As the economy and breakneck media developments put 2009 through its paces, attendance at the Online News Association conference has become more relevant—and more important—than ever. ONA09 conference chairs and committees have been hard at work to find session topics and experts that speak to the dynamic times we find ourselves in but also look beyond to emerging technology, our evolving roles and new opportunities.

In other words, we’ve made sure that every minute is worth the trip.

Here’s the program for the conference, Oct. 1-3 at the Hilton San Francisco. Specific times, as well as speakers and panelists, will be announced throughout the coming weeks. We hope you’ll join us to share excitement over what the future holds, meet with old friends and make lots of new ones.

Thursday, Oct. 1

Pre-Conference Workshops

• Learn how to unlock the power of the Facebook API
• Take a look inside IDEO, the global design consultancy, to experience its unique methods of observation, prototyping, building and storytelling
• Video expert Chet Rhodes of washingtonpost.com and multimedia guru Richard Koci Hernandez, a Ford fellow at the Knight Digital Media Center, guide you through beginning and advanced video and multimedia production
• Aron Pilhofer from New York Times Interactive shares techniques in data-driven/graphical storytelling
• Where’s the money? J-Lab’s Jan Schaffer joins us to tell you about the new forms of foundation and grant funding emerging in the new media ecosystem

Keep an eye out: Registration for Pre-Conference Workshops will open shortly.

Career Summit & Job Fair
This year, we’ve expanded the Job Fair into a full-fledged Career Summit, with up to 50 recruiters from major and independent media and Bay Area technology companies, as well as up to 150 attendees. Whatever your career stage, sessions are targeted to help you chart your digital future. Speakers include representatives from Google, LinkedIn and Federated Media, as well as seasoned career coaches, executive search professionals and journalists-turned-entrepreneurs Susan Mernit and Amy Webb.

Career Summit & Job Fair: Schedule :: Recruiter FAQ :: Attendees :: Register

Friday and Saturday, Oct. 2 and 3

The conference opens Friday with a keynote address from Twitter CEO Evan Williams and moves right into our expert panels and popular Multimedia Learning Lab. We break for Lunch with Leo (Laporte, that is). On Saturday, Blogher’s Lisa Stone provides the welcome, along with insights into her growing media empire.

Multimedia Learning Lab

• Four cool new web apps for journalists
• Omniture/Google Analytics: React in real time with sophisticated metrics at your fingertips
• Producing content with your high-end phone: The new mojo travels much lighter these days
• Enterprising with Twitter: The next level
• Live streaming: All live, all the time — once an exaggeration and now possible with free web-streaming technology
• From Flip to Web via iMovie: Learn how to turn around a story using a Flip camera and iMovie
• Mapping applications with RSS: Generate an RSS feed and use it to power an online map
• How to handle text and spreadsheets: Leverage the power of regular expressions and spreadsheets in new and wonderful ways

Panels
The Back End

• The return of Amy Webb with “Ten tech trends you’ve still never heard of”
• What you can really learn from your audience and site metrics
• In-depth Q&A on digital legal issues
• Real-life lessons from real-live entrepreneurs
• The answer to the question: Is there really a perfect CMS?
• Semantic web: Can it save your site?

The Front End

• Finding the great stories in them thar databases
• Giving your content love ‘handles’ with widgets, Facebook, Twitter, and lots, lots more
• Journalism for – and from – the mobile generation
• Covering the economic collapse using the coolest tools
• Best practices and common pitfalls when using the social Web
• Special tricks and techniques to attract online readers, including Google’s spiders
• Using design studies to learn how readers interact with Web sites
• Taming video, the Wild, Wild West of the Web

Pitch your bright idea at ‘6 in 60’: Got an idea for a website, tool or widget but unsure of how to take it the next level? Come see how it’s done in the Silicon Valley in a real-life pitch-and-crit session, before a panel of Bay area venture capitalists, a successful media entrepreneur and a product developer. Those watching will not only get an idea of what the hot new ideas are, you’ll also learn effective pitching techniques and how you can grow your own idea into a business.

End each day with a celebration

• Thursday: Opening reception, highlighted by ONA’s 10th Anniversary party.
• Friday: Networking Event, featuring an informal discussion with our expert panel of futurists.
• Saturday: The Online Journalism Awards Banquet, celebrating the best in digital journalism.

Register for ONA09 | Register for Career Summit & Job Fair | Reserve a room
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