Next week, after a debriefing, I’ll wrap up my year as chair of the Online News Association’s annual conference. It’s been a fun — yet exhausting — tenure. And this last week, stuck in bed with some kind of cold, it was hard not to think about the conference.
Since January, my small but dedicated group of conference planners talked weekly with few exceptions. Josh Hatch, of USAToday.com, joked that he can’t imagine what he’ll do with himself during what had become our usual Thursday call.
Josh ran the content/design track for the conference committee, Danny Sanchez and Laura Cochran coordinated the community/convergence track, and the phenomenal Amy Webb — and I’m not just saying that because she’s taking the reins from me to lead next year’s conference — ran the business track and pitched in on most of the other events to find panelists, etc.
Jon Hart coordinated the ever-popular legal session, while Adnaan Wasey put together the educator’s session. Liz Lufkin and Monte Enbysk coordinated our general sessions, including the keynoters and superpanel. Chet Rhodes and Mindy McAdams ran training for us. Tiffany Shackelford and Chrys Wu had loads of fun as our publicity coordinators and succeeded in getting folks to Toronto in record numbers.
Steve Fox and Dan Berko stepped in to expertly run the student newsroom. Anjali Kapoor rallied the Canadian folks, guided the student journalists and led our on-the-ground efforts to get all the gear ready for conference attendees. Executive Director Lori Schwab was the logistical mastermind and board member Jody Brannon, last year’s chair, joined us each week to give sound advice.
I’ll have a much lesser role in conference planning next year — I’m transitioning to the ONA board and will serve as adviser to the new team of planners. With that in mind, I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for next year’s conference. Conference attendees will also get an e-mail survey.
For those of you who missed it, the conference went off almost seamlessly last week in Toronto. We had three dynamic days with a mix of hands-on training, panel discussions, general sessions and networking events.
For the first time in the organization’s history — it’s almost 10 years old — we sold out registration for the conference and had to turn people away. I’m thrilled because it tells me the conference and the organization are relevant to those interested in or immersed in new media. We aimed for a mix of print and broadcast journalists, non-journalists, educators and technologists to round out this year’s panelists. In shaping the conference, we tried to offer topics that transcended medium and spoke to the needs of our diverse constituency. Although I’m pleased with the lineup we created, there were many fabulous ideas that we left of the planning room floor because of lack of time, space or availability.
If you think this conference isn’t for you or could be better, get involved in planning. Amy Webb is in need of volunteers.
If you missed the conference or particular sessions, be sure to check out the following sites for conference coverage. ONA will also offer the full conference on CD at some point. (Feel free to link to more coverage in the comments):
- ONA student newsroom – indepth conference coverage.
- Cyberjournalist.net – brief roundup of what other coverage.
- BlogTalkRadio – audio interviews with some of those in attendance. (See player below)
- Social Media
- Poynter
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