National Association for Campus Activities
NACA is an organization that produces conferences for college student activity production teams. The conferences provide the means to check out a wide variety of entertainment options for campus events:
- Bands and Musicians
- College Comedians
- Coffee House Poets
- DJs
- Hypnotists
- Jugglers
- Inflatable Bounce Houses
- Laser Tag
- Magicians and Mentalists
- Professional Speakers on topics such as diversity, relationships, and goal setting
NACA Conference Programs
A NACA conference is a multi-day event. Each day includes a whirlwind schedule that goes from morning through midnight. Activities are designed to engage, educate, and generate ideas for the attendees:
- Educational Sessions include topics like “How to Work with Big Name Talent”, “Low Cost Promotion Ideas”, and “Fostering Student Leadership”.
- Trade Shows (aka “Camp”): This is where you can talk face to face with speakers, talent agents, variety acts, and entertainment companies.
- Live Entertainment Showcases: Watch an act show their stuff live on the big stage!
Live Entertainment Showcases
The college entertainment showcases are an opportunity for a student activities team to quickly sample a variety of acts in a very compressed amount of time.
Each showcase performer gets only 15-20 minutes on stage. Audiences typically range from 200-1500 attendees.
Colleges need entertainment. They’re regularly booking entertainment for weekly events, orientation week, homecoming, comedy nights, and the like.
Entertainment Showcases Are Hard to Get!
From about 600 showcase applications received, maybe about 60 acts are selected to perform at a NACA conference. Your promo materials really need to stand out to make the cut here.
Many acts have been involved in the college market for years and have never had the opportunity to showcase.
College Entertainment Showcase !!
So, I was grateful to be selected as the only Comedy Stage Hypnotist to perform a live College Entertainment Showcase at the NACA Central conference in Arlington, Texas.
Generally, College Hypnotist showcases are few and far between at the NACA conferences, so this was kind of a big deal for me…
I had only 15 minutes to convey the essence of what is typically a 75-90 minute performance that utilizes up to twenty volunteers!
With that level of volunteer interaction and participation, performing a Comedy Hypnosis Show is sometimes like herding cats.
Getting things rolling quickly within the 15 minute time limit was definitely a challenge!
However, I had a game plan, and things worked out pretty good for my first ever College Entertainment Showcase.
Hopefully, there will be many more to come at future conferences. I’m looking forward to learning from my experiences to find ways to make the presentation even more humorous, impactful, and mesmerizing!
Next Post: Texas Comedy Hypnotist Show
Leave a Reply