This is the sixth in a series of blog posts to help you decipher each program track at ONA15. You can sort our schedule by your own favorite track by clicking on any of the gray boxes on the main session page. You can also check out my previous posts on our tracks for Mobile Tools + Design, Audience Engagement + Impact,  Developer Tools + Tech, Audio, Photo  + Video, and Revenue + Ethics.

There are so many great sessions at ONA15, it can be difficult to decide which to attend! We’re particularly excited to preview our Professional Development track to help guide you in choosing your discussions, as it’s a brand-new track for the annual conference.

And don’t forget, for every track we’ll be hosting Table Talks, an open forum for discussing solutions to a variety of challenges in your area of interest or expertise. Continue reading

Note: This is second in a series of posts written by the conference organizers recommending sessions they feel will be particularly interesting. Of course, we hope every session is valuable to the right audience, but with so many things happening at ONA15,  we want to offer guidance from a variety of view points that will give you useful highlights. These recommendations come from Julie Westfall, co-chair of the ONA15 Program Team.

Julie Westfall

Here’s a common sight at the Online News Association’s annual conference: A mass of attendees flooding the common spaces between sessions, flipping through their programs (or scrolling through it on the conference app), debating their next moves and being torn between this session or that session: “On the one hand … on the other hand.”

A big team worked hard to give you all those choices —  but sometimes the decisions can be hard to make in the moment, so a number of us are pointing out some of our personal top picks — the ones that most frequently catch our eyes when we peruse the schedule — and here are mine. We can’t wait to see you in Los Angeles.
Continue reading

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts to help you decipher each program track at ONA15. You can sort our schedule by your own favorite track by clicking on any of the gray boxes on the main session page. You can also check out our previous posts on our Audience Engagement + Impact track,  Developer Tools + Tech track, Revenue + Ethics track and Audio, Photo + Video.

There are so many great sessions at ONA15, it can be difficult to decide which to attend! We’re excited to preview our Mobile Tools + Design track to help guide you in choosing your discussions.

And don’t forget, for every track we’ll be hosting Table Talks, an open forum for discussing solutions to a variety of challenges in your area of interest or expertise. Continue reading

Every ONA conference is driven by ideas from the digital journalism community. In the spring, we take session pitches through the Suggestion Box, and throughout the spring and summer, the Program Team helps select and build out sessions. Now, just before the conference, we’re opening up two more ways to get involved: the Lightning Talks and the Unconference.

If you’ve got an idea for a full-blown conference session, you should pitch the unconference. If you’ve got a big idea to share and the guts to present it in five minutes or less, send us your lightning talk by Wednesday, Sept. 23. Continue reading

Note: This is first in a series of posts written by the conference organizers recommending sessions they feel will be particularly interesting. Of course, we hope every session is valuable to the right audience, but with so many things happening at ONA15,  we want to offer guidance from a variety of view points that will give you useful highlights. These recommendations come from Luis Gomez, co-chair of the ONA15 program team.

Luis Gomez

So you’ve made it this far, and that feeling may already be setting in. That feeling is the slight sense of panic or FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) as you come face-to-face with the ONA15 conference schedule. So many options! What to pick? Where to go?

Don’t worry! Those of us who helped shaped this year’s conference are excited to show you our top picks for all three days. Unlike the pride I get when I talk about my favorite bands or my favorite movies (Kubrick emphasis here), I feel it’s a sense of duty to emphasize the sessions that I believe will make you a better journalist at the end of the day.

Assuming you’re reading this and you haven’t quite planned out your sessions for all three days, here are five recommendations I consider to be “can’t-miss” sessions: Continue reading

Hello!

Looking for a different kind of conference experience when you arrive at ONA15? Then look no further — that’s what the annual unconference is for.

What is the unconference, you ask? Every year, a team of volunteers gets attendees to submit their ideas for what they think should be a part of the official conference but isn’t. It could be a panel, it could be a hands-on workshop, it could be a roundtable discussion. We’re here to help you make those ideas into realities. Continue reading

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts to help you decipher each program track at ONA15. You can sort our schedule by your own favorite track by clicking on any of the gray boxes on the main session page. You can also check out my previous posts on our Audience Engagement + Impact track,  Developer Tools + Tech track and Revenue + Ethics track.

There are so many great sessions at ONA15, it can be difficult to decide which to attend! We’re particularly excited to preview our Audio, Video + Photo track to help guide you in choosing your discussions, as it’s a brand-new track for the annual conference.

And don’t forget, for every track we’ll be hosting Table Talks, an open forum for discussing solutions to a variety of challenges in your area of interest or expertise. Continue reading

We’re thrilled to introduce the finalists of the WNYC Podcast Accelerator at ONA15. The seven finalists (representing five podcasts) are now receiving coaching and guidance from WNYC and ONA staff as part of this new program, the first of its kind to provide production advice, industry connections, mentorship and a platform for creating remarkable audio content. The podcasts were selected from almost 400 entries.

The finalists  will head to Los Angeles in September to pitch their projects to a panel of judges in front of a live audience of conference attendees at an ONA15 special event. Continue reading