We’ve officially announced our initial conference program for ONA16 in Denver. You can see a list of our program topics and conference speakers — a list that will continue to expand through the end of June.
Planning the schedule for our annual conference is one of the highlights of the year for our team, and we hope ONA16 continues to uphold the quality and diversity we aim for in our educational programming. We love working with journalists around the world to talk about the issues that are at the forefront of their work and finding creative ways to highlight interesting conversations for our attendees.
This year, you’ll hear more discussions related to the most interesting trends in news gathering, audience engagement, education, mobile tools, revenue, audio/video, work flow and building your career.
We also wanted to highlight a few key areas of the program that are being improved or expanded to better serve our growing ONA community.
Expanded Broadcast Offerings
This year, we are making an intentional effort to expand and diversify our offerings for broadcast journalists, particularly those working on TV news. Demand for web video and audio is increasing exponentially, and broadcast journalists have told us they are looking to share ideas and best practices for workflows, tools and live streaming, all of which will be included at ONA16. Stay tuned for more speakers and sessions to be announced focused on broadcast in the coming weeks.
Augmented, Virtual and 360 Realities
The number of news organizations investing in 360 video and virtual reality grew dramatically over the past year, so at ONA16 we’re hosting more discussions around this evolving medium. We’ve scheduled high-level conversations around when to employ VR as a storytelling tool, and address head-on the ethical questions surfacing from these new formats. We’re also hosting four technical conversations for practitioners that will explore the emerging tools and techniques in this rapidly changing space.
Improved Table Talks
Last year, we introduced Table Talks, a chance to take a deeper conversational dive into dozens of challenges affecting journalists working in digital media. They were a huge success, earning a spot in the five highest-rated sessions at ONA15. That said, we received a lot of constructive ideas for improving and refining the process, and we’ve taken those to heart. We’re hoping these will continue to be a highlight of our conference.
More to come!
The schedule announced today is only about 70 percent of our full planned conference, just enough to give you a sense of what’s in store before early-bird registration expires on June 2. Be sure to check back frequently through early July to see additional sessions, presenters, keynote conversations and a few surprises that will populate our schedule each week.