Become a SRCCON Sponsor
“You all are leading the way on how to have a great conference that is welcoming for everyone, and someday the tech industry will be so much better off when it adopts what you’ve done.”
“This was the first conference I’ve been a part of where I felt I belonged on every level.”
SRCCON is a journalism conference people love. This reaction comes from the approach SRCCON takes: highly participatory and extraordinarily inclusive. We’re grateful for the support of sponsors in helping make this event possible.
Help Make SRCCON Happen
We’re seeking sponsors for SRCCON 2019, which will host 300 participants in Minneapolis on July 11-12.
Available sponsorships include:
- Lead sponsorship and partnership sponsors - core supporters who make it possible to keep ticket prices low, offer facilitation training to session leaders, and support all attendees in having a great experience
- Accessibility sponsors - support for scholarships, transcription, and childcare
- Meal and snacks sponsors - helping keep attendees nourished throughout the event
- Event sponsors - help make the entire event possible
- Special event sponsors for local organizations - a chance for local media and technology companies and foundations to connect with a national audience
Each sponsorship includes at least 1 free ticket and different types of visibility and recognition throughout the event. Contact Erika Owens for a full kit with pricing and further details. We love chatting with folks to find the best way we can collaborate to welcome your team to the event and make it inclusive for all attendees!
What Is SRCCON
OpenNews has been hosting SRCCON annually since 2014, and added a series of smaller, topical conferences starting in 2017 with SRCCON:WORK and continuing in 2018 with SRCCON:POWER. At SRCCON conferences, participants come first so they can focus on collaborating on the work at hand. Over this time SRCCON has:
- welcomed 1,400 participants, with a healthy mix of new and returning attendees each time.
- hosted 293 interactive, collaborative sessions on topics ranging from archiving and algorithms to management and self-care.
- provided scholarship support to help 193 participants and facilitators attend the event.
- operated with inclusion and accessibility as core design features, providing live transcription, childcare, tasty food and drink for all dietary needs, and a schedule with space to refresh and connect.
- created a code of conduct and incident response plan that supports attendees and has influenced the journalism community, including ONA and IRE conferences.
- led to countless job connections, innovative project ideas and collaborations, and new organizational policies on hiring, inclusion, mentorship, workflow, development processes, and more.
Who Attends and Why
People come first at SRCCON. The entire event is set up to allow participants to focus on getting to know each other and learn from the wisdom in the room. A third of participants also facilitate sessions, leading conversations and skillshares that help folks bring new ideas and experience back to their newsrooms.
The SRCCON 2018 audience included:
- 304 attendees from New York and DC, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Louisville, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Knoxville, Spokane, Durham, Iowa Falls, and numerous other cities throughout the U.S. and beyond.
- participants from a range of editorial and/or technical roles. About 25% of participants are in a senior, editor, or other leadership role. About 20% are in a developer or engineer role. Other roles represent about 10% of attendees each, including data, design, product, and reporting.
- about half of attendees identify as women and about a quarter identify as people of color.
- companies represented include news organizations, journalism-serving organizations, tech companies in and near journalism, academia, and more. These organizations reflect the range of companies involved in journalism, from giant coastal papers and digital operations to nonprofit outlets, local papers that are part of national chains, privately held orgs, and related tech companies and startups.
SRCCON 2018 participants attended because:
- they wanted to discuss challenges facing their teams every day. The entire SRCCON schedule was built from session pitches from attendees, including topics like: technical communication, collaboration, engagement, algorithms, news nerd career paths, security, accessibility, supporting journalists of color, data viz, management, and more.
- they wanted to (and reported being able to!) build stronger network connections, to find new strategies to take back to their newsroom, and to learn more about new tools and tactics to improve their journalism.
“My job very much straddles the line between technology and the newsroom and in 20 years of being in the newspaper (media) business, this is the first conference I’ve been to that I felt like was specifically for me. I could contribute meaningfully to every session I went to.”
Why Sponsor SRCCON
For journalism-technologists, newsroom leaders (both formal and informal), and others seeking to change journalism for the better, SRCCON is where they can sit down away from the deadlines and the day-to-day and learn from each other. We want you to help make that happen.
About the 2018 program:
- sessions included a kickoff kit for new teams starting off, a discussion of rebuilding ad tech, a product design exercise for membership programs, and a wide range of additional sessions with tons of transcripts, notes, and resources documented.
- designed around our facilitated session format that enables attendees to engage deeply in a purposeful way.
- with a Thursday evening program of hobby talks, games, dinner, and a walking tour that a third of participants went on (including one kiddo in a stroller), after an emotionally intense day.
Sponsors help us make this event unique and accessible by keeping our ticket price well below cost, getting people to the event, and bringing in the special touches that make SRCCON… SRCCON. As one attendee put it, “The structure of the program and the attention to detail and people’s needs is what makes this an exceptional and special event.” Sponsors are what make the detail, intentional design, and accessibility all possible.
“SRCCON is the best conference I go to all year. It’s so thoughtful and well planned. I feel happy, safe, and informed.” (all quotations from SRCCON attendees in post-event surveys)
Interested in having your company or organization become a sponsor of SRCCON? Get in touch with OpenNews Executive Director Erika Owens today.