In the spirit of the West Coast and Silicon Valley, join us in the Midway, an arena full of tools, journalism innovators, social lounges, and more. This is the space for you to explore new tech, get hands-on trainings with new and familiar colleagues, and be inspired by some of the leading innovators in the field.
There’s a whole circus of events happening in this space from Friday, Sept. 21, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 22, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The full list of participants can be found here. Be sure to keep checking back, as we’ll be adding new names as they come in. A full schedule of events can be found here.
Here’s a quick overview:
- The Midway stage: See demos, presentations and short talks given by journalists, technologists, program managers, investors and entrepreneurs in 15-minute bursts.
- Social lounges: Join Google, Twitter and Tumblr in one of their social lounges! Get advice during office hours with leaders in digital journalism or talk collaboration in ad-hoc discussions with startup project leads. Whether a scheduled workshop, a hands-on training or an opportunity to talk with a new connection, these lounges will play host to your key moments at ONA12.
- Participant tables: Stroll through more than 30 tables featuring tools, start-ups and journalism projects.
- Innovator’s table: Think of this as a community table of journalism innovators. To accommodate those attending the rest of the conference, we created a common space for innovators who want to schedule time in the Midway to share their projects or to pop in during free time. Look for the Midway calendar, where we will house, and update daily, a schedule of participants.
- Hack space: Powered by Soundcloud, this is an open work space for all conference attendees. Come get some work done or develop a new idea. We’ve also invited projects from Wednesday’s Techraking II: Gaming the News and Thursday’s Hacks/Hackers Hacking at ONA12 to continue working in the Midway, leveraging the assistance of the many on-site tools. Select projects will be featured on the Midway stage!
- Interactive projects: Nonny de la Peña brings us her moving presentation, “Hunger in LA,” in which she recreates an eyewitness account of an actual crisis in a food-bank line using game-development tools, Unity 3-D, a body-tracking system, and a head-mounted goggle display, along with live audio she collected during the incident. Experience first-hand the power of immersive news reporting. A sign-up sheet for the experience will be available next week.
