Reminder: Reverse Auction Workshop Set for May 24; Agenda Now Available
A couple of weeks ago we reported on the FCC's announcement of the final steps in the run-up to the start of bidding in the clock phase of the reverse auction portion of the long-awaited, much-anticipated Broadcast Incentive Auction. One of those steps: an FCC-conducted workshop on the online bidding system that participants will have to master by May 31, when the bidding cranks up for real.
The FCC has now released the agenda for that workshop, along with the usual instructions for signing up to attend in person (or accessing in online, whether live or recorded). Attendees can expect to check out, among other things, a walk-through of the reverse auction bidding software for stage one, an overview of the incentive auction public reporting system, and an introduction to the reverse auction bidding software for a new stage. All of this should prove extremely useful once things get rolling on May 31.
If you'd like to attend - and, seriously, why wouldn't you? - here's the scoop. The workshop will run from 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. ET on May 24, 2016 in the Commission Meeting Room in the Portals in Washington. Helpful tip from the FCC: In-person attendees would be well-advised to get there at least 20 minutes early, to make sure they clear security in time. (You can streamline the check-in process some by pre-registering. Just submit your name and company affiliation to auction1001@fcc.gov.) Or you can avoid the traffic (and, God forbid, the D.C. Metro system) by staying home and watching on your computer; the workshop will be streamed live at www.fcc.gov/general/live. (If you're the kind of person who used to sit in the front row of class so you could ask a lot of questions, don't worry. You'll still be able to submit questions long-distance through the auction1001@fcc.gov email address.)
After the show is over, a recording will be available at the www.fcc.gov/general/live, and you'll still be able to email questions, too.
One last thing. Don't forget that the preview period for the bidding site - your chance to take a look at the system (and check out the bidding status of your own station(s), available bid options, etc.) - opens at 10:00 a.m. ET on May 23. To get the most out of the workshop, you might want to take a gander at the bidding site in advance.
[Blogmeister's Note: The headline of this post originally indicated, incorrectly, that the workshop was scheduled for May 23. That inadvertent error has been corrected.]