When we began planning ONA14, we agreed not to have a specific conference theme. There’s simply too many exciting endeavors in the field of journalism to narrow our conference down to any singular focus. That said, there are a number of topics that are emerging as threads this year:
Start-ups and Star Power
Can any of us remember another stretch when so many media start-ups emerged, and with so much star power behind them? Consider First Look Media, Vox.com, OZY, Re/Code and Syria Deeply. There’s been a tremendous shift of news talent to new and innovative properties. Investor types are getting into the game as well, including Jeff Bezos’ high-profile purchase of the Washington Post, 21st Century Fox’s $70 million investment in Vice Media, and the News Corp acquisition of Storyful. We’re thrilled to highlight this energy around entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the conference. We’ll host a sit-down with Melissa Bell of Vox.com, Lara Setrakian of Syria Deeply and Kara
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Swisher of Re/Code about what it’s like to craft the team and tech behind a new venture. We’ll also hear from entrepreneurs from around the world about reaching into various global markets. Black Girls Code? Bezos? More established entities are hardly lacking in innovation. Consider a session on journalism outlets hosting a number of creative In Real Life events as fundraisers, or Google’s work around crisis mapping. Vice, NBC News Digital, and Al Jazeera will share their successes in creating original video content for the web.
Digital Journalism Collides With The Physical World
The promise of wearable tech and a “programmable world” hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice, particularly following buzz in the wake of dozens of new products introduced at CES and SXSW. The adaptation of these tools for news represents the collision of online news with our offline world. Robert Hernandez from USC Annenberg will discuss the future of wearable tech and augmented reality as it relates to journalism. Dan Pacheco and Lorne Covington of Syracuse University, Nonny de la Peña, and Steven King at UNC are pushing this concept even further, examining “a new wave of environmentally responsive devices” such as the Oculus Rift and the Kinect, that allow users to move through — and even into — information spaces. On the business side of news, Damon Kiesow will talk about how iBeacon and other Bluetooth Low Energy technology represents new opportunities for location-aware products, both for newsrooms and for advertisers. Further, I would argue that some civic tech initiatives — plentiful in our host city of Chicago — are starting to bridge the gap between our ease of access to news to our desire to take actions to better our communities. In other words, these initiatives help us create concrete social change. Take Derek Lieu and Jue Yang of Development Seed, who are working to map foreclosures and other mortgage-related data. Or Tara Conley of Media Make Change, who will show her innovative and collaborative approach to connecting court-affected youth to civic initiatives.
Communicating Complex Ideas
There’s no field that represents the world’s complexity better than science. And scientific revelations over the past 25 years — with the ability to aggregate knowledge from around the globe — are starting to illuminate just how complex our environment really is. From climate change to advances in understanding brain function to looking across our entire galaxy, science represents a challenge for journalists: how do we distill complex ideas into an engaging, informative narrative? Even a task as superficially simple as cataloguing the earth’s species is a tremendously complicated undertaking. Thank goodness, then, for the work of AMAZING KEYNOTE, who seem to effortlessly communicate complex ideas with grace and humor. And for Emily Graslie, who teaches us not only that innovations happen each and every in museums — but that communicating science via web videos can be fun, elegant, and doesn’t need to be “dumbed down” for the public. In fact, no matter how complex the issue is, there are ways to break it down to make meaningful narrative for your audience. A. Adam Glenn of CUNY, Reggie Murphy of Electronic Ink, and Laura Cochran of Condé Nast will lead a workshop on human centered design that will help illuminate how to engage your audience in complex science — even on an issue as thorny as climate change — at the local level.