CASMEC 2024 Recap
This week I was out in Sacramento, California on behalf of MusicFirst at the 2024 CASMEC Conference. I have been to past events quite a few times and always love interacting with music teachers, customers, and friends while I’m here. This year I presented a session titled Tech for the Over-Scheduled Music Educator, and had the opportunity to hang out in the MusicFirst booth with my good friends and colleagues, Matt Ferry and Paul Flecther, Founder and CEO of Charanga Music - the company behind MusicFirst Elementary. Previously CASMEC was held in Fresno, so the change of location and the palpable energy in the exhibit hall (thanks to the folks at West Music handing out free recorders to hundreds of students who were participating in various All State Ensembles) made for a great (albeit noisy) show.
Paul Fletcher, Me & Matt Ferry waving the MusicFirst flag @ CASMEC 2024
My session went very well. I love showing the various ways that teachers can save time by using the MusicFirst Classroom. My presentation focuses on the many ways that products like PracticeFirst, Sight Reading Factory, Auralia & Musition, Soundtrap, Flat and Focus On Sound (as well as others of course) can be used to streamline “administrivia” that teachers have to deal with on a daily basis so that they can spend the precious time they have with their students actually teaching and making music. One of the most impressive workflows that I show and always get an audible gasp from the attendees, is when I show how easy it is to find appropriate and relevant content and assign it to students using our very unique drag and drop calendar functionality and the extremely useful Favorite function that allows you to assign something over and over just by dragging it on to the calendar.
There were a few highlights of the show this year for me: first, finally getting to spend some time hanging with Dr. Steve Holley, the President of the Association of Popular Music Education (APME). Steve is an amazing music educator, and author of two very cool books titled Coaching a Popular Music Ensemble and Action Based Approaches in Popular Music Education. I HIGHLY recommend picking them up if you teach Modern Band in your school.
I also got to meet up with some former students from Teachers College: Dr. Nita Baxani who now teaches at Cal Poly Pomona, Dr. Lindsay Tornatore (Weiss) who is now the Director of Systems Improvement & Student Success at California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (WOW), and her husband, friend and TC Grad Dr. Gianfranco Tornatore, who is the Director of Continuous Improvement and LCAP for the San Juan Unified School District. It’s so nice to see fellow TC alum doing so well! I’m so glad I had the chance to meet up with them while I was out here.
Of course, being in Northern California means that we were near some wonderful vineyards. We may have snuck away a little early on Thursday afternoon to visit Bogle Vineyards. Great wines and a beautiful location! Next week I head to San Antonio, Texas for TMEA 2024 and then I think I have a week off to recover from all of the travel I’ve been doing recently. No rest for the wicked!
