Save the date for PMDMC24 in San Diego, August 12-15, 2024.  Registration will open in spring 2024.

Session Proposals

Share your ideas
Contribute your best thinking to PMDMC 2023! Send us your inspiring, creative conference session proposal today.
PMDMC23 Session Proposals

We’re opening our call for proposals one more time for any late-breaking, relevant, and timely sessions ideas before we finalize our schedule. If you have any new challenges that you have tackled in the last month or so, please submit a session proposal for the chance to share your successes at PMDMC23!

As always, we are looking for sessions that cover the myriad of challenges our industry is currently facing while also connecting attendees through interactive formats. You can submit a fully designed session proposal, an idea that you want to understand better, or both. What brand new challenge is keeping you up at night? What new success have you tapped into?

Check out an example of a fully designed session proposal.

Consider these key elements to help your proposal shine:

  • Amplify multiple voices, especially Asian, Black, Indigenous, LatinX, and other People of Color, plus representation from both leaders and staffers.
  • Represent a variety of station sizes, types, formats, and markets.
  • Outline 2-3 concrete learning goals and takeaways, plus a vision for engaging attendees (ie. what will the attendee be doing in the session?).
  • And last but not least, connect and inspire your audience and colleagues

Attention business partners or vendors: Your proposal should feature a variety of perspectives, including that of a station or other client(s). Avoid promoting and/or selling your product directly. Attendees tell us they don’t want pitches. Instead, they want thorough information about the application of a tool or service along with user case studies so they can make up their own minds.

The deadline to submit session proposals or ideas closed on April 21, 2023.

The Public Media Development and Marketing Conference content is curated by a team of Greater Public advisors, staff, and contractors. This process begins with the public call for proposals, happening January 31-February 24, 2023. A second call for proposals will take place April 5-April 21. Anyone can submit a session proposal or idea, which is sent to the PMDMC content team shortly after the deadline.

Once the content team receives the session proposals and ideas, they evaluate and rate every submission with the other advisors and staff in their learning area. The content team then selects proposals and ideas to develop based on the criteria outlined for this year’s conference:

  1. Amplify multiple voices, especially Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, plus representation from both leaders and staffers.

  2. Represent a variety of station sizes, types, formats, and markets.

  3. Outline 2-3 concrete learning goals and takeaways, plus a vision for engaging attendees (ie. what will the attendee be doing in the session?).

  4. And last but not least, connect and inspire your audience and colleagues!


Typically, the content team receives approximately 100 session proposals and ideas! PMDMC23 will feature around 40 sessions, so, unfortunately, we cannot provide a slot to every submitter. However, our content team works hard to group together session proposals and ideas that have a common theme, bringing more voices to one session.

Business partners or vendors are invited to submit proposals or ideas but should remember to focus their session around station attendees. Avoid promoting and/or selling your product directly. Attendees consistently tell us they don’t want pitches. Instead, provide thorough information about the application of a tool or service along with user case studies.

Those who submit designed proposals for PMDMC23 will be contacted no later than June 1. The full conference schedule will be announced on June 15, 2023.