AAN Web Publishing Conference 2012

Web Conference Program

Thursday, January 26
 

11 am Registration Begins

1:30 to 2:15  pm
Welcome and Opening Session with Guest Speaker Terry Heaton
Terry Heaton is the author of "Reinventing Local Media, volumes one and two" and the popular essay series, "Local Media in a Postmodern World." He also co-wrote "Live. Local. BROKEN News" with his colleagues at AR&D in Dallas. He's a consultant, media innovator, iconoclast, blogger, philosopher, ethics professor and futurist, and he's regarded by most as one of the key thought leaders in the world of media today. Mr. Heaton's concepts of unbundled media, news-as-a-process, the evolving-user paradigm, and many, many other breakthrough ideas have become widely embraced by media organizations in the face of disruptions to the core business model of "the mass."

2:20 to 3:00 pm (concurrent sessions)
How to Get in on the Buy, Even if You're a Small Fry
We'll hear from digital experts on the latest trends in digital buys and how to make sure you don't miss out.
Panel: Blair Barna, Charleston City Paper, Joe Larkin, Voice Media Group, Ian Moray, ValueClick Media

2:20 to 3:00 pm (concurrent sessions)
The Revolution will be Portable: Understanding the Tablet Opportunity
Alternative media organizations need to figure out their tablet strategy. Find out how to engage in a media ecosphere where the tablet is emerging as the dominant consumption device.
Presenter: Stefan Klocek, Cooper

3:15 to 4:10 pm (concurrent sessions)
Tech Tools
A. State of the Art Web Mapping w/ MapBox
(3:15 to 3:45 pm)
Learn how to make beautiful, fast, and interactive maps for web and mobile using the TileMill. This workshop starts with a walk through of how web mapping works, with the core focusing on hands-on learning using TileMill, MapBox's open source design studio, which allows you to design fast and beautiful interactive maps using your own data and share them on the web and mobile. Examples and walk-through demos of making several types of maps in TileMill will target both technical and non-technical users. For example, we will cover the entire workflow of how non-technical users can quickly go from a simple spreadsheet to a custom designed map and then share it from a cloud map hosting service using embeddable widgets and the MapBox API. We will also discuss the opportunities, challenges, and strategies for hosting dynamic tile serving using big datasets like OpenStreetMap.
Presenters: Eric Gundersen and Will White, Mapbox

B. Experience the Upcoming AltWeeklies Content Exchange - Get More Video. Get More Audio. Never Miss a Story Again. (3:45 to 4 pm)
Cont3nt.com has created a private Content Exchange for AAN members to collect, share, & monetize photo and video content. See how you can collaborate with other AAN members to trade stories or share the cost of long-form features. Learn how you can collect high-quality photo & video from your local freelancers as well as thousands of stringers worldwide. Leverage your hyper-local focus to syndicate and monetize your content by selling it to larger outlets. If you're interested in photo & video, you need to come see the AltWeeklies Content Exchange.
Presenter: Anton Gelman, Cont3nt.com

C. DISQUS Presentation (4 to 4:10 pm)

3:15 to 4:10 pm (concurrent sessions)
Twenty Things
Twenty things you can do right now to get more pageviews, make money online, etc. Thing one: come to this session.
Panel: Jack Krawczyk, StumbleUpon, Laura Rich, Street Fight, and Molly Willmott, The Memphis Flyer

4:15 to 4:45 pm
Essential Workflow Tools for a Multi-Platform World
You've heard the terms -- API, open source, HTML5 -- but what do these tools do? And how are they relevant to your publication? We'll remove the curtain and demystify these essential tools that address the workflow problems of publishing a print, web and mobile edition all at once, with limited staff.
Panel: Irakli Nadareishvili, NPR, Shea McKinney, ImageX

4:45 to 5:30 pm
User groups and roundtables

6 to 7:30 pm
Reception


Friday, January 27
 

8:45 - 9:30 am Morning Coffee

9:30 to 10:15 am
Opening Session

A. Welcome and a Word from our Sponsors

B. Why Marketers (and their Agencies) Will Destroy Us, If We Let Them
Greg Stuart is a recognized leader in digital media & advertising and was selected by Ad Age as one of "10 Who Made Their Mark" in 2006, alongside Chad Hurley and Jay-Z. He is the Global CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, a worldwide group of brands, agencies, media and carriers who are working together to build the Mobile Marketing channel. Greg is also former CEO of the U.S. based Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade group for the interactive advertising & marketing industry. Greg has more than two decades of hands-on operating experience as a proven business builder in the digital media and technology arenas since 1993. He has extensive experience as CEO/director/senior executive roles with Y&R, Sony Online Ventures, Cars.com, Flycast Ad Network and other venture-backed businesses. Ad Age identified his book, "What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds," as the "Number one of 10 books you should have read."

10:30 to 11:10 am
How to Build What's Next for News
Entrepreneurial Journalism, author Mark Briggs will discuss the intersection of journalism and entrepreneurship. It's about the new business models for news and the startups and new projects that are flourishing around us, giving us a preview of what's next for news.

11:15 to 11:45 am
Mobile and Tablet Insights, Tools and Best Practices
Speaker: Grace Dolan, Google

11:45 am to 12 pm
Sponsor Presentation: The Business Side of Open Source Mapping with MapBox
Interactive web maps go beyond giving the geographical context of a news story -- they can quickly communicate the complex situation behind a story. Open source mapping tools like MapBox and TileMill make creating custom maps and sharing them online easier than ever. This session will look at the maps and visualizations that can be created with these tools and show how your newsroom can go from a spreadsheet of data to an online interactive map in less than ten minutes. The timing of this is critical, with Google's recent announcement that it's implementing paid usage limits for their maps and adding advertisements for all free map users.
Presenters: Eric Gundersen and Will White, Mapbox

12 to 12:35 pm
Sponsor Presentation: Open Source and Online Publishing: A Match Made in Heaven
Thousands of developers, contributors and people just like you have made Drupal the success it is today. It runs hundreds of thousands of websites, including such household names as Al Jazeera, The Economist, Harvard  University, and thousands of online publications and media sites just like yours.
Presenters: Jenny Hols, ImageX Media, Karen Borchert, Phase2 Technology

12:35 to 1:45 pm
Networking Lunch

1:45 to 2:30 pm (concurrent sessions)
Cool Shit with Data for Free
Sarah Cohen, Duke University's Knight Chair, will lead a session on cool tools to use data and graphics.

1:45 to 2:30 pm (concurrent sessions)

Online Promotions:  What are they, Why do they Matter, and How do they Drive Big Profits?
Advertisers are now media companies themselves...and thus the competition. But right now, there is money to be made and alts are in a good position to own a piece of the market. How do we do so?
Speaker: Matt Coen, co-founder and President of Second Street

2:45 to 3:30 pm (concurrent sessions)
Trends in Digital ads
Website, newsletter, sponsorships and more. We'll discuss what clients are looking for on both a national and local level.
Presenters: Ben Pashman, Centro, and Sarah Kotlova, Digitaria

2:45 to 3:30 pm (concurrent sessions)
What is Your Web Traffic Trying to Tell You? 
Web traffic stats are more than mere circulation reports. Dig past the pageview count, and you'll find a goldmine of data about who your readers are, what they want, and how to engage them. In this session we'll show how easy it is to use tools such as Google Analytics, Clicky, and Chartbeat, to learn about your audience and apply those lessons editorially. We'll also have a live demonstration of real-time analytics, which shows you who's reading what, as it happens.
Panel: Joshua Curry, Charleston City Paper, and Sondra Russell, NPR

3:30 to 4 pm
Exhibitor Break
Here is your chance to visit with our exhibitors and learn about their products and services. 

4 to 4:45 pm
Showcase
Come share your latest app, multimedia story, creative idea, hire...anything you think is cool. Each participant has three minutes and can choose to show slides or a site or an app. Interested in presenting? Email us at web[at]aan.org

5 to 6 pm
Happy Hour with Exhibitors


Saturday, January 28
 

 8:45 - 9:30 am Morning Coffee

 9:30 to 10:30 am
Innovative Revenue Ideas

How do you find new ways to sell out your ad space without selling out your soul? What great ideas can you steal from other papers and from bloggers and marketers? Neil Chase, who put in 25 years as a journalist and journalism professor and then five years on the dark side creating new revenue models, will lead a group brainstorming session where we share ideas, solve each other's problems and come up with new plans that people on both sides of the wall can love.
Presenter: Neil Chase

10:45 to 11:15 am
Change the Revenue Model, Change the Business
In a challenging market, it becomes more clear every day that the revenue model that has sustained the newsmedia for the past century will not carry it into the next one. But in search of new revenue streams, it can be all too easy to get swept away on a costly tide of buzzwords and claptrap. Worse, the temptation comes to simply take the same product and try to sell it in a different form instead of changing the business to suit the revenue model. The good news is that there are only eight fundamental revenue models to keep in mind while leading a publication through a time of considerable change.
Presenter: Pete Mortensen

11:30 am to 12 pm

Social Media and User Engagement
What should you be doing on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+? What should you be doing right at this very minute? What about next month? We'll discuss how to enhance user engagement and make better use of online communities.
Presenter: Anita Zielina, Stanford University

12 to 1 pm
Lunch (included)

1 to 4 pm(concurrent sessions)
Digital Storytelling Workshop
Publishers are vital. Publishers shape, advise, refine and deliver great stories. Successful publishers are Zen masters in print media. Publishers -- especially alternative publishers -- need to serve an audience for whom print is increasingly irrelevant. The audience is rapidly and inexorably moving to IP-based delivery. Taking print stories and simply delivering them on a web page #fails. The web is a new medium. Storytelling is different. Audience expectations are different. There are no Zen masters. Survival mean learning to tell stories in a new medium. This session presents the web as a new medium and examines how to identify the best tools to tell story elements.
Presenter: Jerry Monti, Knight Digital Media Center

1:15 to 2:30 pm (concurrent sessions)
Tablets Are Here to Stay
What are the trends? What should we be developing for tablets and how should we be developing for them?
Presenters:  Shahab Choudhry, Propelics, Jeremy Rue, UC Berkeley, and Jason Dyer, Quickoffice

2:45 to 3:15 pm (concurrent sessions)
Going Nonprofit: Benefits and Downsides
In the last two years there has been a wave of nonprofit news organizations. But did you know the IRS has stopped approving new news media nonprofits? Some have been waiting in line for two years. Some nonprofits can get grants of up to 5 million dollars. But what isn't presented is just how much time and energy then goes into acquiring those grants and how the money is sometimes restricted. Going nonprofit is a viable option but any media entity looking into should be informed.
Presenter: David Cohn

3:15 to 4 pm (concurrent sessions)
Budgeting for Technology Realistically
Web editor/no web editor? Programmer/no programmer? How do you deal with your staffing issues? We'll discuss these and other related issues.
Panel: Amy Austin, Washington City Paper, Stacy Volhein, Village Voice Media, Fran Zankowski, Colorado Springs Independent

4 to 5:30 pm (concurrent OFFSITE sessions)
Killer Video with Your Mobile Device/Smartphone
Yvonne Leow, Associated Press

4 to 5:30 pm (concurrent OFFSITE sessions)
Cool Audio Tips and Tricks
Trainer: Eddie Granillo

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