There are a variety of ways to get involved with ONA’s annual conference, detailed below. Some include complimentary registration.
Subscribe to the ONA26 Newsletter for regular updates about the annual conference.
Open opportunities
Volunteer!
Each year we rely on a wonderful group of volunteers to help us make our conference environment warm and welcoming for all attendees. Volunteers work alongside the most innovative people in journalism, and finish the conference with the satisfaction that they’ve helped successfully support one of the biggest events in the field.
Selected applicants will receive complimentary registration to ONA26.
Sponsor the conference
If your organization is looking to connect with innovators in digital media, we provide a wide variety of compelling sponsorship opportunities and can craft something to meet your goals and needs. Reach out to Head of Strategic Partnerships Hanaa Rifaey: hanaa@journalists.org.
Present at ONA26
The ONA26 Suggestion Box is now closed and pitches for conference breakout sessions and cohort meetups are no longer being accepted.
We are looking for ideas for attendee-generated programming, including Table Talks discussions and Unconference sessions, pitch now via this form, and see below for more information. Successful pitchers are not entitled to complimentary conference registration and must be registered attendees.
Table Talks
Table Talks are highly-participatory conversations tackling major issues in digital journalism. About 50 simultaneous Talks will run over sequential hour-long blocks from 9:00 – 10:00 and 10:00 – 11:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, March 30, with each successful pitcher expected to “host” a Table of up to 10 attendees. Compelling Table Talks ideas can be discursive or tightly-focused, light in tone or deadly-serious, should be accessible to participants of all backgrounds and experience, and must not be lectures, advertisements, free consultations.
Unconference
Unconference sessions are attendee-generated and voted-upon programming that are less formal and require less planning than traditional conference offerings. Running in sequential 60-minute blocks from 10:30-11:30 AM and 12-1 PM on Wednesday, April 1, these open-source concepts will close the ONA26 conference. Great Unconference sessions tend to be participatory and responsive to ideas generated closer to and during the conference. Think of this as extra space and time to dive into a particular issue or topic that you’d like to discuss in more depth during ONA26.