JACC hosts a variety of conferences and workshops for its members throughout the year. While specialized workshops or day-long conferences may be scheduled as needed, the main conferences include:
NorCal Conference – The NorCal conference is a one-day affair scheduled each fall at a northern California community college. The conference provides students and faculty from member schools in northern California (typically colleges above Fresno and San Luis Obispo) a variety of workshops, contests and meetings.
SoCal Conference – The SoCal conference is a one-day affair scheduled each fall at a southern California community college. The conference provides students and faculty from member schools in southern California (typically colleges below Bakersfield and Santa Barbara) a variety of workshops, contests and meetings.
Mid-Winter Faculty Conference – The Mid-Winter Faculty Conference is a two-day affair scheduled each January or February at hotel in the Morro Bay area. The program provides community college faculty a variety of workshops focusing on the different issues involved in teaching journalism at the community college level. A featured workshop each year is an annual media law update. In selected years there is a separate day-long Blue Heron workshop that focuses on teacher training in a single subject or skill set area.
State Convention – The annual convention is a three-day affair scheduled in late March or early April in various parts of the state that brings together students and faculty from member schools across the state for speaker, workshops, contests, meetings and more. Since 2022, the JACC State Convention has joined forces with the Associated Collegiate Press spring college media conference.
Initially, for many years the state convention was anchored in Fresno in hotel or university settings. From the early 2000s until after the pandemic, the convention rotated from Sacramento to southern California in a hotel setting.