Wood

DURING HIS 15 YEARS AT NSPA/ACP, COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER IMPLEMENTS SIGNIFICANT TECHNOLOGY CHANGES.

BEFORE HE JOINED the NSPA/ ACP staff in fall 1997, Marc Wood had been on the staffs of his high school yearbook and college newspaper, and he had worked as a news photographer after college.

Beyond that affinity for journalism, the travel convinced him to take the job, he said.

“The travel was a great perk. Before taking the job, I had never been on an airplane, but I didn’t volunteer that information in the interview,” Wood said. “As it turned out, I was on a lot of planes and attended 50 national conventions.”

During the 15 years Wood was at NSPA, he made significant changes in technology, and he changed, too, he said.

“My focus shifted as the needs of the organization changed,” he said. “I started my career writing and doing some photography and design. When I went to NSPA, I got more into graphic design and started developing for the web.”

An expanded online footprint changed the face of the organization.

“I remember watching the mountains of mail come in and go out of the office. The less of that we can do, the better. Cutting down the wait factor makes things more expedient,” Wood said.

“There was a web site before I got there but the server was housed on a single Mac in our office. We were constantly trying to grow the website to meet the expectations people had because of the developing technology they were using. Our challenge was to make that growth happen on a non-profit budget.”

Wood said the changes made the staff more efficient and served the membership better.

“In the early days, we faxed 15-20 pages of contest results to individual schools. It took a couple of days for people to get the results. As we developed the online programs, we were able to get the results out moments after they were announced,” Wood said. “Improvements like these and the addition of online convention registration and contest entries saved hundreds of hours of work for the staff.” Wood’s technology developments gave conventions a facelift.

“In the late ’90s and early 2000s, schools had to stand in long lines at the convention registration desk. We had five three-ring binders with lists and records of the schools. It took forever for us to look up and process each school. In 2005, check-in went digital and in-line times were significantly shorter,” Wood said. Awards ceremonies evolved as well.

“We used to stand at the podium and read names from a list,” Wood said. “It was still exciting because the student energy in the room was always over the top. Then we read names and had slides of the winners.Now the list of winners, judges‘ comments and winning entries are part of the ceremony.”

Wood became a master at FileMaker software, and he said he still uses it in his current job with Tactile Medical, a company that develops at-home therapy devices.

“I learned so much working at NSPA,” Wood said. “Learning tech as tech was starting to grow and mature into a new industry was a great experience.

“I left because the skills I learned there became more valuable elsewhere, so financially it made sense to move on for my family’s sake.”

Wood’s extended family includes the 28 staff members he worked with in the five-to-six person office during his 15 years at NSPA, as well as the teachers and professional journalists with whom he has shared significant moments.

“The major news events of the times seem more important because there’s an intersection of the event and NSPA’s focus on training student journalists. The office staff was always invested in the major stories. On 9/11 we bought a television for the office because all the websites were down.

“Election night in 2000 was significant because we were in DC for the convention, and we woke up the next morning not knowing who had won. There was a lot to talk about while we were there.”

“But the event that most stands out is Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We sat in the office and watched the windows being blown out of the Hyatt Regency where we were to have the ACP convention in two months. Hyatt offered its hotel in Kansas City, and everyone worked together to reset the plan so the convention could go on nearly as it was planned.”

Wood said it’s one thing to build something and quite another to leave it in a state so it could be maintained by someone else.

“Once you offer a program or develop online activities, there are certain expectations about services,” he said. “There’s no going back once you’ve started offering those things.

“You keep moving forward.” n