Both my mother (a long-time journalist) and I are members of the AWC (Association for Women in Communications.)
This year, Mom noticed that there was a new category, Personal Blogs, in the Online Media section of AWC’s annual Clarion communications awards.
She encouraged me to enter this blog in competition for a Clarion.
Like a good Mom, she then followed up just before the deadline to ensure I’d entered. I’d totally forgotten, of course, and had to race off to the post office to mail in my paperwork.
So, it was pretty cool to attend the 2011 AWC National Conference in Tulsa with Mom last month, have her in the room when I spoke with Maria Henneberry about more effective webinars, and then turn around and win the Clarion for Sheila’s Guide.
Thank you to all of my readers for your support since I launched the blog in September 2008, and thanks, Mom, for always encouraging me to excel.
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I was the president of my college AWC chapter and we won a few Clarion awards too! It never dawned on me that I should consider rejoining the organization. Food for thought …
Congratulations on the win!
Thanks, JoAnna, and do consider membership if that works for you.
I just joined the AWC National Board of Directors as well, in addition to volunteering on their Tech Committee, and there are many of us who are coming up with ideas to add value to membership in this particularly cash-strapped modern era.
Will be launching #AWCChat here soon as well! 🙂
Congratulations. Well deserved!
Thanks Andy (and thanks for helping me clear the WP Pharma hack so I could make this announcement without my search engine results being a total mess!)
Wahoo! Congratulations on the well-deserved award. You have made an amazing impact in the hospitality and tourism industry as well as other industries. Thank you for continually putting your voice, opinion and thoughts out there for others to read and learn from.
Kudos to you and your mother should be very proud! (And I’m sure she is!)
Oh, gosh, Jeff, thank you very much. Mom IS very proud, but she’ll be mad at me for putting her photo out there “….without any lipstick on!”
I can hear her saying it now. 🙂
My mother joined AWC in 1955 when she was an honors journalism student at the University of Texas, Austin. Back then it was Theta Sigma Phi, a women’s journalism sorority founded in 1909 at the University of Washington in Seattle. Mom’s now an AWC Member Emeritus, which she jokingly tells people, “Means mostly that I’ve been in for so long, they don’t make me pay the annual dues anymore.”
When she got her first full-time job as a newspaper journalist (in her 40’s!) she credited AWC with helping to keep her knowledge and skills up to speed while she was moving all over the world as a Navy spouse after graduating from UT.
That support included a training session on something called a “computer” at one of the AWC national conferences.
Wow, Sheila. That’s a great story about your Mom and her journalism days. Should have known that behind every great blogger is a great Mom! 😉
Congrats to you!
Thank you, Dominique.
Thanks for shearing!