Music Director Sent to New York’s CMJ Music Marathon
Words by Emily Parma — Assistant Web Content Manager
Video by Erin Cantu — Office/Traffic Manager
Every year, New York City holds the national College Media Journal, or CMJ Music Marathon, where college students and organizations come together to meet new people and learn more about college media to better their productions. This year, KTSW’s music director, Allison Johnson, is being sent to attend and speak at a panel.
Emily Parma: How did you end up being able to attend CMJ?
Allison Johnson: Every year KTSW sends whoever is music director to the conference. It is just kind of a plus that comes alongside of the job, but obviously in order to earn this trip you have to work hard. This year I got asked to speak on the Music Director’s Summit Panel.
EP: How much of an opportunity is CMJ?
AJ: Attending the conference is an opportunity because you get to meet people from all over the country and some people come from different parts of the world. All of the panels are interesting, like covering different topics and music and radio. There’s lots of knowledge you can pick up and lots of networking opportunities to meet people and make good connections. Being an actual panelist this year is huge because not only can I go and talk about KTSW, but I can also go and represent myself and people can see my face and hopefully make the connections in the field I want to go into. It’s a super huge opportunity and I am so excited about it.
EP: How will going to this event help you with your career in the future?
AJ: This is definitely a good way for me to go and show face and express my interest in what I want to do. I want to work with music, I want to work with bands and I want to work with labels. This is like the perfect conference for me to be at so I can see how I can go about being more introduced into that field.
EP: What are you looking forward to most?
AJ: The shows. Going to see bands. Every day I’ll get up, I’ll go to panels from 10-4 (p.m.), probably two or three panels a day and then I’ll take a quick break and every night I’ll be at a different showcase. That’s what I’m looking forward to most — seeing bands that I have never heard of and then bands that I know now and like.
EP: How does your family support your being able to go on this trip?
AJ: My mom sent a group email to my entire family and she posted it on Facebook. I called my dad and he was looking at it (my featured image on the CMJ homepage) and my brother posted it to Instagram. It was a really cool thing, especially being asked to be a speaker. It’s a sign to me of how hard I have worked and that means I am doing good at my job and that’s all that I want.
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