When I taught broadcast journalism at the high school level, one of the areas I started with was commercials & public service announcements—they were short, they were easy and the kids liked them.

At the first high school where I did this, we actually did the announcements live every morning (Why, yes, it was always a disaster. Thank you for asking!), and at the second school where I did this, we had a radio station where we’d tape radio shows and play them on an actual FM station that broadcast over the Atlanta airwaves (a very small portion of them, anyway).

Because the primary function of our broadcasts at both schools was to relay school-related news, most of the commercials and PSAs the kids wrote had to do with school-related functions (i.e., the homecoming football game, the science club’s bake sale, etc.).

And, without fail, students gravitated toward these kinds of phrases at the ends of their spots: “Will you be there?”  “See you there!” “I’ll be there—will you be there?” “Everyone is going to be there!”  “Be there!”

You get it.

I teased my last group of kiddies so much about this, I still get the occasional “I’ll be there—will you be there?” e-mail. In fact, I’ll probably never hear any variation of the aforementioned phrase without thinking back to G period.  Truly.  And I doubt they will either. 🙂

With that phrase in mind, who’s going to RWA Nationals?  I’ve never been to it, but I’m going this year.*

I’ve heard so many wonderful things from a slew of folks, and I know this is a pretty huge conference—so I’m wondering how many of my readers, Twitter friends and other writerly acquaintances are going to be traveling to Orlando at the end of this month.

Are you?  Let me know!  I would love to meet as many of you as possible!

I’ll be there—will you be there??

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*Not only is this my first year at the conference, but I’ll also be teaching a course.  Click here for more details.