of the extended abstract deadline, we were asked to only contact certain schools about the extended deadline and the website made the necessary changes.

1/19: Extended Abstract Deadline
- This year we received 17 abstract submissions by the regular deadline (Jan. 6), so we extended the abstract deadline to Jan. 19, and we received a total of 33 abstract submissions, of which we narrowed down to 12 by Jan. 27.



FEBRUARY 2015

2/2: Paper Submission Deadline
- This year, because of the calendar change, we bumped up the deadline for final papers to the Monday before class (Feb. 2). Also, we created a rubric for the papers (this was not assigned last year) and asked everyone to grade each paper. A copy of the rubric will be post in the Visions archive.

2/10: Final Decisions - PAPERS
- This year we made final paper decisions a week earlier than last year. We narrowed down the papers from 12 to 8 on Feb. 10. This allowed us to assign the class to revisit all films that had been selected up until this point.

2/17: Final Decisions - FILMS
- On this day we made our final decisions regarding films, and we began to program each block. After a long discussion, we decided to resume the programming of blocks the following week.

2/18: Film + Paper Acceptances
- On Feb. 18-19, Shannon contacted the accepted filmmakers and scholars regarding their submissions and whether or not they will be able to attend. Most responded by Feb. 25, but there are still some who we are waiting to hear from as of this date (Mar. 1).

2/21: Rejection Emails - PAPERS
- Once we heard back from all paper selections, we sent out the paper rejection emails on this date. There were only 3 rejection emails sent out as one (1) author had two (2) works being juried in the final round of papers.

2/24: Production Day - NO CLASS
- Because everyone had been working very hard, we decided to assign a production day to give everyone the day off. The fact that we decided to take this day off became irrelevant as UNCW cancelled classes for this day due to snow/ice/wintry mix. This meant pushing back the finalizing of Conference + Film blocks to Mar. 3.

2/28: Rejection Emails - FILMS
- Once we had a substantial amount of filmmakers respond with confirmation of attendance, we sent out film rejection emails. Also, we notified rejected films via Film Freeway as well (They receive an email from FF too).