Become a SRCCON Sponsor

SRCCON events are journalism conferences people love. This reaction comes from the approach SRCCON takes: highly participatory, extraordinarily inclusive, and incredibly embracing of the toughest conversations. The support of sponsors helps make all of that possible. 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 events have adapted to be fully online and in the midst of both a global crisis and a reckoning within journalism. They are unlike other journalism events, and as a sponsor, you’ll be helping us create unique, accessible, and inclusive events to host the frank, challenging, and creative conversations that need to be had in journalism right now.

We’re seeking sponsors for SRCCON events, which host hundreds of participants from news and technology organizations of all sizes. Available sponsorships include:

👏 Partnership sponsors

Support all aspects of the conference planning and program. Partnership sponsors have maximum visibility — your support makes SRCCON possible.

👉 Accessibility sponsors

You’re directly supporting our accessibility offerings including things like scholarship tickets, attendance and caregiving stipends, and live transcription. Accessibility is one of our most visible sponsorships across the entire program — because you are literally helping us make SRCCON available to as many people as possible.

🙌 Break sponsors

Create spaces for attendees to connect in virtual hallways and hangout spaces. We know that these spaces have created lifelong connections between participants, and extremely meaningful.

👌 Event sponsors

Help us with all the finishing touches on the event. Show your support by helping us put on what our participants frequently say is “the best conference I’ve ever been to.”

Each sponsorship includes at least 1 free ticket and different types of visibility and recognition throughout the event (we also offer the chance to sign up for a sponsorship package across several events). 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 our events and make them 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. At SRCCON events, participants come first so they can focus on collaborating on the work at hand. Over this time SRCCON has:

Welcomed more than 1,500 participants, with a healthy mix of new and returning attendees each time.
Hosted over 300 interactive, collaborative sessions on topics ranging from archiving and algorithms to management and self-care.
Provided scholarship support to help 250 participants and facilitators attend these events.
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. This year, we’re planning to offer digital accessibility across international timezones, and intentional programming for how attendees can digitally connect based on their needs.
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. Each event is set up to allow participants to focus on getting to know each other and learn from the wisdom in the room. About a third of participants also facilitate sessions, leading conversations and skillshares that help people bring new ideas and experience back to their newsrooms.

The SRCCON 2019 audience and program included:

Half of attendees identify as women and almost a quarter as people of color.
A quarter of participants are in leadership roles.
About a third are developers or engineers.
Other roles include data journalists, designers, product managers, and reporters.
The diversity of attendees also includes the size and nature of the organizations attendees represent, including staff from large and small companies that are, or work with news organizations—including attendees from tech companies, universities and colleges and more.
Sessions digging into best practices for all kinds of teams and so many techniques, including developing product teams, editing data, ethical advertising, managing in local news, and more.
A schedule designed around our facilitated session format that enables attendees to engage deeply in a purposeful way.

SRCCON 2019 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.

“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.”

“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.”

Interested in having your company or organization become a sponsor of SRCCON events? Get in touch with OpenNews Executive Director Erika Owens today.