Join Michael Hollett, editor and publisher of host NOW Magazine, for a brief welcome to the 33rd Annual Convention,.

Cultivating the Online Culture: How can editors lead their newsrooms from being once-a-week producers to reporting and writing on a more daily schedule? Moderator: Matt Kettmann, The Santa Barbara Independent

Mister Publisher, Tear Down That Wall! As alt-weeklies continue to adapt to new models, what is keeping editorial from listening to the ad department more, and vice versa? Why doesn't the ad dept take more leads from edit? In a Web 2.0 world, has the wall become lower already? Can't we just smash through it altogether? Moderator: Jeff Lawrence, Weekly Dig

Survey Says...: Online tools allow us to create and distribute surveys to our readers, to "listen" to them on Facebook and Twitter, and to invite them participate in crowdsourcing our stories. We can collect and collate their feedback in all sorts of interesting ways. So what are we asking them? And what do we do with that information? At this roundtable we'll discuss creative and practical ways to gather and use reader feedback. Please bring ideas, success stories and cautionary tales. Moderator: Cathy Resmer, Seven Days

Admittance of online publications to AAN would require a bylaws change. Members will have a chance to weigh-in on this potential move at this moderated town hall meeting.

From Guatemala to Indonesia and Russia to Zimbabwe, Media Development Loan Fund serves independent news outlets that have managed to survive and prosper in countries facing wrenching political and economic transitions, while making critical contributions to the advancement of democratic development there. Harlan Mandel, MDLF's deputy managing director, will share the stories of some of these heroes of journalism and how they seized opportunities during times of chaos and change to build successful news businesses. Perhaps these stories can offer some hope and inspiration for all independent news publishers as they navigate this challenging time of dramatic change for the whole news industry.

With the Web -- and now mobile -- there are so many different ways to tell stories. How do you choose the right platform for the story? How do you choose what parts in which ways? This session will help you sort through the story forms and learn to make good choices.

In 2010 journalism is increasingly about location, location, location. News organizations and independent media producers are using location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla to add contextual layers to stories, break news, act as community guides, and engage readers. Learn how this smartphone-based technology is helping us reimagine the news in our communities.

Gone are the days when redesign meant new fonts, maybe a new logo, perhaps moving things around or jazzing up your covers. Today, any relevant redesign starts with a question of revenue. What innovations can we design to pull in new advertisers, retain those at risk, or lure back those lost? How do we create new editorial "WOW" -- probably on a shoestring -- to anchor those premium spots? How do we pull in the sales teams as early as possible, devise marketing messages with punch, and create stronger marriages with editorial? This session will include a look inside the just-launched rethink of Atlanta's Creative Loafing, and a glimpse at the process that may be used at Washington City Paper and other publications contemplating change. 

Mike Webb, ProPublica's director of communications, will discuss the various ways the investigative nonprofit newsroom can help you with your reporting. He'll explain the roots and goals of the organization, their partnership process and the many tools they've made available that can help you with your own investigations. From their Reporting Matchmaking to their Stimulus Recovery Tracker to their Reporting Recipe and more, ProPublica shares data and information to help you write stories that will have impact.

You've been focused on doing more with less, for too long…
In a competitive market that is challenging every assumption and actively reinventing itself from the bottom up, your business model is going through more contortions than you could have dreamed, even five years ago. The only thing you know for sure is your cost structure; your revenue model is completely up in the air. Traditional sources are drying up faster than new ones can be found and tapped, and the only thing you've known for certain is that you've had to cut costs to survive. You must grow your balance sheet and not by acquiring assets or committing to new expenses, but through the contribution and ROI you are receiving from your existing capital base -- primarily your human capital.
Jan van der Hoop of HiringSmart, offers organizations a proven approach to staffing that leads to better business results. He will take you through a step-by-step process that will help you and your organization:
• Understand the factors that drive performance and productivity
• Discover what characteristics separate top performers from poor performers
• Learn how to measure what matters
• Plan concrete steps to improve your top line and your bottom line

Four months before a Toyota Lexus accelerated out of control in California and killed four people -- ultimately resulting in Toyota's recall of millions of cars -- Houston Press staff writer Paul Knight published his investigation into unintended acceleration of the Toyota Prius. Although the Prius was the darling of the environmentally conscious, Knight had started hearing accounts from owners that their cars had gotten away from them and in some cases crashed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had done a few brief investigations and found nothing while Toyota was claiming either driver error or loose floor mats were the culprits. As Knight's story demonstrated and now as the world knows, that was not the case. In this panel, Houston Press Editor Margaret Downing and Paul Knight will discuss the reporting methods used to produce this piece of journalism.

Simon Owens, social media consultant, online journalist and founder of Bloggasm, will provide demonstrations on how he pitches bloggers, social media users, and online journalists to secure hits for articles and stories. In addition to showing the different measures for gauging reader engagement and how to retain more long-term readers, he will discuss the impact of online social news communities like Digg and Reddit and how to solicit help from those communities to drive traffic. Most importantly, Simon will stress the importance of journalists maintaining their own personal online "brands" that exist outside the publications for which they work. He will also present the results of a social media survey sent out to AAN member papers.

Patricia Martin, expert on commerce and culture, and author of the book, "RenGen: Renaissance Generation," reveals what to expect from the coming cycle of re-birth. Known for using culture as a medium to reach communities of consumers, Martin takes you on a journey to the heart of the social movements forming the next wave of prosperity. Having worked with some of world's most respected brands including Dannon, Discovery Channel, Microsoft and Target, Martin delivers:
• Competitive insight -- Discover how independent news and information fit into the next cycle of cultural change.
• Innovative ideas -- Get insight from the rarely revealed social experiments of Google, Red Bull, Ford Motor and others to engage your audience in new ways.
• Strategic thinking -- Create emotional bonds with your community that translate back to your advertisers.

iPad: It ain't gonna save us...but our papers look great on it, and we can make some money off it! With the launch of the iPad, Apple is creating a third category of mobile devices positioned between smartphones and laptop computers. The bad news is, it's not going to save newspapers by itself. The good news is, our content--and our ads--look fantastic on it. There is money to be made and there's an opportunity for AAN papers to create digital versions of their products with innovative features, such as gps targeted ads and listings, to make the digital paper reading experience profitable and enjoyable to the reader. Hear from both outside experts and AAN papers that are investigating iPad development and business opportunities.

Those people formerly known as the audience are consuming plenty of media, but a lot of it is generated by their pals, crowd-created on Twitter and Facebook, or by some guy in Lawrence, Kansas, whose cat plays a pretty mean piano. How can professionally generated content -- give or take, this is AAN we're talking about -- compete and rise above the clutter? We'll talk about friending social media in a new informational ecosystem.

Let's face it: most AAN editors' rely on a small team of reporters to deliver (nonstop) front and back section stories -- hopefully high quality, hopefully on deadline. But in this recessionary era with smaller papers and staffs, the hard-hitting investigative pieces, long the staple of our newspapers, seem more daunting to produce, even with technology on our side. In this session, we'll hear from three experienced editors and reporters before opening it up to the floor, with the goal of generating up to 12 ideas -- hopefully 13 -- to take home and get to work starting Monday. We're looking for easy to produce, highly relevant, bureaucratic busting stories that you and your readers will find satisfying, begging for more. Who are the public employees in your city or county that make over $100,000 per year, and what would their salaries be if in the same job in the private sector? Who's the local attorney who reaps more from city hall assigned cases? How many pounds of Round-Up® were sprayed in your favorite city park? Which arts organization spent the most on administrative expenses versus programming? We're looking for some easy how-tos on FOI requests, and some clever new ideas to take home so that you and your editorial team are ready and willing. Plus, we'll brainstorm for a bonus 13th quick investigative story idea, one that a bunch of us might undertake in the same month in the next 12 months and publish in our local markets the same week, a collective AAN project. Sharpen your pencils, charge up your iPads, we're going deep, fast. Moderated by the winner of AAN's Best Story Panel Competition, Bradley Zeve.

Newsroom staffing levels, freelance pay rates, page counts--this session is about the nitty gritty. In advance of this editors-only session, AAN editors will have the opportunity to fill out a survey that addresses various benchmarks, as well as queries about how they deploy their resources. The survey will ultimately be collated and available in the AAN resource library as an editorial standards document. The session will consist of a lively free-wheeling discussion about how editors are using their budgets and staffs with the goal of generating new ideas and inspiration.

With 650 publishers and printers signed on, Canopy is one of the smartest eco-orgs working to save the forests today. Transformation among newsprint consumers (that's us) and commercial printers across the continent has been their key focus since 2006. The results have been astounding. Find out what's actually happened in the Boreal Forest based on their work. Hint, the caribou are smiling. How does Canopy define green? And hear how some of our own have defined it for themselves.