For my industry event, I attended the “Celebrating the Life of Fred Rogers” event at the Mayo Concert Hall on November 4th. I had helped set up the audio at the event as part of my Audio Recording and Production class, and I was told that if I stayed for the event I would be given extra credit. I used this as an opportunity to attend an industry event for this class.

At this event, the author of The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, Maxwell King, gave a talk about Fred Rogers. He opened up with a recollection of Rogers’ testimony before Congress in 1969 in order to obtain funding for PBS. He described how PBS specifically chose him because they knew how he talked and acted and were confident that he would be able to convince the Congressmen on a personal level. Rogers successfully persuaded Congress that PBS and his show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, were incredibly important to children across the country and that they would genuinely help educate them to be better people, unlike the shows that were plaguing television at the time.

King went on to describe the kind of man Mr. Rogers was, and how he was always willing to speak directly to the heart of children, including how he sought out one specific physically disabled boy to appear on his show so he could teach kids to be proud of who they are.

After the talk, there was a panel with multiple industry leaders in attendance, and after that there was a tea. During the tea I was able to talk to Mark Schlichting, the creator of the Living Books CD-ROM series. We discussed how he jumped between multiple unrelated careers until he finally became a software developer, and how he tailored his resume to every career because companies are looking for experts in their field. I am in a similar situation to him, having experience with multiple skills but not being an expert in any one of them, so I found his advice very helpful.