At the end of March and the beginning of April, media representatives from four countries gathered to attend the training conference "Television, radio, social media and PR". The event at Khreschatik Hotel in Kiev was organized by The Journalists Association “Novomedia” (Ukraine) and MEDIAllianceInternational (USA). Hashtag #novomedia17 has actually became an unofficial name of the event.

The media conference for Christians is an annual event of Novomedia Association. This year among speakers were five experienced specialists from the United States and six from Ukraine. 170 participants gathered at academic audiences: Christian journalists of different denominations, personnel of Christian media and public organizations, representatives of church press services, participants of independent media projects and people who were interested in this theme. In the morning and evening there were sessions on general topics, and in the afternoon – educational thematic sessions at three classrooms simultaneously.

At the opening speech the president of Novomedia Association, Ruslan Kukharchuk, talked about main priorities: creating as much of the author's media content as possible, increasing an audience as a consequence of the mass communication of Christian journalists becoming more interesting and understandable.

"We are responsible for the future and for the media. Let our materials be filigreed and successful, let each word be accurate and one that bears the truth, " – called the head of Novomedia Association.

Then Ron Harris, a radio journalist, with more than 50 years of experience and president of the organization MEDIAllianceInternational, made a speech.

"I'm so experienced that I even remember the time when there were no TV! Can you imagine?",  - he started. And then he introduced a large delegation of teachers – specialists of various media spheres from the United States. At the same time, he noted that they came at their own expense to communicate with their Ukrainian colleagues and share their experience and skills.

At sessions on radio production taught Bernie McPartland, production director and deputy of program director for Christian radio KCBI in Dallas, Texas. The group of interested at social media was trained by Lee Ann Jackson (executive director of marketing at the advertising agency "Ambassador"). Powerful and extremely practical sessions were held on television production from a team of the organization "In Touch Ministries" – Gary Longenecker and John McKinnon.

The pool of Ukrainian speakers gathered from those who have never spoken at the events of the Novomedia Association, but they have considerable experience and achievements.

Alex Fishman spoke about the success of the Jewish messianic portal ieshua.org. Art director and designer Dmitry Larin told about the specifics and features of visual communication. Sergey Stepanyuk from the "HOPE MEDIA GROUP" spoke about the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and the media component. The author of the community FOLLOWING JESUS in VKontakte Max Vitvitskii joined with the theme of Christian ministry in social networks. And the organizer of Nik Vuychich's visits to Ukraine, Yana Kucherenko, shared her experience in marketing campaigns.

At the last day of the evening session everybody came together. There were final training recommendations, speeches of the participants from the conference, presentation of Ukrainian national gifts to foreign guests, final general photo and a live broadcastom on Facebook!

The Novomedia Association for the third year is conducting a spring general event together with MEDIAllianceInternational. This allows the best way to bring together the Ukrainian and international experience for the development of Christian media services in Ukraine.

Press-center of Novomedia Association