114th Annual ECA Convention

2023 Eastern Communication Association Conference

Harboring Innovation

Hyatt Regency Inner Harbor

Baltimore, MD

March 29 to April 2, 2023

Submission Deadline: October 16, 2022, 11:59 PST

“Innovate”: To make changes in something established, especially by introducing new ideas, methods, or activities. To create transformation, revolution, metamorphosis.

When the 2020 ECA convention was canceled less than two weeks before its scheduled date, innovation probably meant something different to us all than it does today. Innovation became more important than ever before during an extended period of virtual teaching, difficult access to research participants and venues, and the absence of venues like the ECA convention. Thus, I felt it appropriate to take up the intended theme of my first ill-fated but fully-planned 2020 convention for 2021. And I encourage all ECA members and communication researchers to bring their best thoughts about innovating the field, our scholarship, our teaching, and our outreach to Baltimore.

Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, an area with one of our nation’s richest and most innovative histories, offers a unique setting for our discipline’s oldest existing association to gather and consider the ways in which we innovate. In 1608, Captain John Smith sailed north from the newly formed Virginia Colony and described the wild hunting lands that were the future site of Baltimore as “not inhabited but navigable,” foreshadowing the kinds of visionary leadership, creativity, and innovation that has characterized Baltimore throughout its long and challenging history. Baltimore seems to be a place that grows both in calculated ways and out of adversity:

• Baltimore is the place where Francis Scott Key’s, The Star Spangled Banner was born.
• Baltimore overcame division and ruin in a difficult, gradual recovery from the American Civil War.
• Baltimore has innovated in front of, and in response to, shifts and disruptions in the economy, education, technology, and healthcare.
• Baltimore was a model to the nation for its major renovation of neglected downtown and waterfront areas after World War II.
• Baltimore has orchestrated an ongoing and evolving renaissance after the collapse of the American steel industry, led by visionaries such as Under Armour founder Kevin Park.
• Baltimore is a hub of art, culture, sports, and entertainment (Travel + Leisure even named Baltimore “the coolest city on the East Coast” and Zagat listed it as “one of the most exciting food cities” in the U.S.)
• And Baltimore is where ECA will continue its positive and innovative path as the oldest existing professional association in the communication field.

Our Baltimore Inner Harbor convention and the “Harboring Innovation” theme provide us with the opportunity to consider the lessons the city has to offer communication scholars.

I invite ECA interest groups and members to develop programming for the convention that focuses on how we have innovated and how we need to innovate to remain relevant, cutting-edge, and unique. In what ways is our field at the forefront of studying the powerful relationships among communication and our relationships, organizations, communities, and the environment? What innovative theories, questions, methods, data analysis techniques, and practices are emerging from our field? What opportunities exist for us to innovate with our research, service, pedagogy, and practice? How are you responding to your environment to ensure that your work and our field are addressing the practical communication concerns of today and tomorrow?

Our “Harboring Innovation” conference will provide a venue to showcase how we are innovating, and to deliberate the ways in which we must innovate to ensure that the communication discipline continues to make an important impact at all levels of society. I look forward to us all being together for a second year after a long period of being apart. The annual ECA convention is so important to us all, and a vital in-person convention just can’t be substituted. I can’t wait to see everyone.

Jennifer Waldeck
University of Georgia
jwaldeck@uga.edu