Joe Conlon has been actively engaged as a volunteer, public access producer, board member, and an employee at Town Square Television (TST) in Inver Grove Heights, MN, since he was a student at South St. Paul High School in 1988. Joe joined the TST nonprofit Board of Directors in 1990 and served for five years, then served on the Norther Dakota County Cable Communications Commission for 3 years, before being hired as a TST staff member in December 1997.

In his current role as Engineering Manager, Joe manages the audio/visual engineering needs of the TST facility, production truck and four city council chambers. He helps oversee public access services and spearheads productions of multi-camera live events with the TST production truck.

Growing up in South St. Paul, MN, Joe was always curious how technology worked and started taking apart disused electronics at about six years old. Unfortunately for his parents, he didn’t start putting things back together until he was about thirteen years old. As a South St. Paul High School student, he had the opportunity to take four years of electronics as an elective from instructor Jim Bristol. Those classes led Joe to recording South St. Paul High School Sports and working for the Audio-Visual department.

Joe attended the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN as a seminarian at St. John Vianney Seminary. As a St. Thomas student he studied Communications (telecommunications emphasis) and Philosophy for three years. In 1989 Joe started volunteering with a low power Catholic TV station that broadcasted from the IDS building in downtown Minneapolis, and still volunteers with that station. After three years as a college seminarian Joe decided not to pursue studying for the priesthood.

In 1993 Joe had the opportunity to go to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia for four months to volunteer at a Catholic TV station. He worked on field recording, editing and transmitter repair. In 1995 he returned to St. Lucia for ten months to again help at the station, and was blessed to meet his future wife, Mirla. They just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in September!

Joe is an active member of SBE (Society of Broadcast Engineers) and has served as an officer for the Minnesota Chapter 17 for the past 15 years. In 2023, SBE recognized Joe as the national Robert W. Flanders Engineer of the Year. Joe is a leader in our metro-wide network of local community media stations who generously share resources and programming. Joe’s passion for the mission of local community media has remained strong over 37 years of service and is still obvious in his work every day.