San Francisco Jan. 24 - 26, 2013

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AAN's 2013 Digital Conference in San Francisco will still deliver the same networking and learning experience you expect from AAN confabs, but we're moving beyond the web browser and diving deep into mobile and digital revenue strategy. So pack your bags, darling. It's time for our annual rendezvous in that gorgeous city by the Bay.

Schedule

Thursday, Jan. 24

12 to 5 p.m.
Registration

1 to 2 p.m.
Foundation Users Group

2 to 3 p.m.
Start-up Showcase: Tools from Silicon Valley and beyond
Presenters: Dave Cohn, Circa, Kat Topaz, Storycode, Lindsay Watt, Placeling

3 to 3:30 p.m.
The Tablet Universe
It's not just iPads anymore. As we enter Year 3 of the tablet-buying frenzy, what direction should news products be going to adapt to tablets? And where's the money?
Presenters: David Weir, 7x7.com, Erik Lundberg, W3i

3:30 to 3:45 p.m.
Sponsor Introductions: Town News and Family Features

4 to 5:30 p.m.
Mobile Strategy
As mobile devices become more popular as a way for consumers to access information, publishers are challenged to provide their users with content that can be viewed on tablets and smartphones. This workshop explores publisher monetization models and offers ways to capitalize on the mobile trends while supporting existing revenue streams.
Presenter: Tina Barnes

6 p.m.
Welcome Happy Hour

Friday Jan. 25

9 to 9:55 a.m.
General Session
Fran Zankowski, Colorado Springs Independent, AAN Board President and Tiffany Shackelford, AAN: Welcome
Kevin Anderson: Independent Journalism: Doing good and doing well
Lisa Skube reports on The New News Frontier: How are localized media partnerships creating real impact? Partnering with Kevin Anderson in the opening keynote, we'll hear from Lisa Skube founder and director of the Journalism Accelerator (JA), a new online nonprofit that hosts qualified conversation and reports on emerging forms of sustainability across news markets. Practitioners across news verticals (e.g. broadcast, public media, radio, new media, legacy) reveal practical techniques, both the pros and cons, through the exchange of ideas in hosted online conversations across the JA. In 2012, the JA explored how the field of news is redefining and creating sustainability across neighborhood, town, city, regional, franchised, niche and legacy news business models across the US. Lisa's talk explores new context breaking from the front lines of the digital frontier. She'll share a few examples of new partnership experiments, news ways peers are learning through collaboration, why metrics matter and a collection of practical tools others are using to play "what's working" forward.

9:55 to 11:05 a.m. (Concurrent sessions.)
Editors' Round Table: How Are You Feeding the 24-Hour Online Newsbeast in Your Midst?
As more and more of our work revolves around the Web and social media (and we're spending more and more time on them), alt-weekly editors are also confronting many of the same challenges. The Editors' Round Table will be a chance to ask questions, share solutions to common problems and feel like you're not alone when deciding how best to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. We'll also discuss what you've discovered works -- and doesn't work -- on your website ... with an eye NOT toward driving clicks, but rather toward satisfying your readers. Do our readers want and expect slideshows? Podcasts? Original video? Spotify playlists? Endless videos of kittens kittens kittens? And how can we deliver these things without compromising our integrity or spending a lot of time and money -- oh, yeah, and while getting out a newspaper at the same time? No experts, except for us -- the editors ourselves, sharing our hard-earned knowledge. And a bit of bitching and whining. Because we're all experts when it comes to that, dammit.
Moderator: Kevin Allman, Gambit

9:55 to 11:05 a.m. (Concurrent sessions.)
Ad Trends: Get ready to go big.
Too often media companies wait for RFPs to be sent out, then scramble for 24 hours to put together a haphazard proposal that doesn't get accepted. Why? Because you are not being proactive. Brands are looking for something different, and if you and your network are just offering up banner ads, you WILL fail. It is time to get proactive. AAN papers' target demo has huge reach for the brands with the most money--beer and liquor, soft and energy drinks, insurance companies and mobile. You have the users, now you have to get creative and pitch multiplatform campaigns that utilize web, print, mobile, branded content and street teams to deliver a compelling package to the agencies. This money is going to blog networks--networks which have a much smaller reach and not as many platforms as you. It is time to step up, devote a little time and resources, and get creative and assertive when it comes to national brand advertising.
Moderator: Blair Barna, Charleston City Paper. Panel: Adam Bunshoft, COG1, Bill Jensen, Joe Larkin, VMG Advertising, Rodney Mayers, Proximic

11:20 to 11:55 a.m
Keynote Address: Brewster Kahle

11:55 a.m to 1 p.m.
Internet Law
Where did you get that photo? How many seconds of a song can you use? Is it OK to embed video from just anywhere on the interwebs? And what exactly is the butt hurt report? This session will cover some basic legal info to keep you from unknowingly cribbing work that may get your boss sued.
Presenter: Kevin Goldberg, Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth

1 to 2 p.m.
Lunch at Argonaut Hotel

2 to 4:15 p.m. (Concurrent sessions.)
Alternative Digital Revenue Strategies
Some alts are now the most innovative in their market. What are your colleagues doing that's working? What have they tried that didn't? And what's on your radar? Product presentations to include: cXense from Rob Wescott and Mikal Rohde, cXense; Infogroup from John Heaston, The Reader, Scott Murtaugh, Infogroup, and Jeffrey Khadavi, Infogroup; and Web Services from Jody Colley, East Bay Express, Shahbano Imran and David Toupilov, LocalOn;
Facilitator: Molly Willmott, The Memphis Flyer. Facilitator/Presenter: Andy Sutcliffe, Salt Lake City Weekly

2 to 3 p.m. (Concurrent sessions.)
HTML5 Overview
As the web moves faster towards platform independent design, HTML5 and responsive design are considered essential building blocks for sites intended for mobile, tablet, and desktop display. This session will explore the options that come with new design approaches as well the basics of HTML5. There will be some code demonstration, but it's also intended as an overview to help publishers and editors communicate better with their web teams. We'll be looking at the Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery Mobile frameworks, as well as a few other approaches.
Presenter: Joshua Curry

3:15 to 4:15 p.m. (Concurrent sessions.)
Usability
Terri Ducay will provide tips and tricks on how to achieve more users and advertising with the content and structure you have in place.

4:15 to 4:45 p.m.
Using SEO and SEM to Make More Digital Dollars
Presenter: Will Scott, Search Influence

4:45 to 5:15 p.m.
Social Media Check-in
Moderator: Kelly Ferguson, Arkansas Times

Saturday Jan. 26
ONACamp (Funded by a generous grant from the Gannett Foundation.)

9 to 10 a.m.
Building Online Communities on Tumblr
Presenter: Mark Coatney, Tumblr

10 to 11 a.m.
Google Fusion 101

11 to 11:15 a.m.
Partner presentation by Tagwhat

11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Digital Diversity
We want diversity in our newsrooms and in our portfolios, so why not in our digital space? We'll look at ways to incorporate diversity with the goals of broadening your reach and increasing your advertising dollars.
Presenter: Doug Mitchell

12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Lunch at Argonaut Hotel

1:30 to 2:30 p.m.
Metrics and Analytics
How they influence editorial and business strategy. Learn fast, quick smart ways to get guidance on what's working and what's not.
Presenter: Joaquin Alvarado, Chief Strategy Officer, California Watch

2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Thinking Like a Startup
How do you develop an entrepreneurial mindset? Think about what's new and what's next. Don't be afraid to fail -- revise your plan if you do. Figure out what's going to work in 30 days. Even if you aren't a startup, innovation, creativity and reevaluating "what is" will keep your organization moving forward.
Presenter: Latoya Peterson

3:45 to 4 p.m.
WordPress in the Newsroom
WordPress now powers 17.4% of the web. Millions have found it the best tool to publish online and for mobile, including many top media companies. Come learn why WordPress is a powerful CMS, a platform for revenue generation, and a wise investment for the long term.
Presenter: Daniel Bachhuber

4 to 4:45 p.m.
Network Strategies
Many news sites are built with the expectation that they're an end destination for users. A network strategy calls for finding the readers where they are (an old print circulation strategy) and not expecting them to come to you. Presenter: Deborah Petersen, Senior Editor -- Mobile & Social Media, San Jose Mercury News @deborapetersen

4:45 to 5:15 p.m.
Wrap-Up General Session and Happy Hour!

Please note: the daily schedules are subject to changes.

Speakers

Kevin Allman is a writer, journalist, and the editor of The Gambit, the alt-weekly newspaper in New Orleans. Kevin's work has appeared in newspapers including The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as well as in magazines including Details,Vogue, and Publishers Weekly.

Before joining the Center for Investigative Reporting, Joaquin Alvarado served as senior vice president for digital innovation at American Public Media and founding senior vice president for diversity and innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He is the founder of CoCo Studios, which promotes media collaboration and game development for fiber and mobile networks. Joaquin was the founding director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet, which launched in 2005 from San Francisco State University. In 2004, Joaquin began the National Public Lightpath, advocating high-speed, fiber-optic network as the next generation of the Internet. Alvarado holds a bachelor's degree in Chicano Studies from UC Berkeley and an MFA from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television. He serves on the boards of TechSoup Global and DEI -- the public broadcasting development association. He is the co-author of "Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art." He lives with his wife and two children in Oakland.

Kevin Anderson, journalist, journalism trainer and digital strategist, has joined the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF) to help their clients make the digital transition. Kevin will be editor of the Knowledge Bridge, a blog, digital resource center and newsletter -- to be launched in May -- that will capture the best in actionable digital business and editorial strategy for news media in the Majority World. He will also help identify clients' wider digital capacity building needs and deliver targeted training. After starting his journalism career in newspapers, Kevin shifted to digital journalism in 1996. In 1998, he became the first online journalist for the BBC outside of the US, based in the BBC's flagship Washington bureau. He joined The Guardian in 2006 as their first blogs editor. Two years later, he became digital research editor at the newspaper, helping identify and implement new technologies to support the newspaper's world-class journalism.

Daniel Bachhuber is a developer with Automattic's WordPress.com VIP, where he helps large media companies and brands innovate with WordPress. He's fascinated by the intersection of publishing and technology, particularly advancing editorial workflow. Previously he worked for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Publish2, and co-founded CoPress.

Blair Barna is the Co-Owner and Advertising Director of the Charleston City Paper in Charleston, SC. Prior to founding the paper in 1997, he worked for Creative Loafing in Savannah and Atlanta. He owns three chickens.

With over 20 years of experience in digital and mobile advertising, Tina Barnes has become one of Canada's leading authorities in mobile products and services. She has worked with some of Canada's leading media and communications companies including Rogers Communications, EastLink and Postmedia Network, as well as a number of mobile solution providers. Tina also has extensive experience working with small and medium businesses, and is eager to help companies of all shapes and sizes succeed continually evolving digital marketplace.

Adam Bunshoft is the founder and CEO of COG1 a San Francisco based digital agency. He has over eighteen years of experience in digital media. Starting his career with IDG, he worked with print advertisers to extend their brands into the new digital media. Adam was an early employee at LinkExchange, one of the first interactive ad networks. When LinkExchange was sold to Microsoft in 1999 he worked with many national brands to leverage the reach and engagement of MSN. For the last twelve years, his digital agency COG1 has worked to create award winning digital campaigns for clients like the Voice Media Group, Yelp, Autodesk, Charles Schwab, Yahoo! and Campari. Adam was born and raised in San Francisco and holds a BA from UC Berkeley.

Joshua Curry is an independent photographer and web developer in the Bay Area. He worked at AAN-member Charleston City Paper from 2006 to 2012 as the web editor. While there, Joshua was recognized with awards from the South Carolina Press Association for still photography, video, and web design.

Mark Coatney is Director and Media Evangelist at Tumblr. Previously, Mark was an editor with primary responsibility for social media for Newsweek, where, in addition to conventional assigning/ editing, his big initiatives were the Newsweek Tumblr, as well as handling Twitter, Facebook and other audience engagement platforms for Newsweek.

Kansas City native Jody Colley got her start in the alt. weekly world at the then independently owned Pitch Weekly. There she worked through various positions including business manager, distribution director and classified sales manager. After the publication was purchased by New Times (now Village Voice Media) in 1999, Colley headed West joining the sales management team at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. As advertising sales director at the Guardian, Colley was active in various San Francisco business groups, AAN committees and served on the executive committee for AWN. In 2007, Colley left the Guardian to be publisher and one of the owners of the East Bay Express.

Kelly Ferguson is the social and digital media director at The Arkansas Times. Her department currently manages the social media accounts of the newspaper and its affiliated publications. Kelly has a bachelor's degree in Journalism with minors in both Speech Communication and Theatre Arts from Texas A&M University. She has worked as a reporter and as an editor for more than 15 years in daily newspapers. In 2008, she took on the role of web content coordinator in the marketing department at Tyler Junior College in Tyler, Texas, and created the school's first social media campaigns. In January 2011, The Arkansas Times recruited Kelly via Twitter to come to Little Rock and build the department there.

Kevin Goldberg is an attorney with Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth. His expertise is in First Amendment, Freedom of Information Act, and intellectual property issues, particularly copyright and trademark matters encountered by content creators and users. Kevin has a B.A. from James Madison University and a J.D. George Washington University.

Shahbano Imran is co-founder of the Local On web marketing company. Shahbano's background in software development and graphic design give her the ability to turn vision into real products. She graduated from Boston College with a degree in Computer Science and worked as a Software Engineer at Rackspace. She was an early employee of "The Updown", a startup out of Harvard Business School, that provided her with a strong introduction to early-stage operations.

Bill Jensen has a master's degree in religious studies from the University of Kansas, has written about unsolved crimes, punk rock and fisticuffs and played professional roller hockey (earning the first minor penalty in league history). He co-founded the nerd news and self-loathing blog Topless Robot and the Long Island Press newspaper and website (where he hired Amy Fisher as a crime columnist). In 2006, Bill took the digital helm at Village Voice Media to oversee all web and mobile content and platforms for 17 newspapers (including LA Weekly and Village Voice). During his tenure, digital media revenue grew more than 400%, and pageviews and uniques grew from 176 to more than 750 million. Bill also created several mobile apps which have been downloaded more than two million times. Itunes named the "Best Of…" app one of the top five travel apps of 2011, and Wired included it in its collection of "400 Essential Apps." In November 2011, Bill moved to Los Angeles where he ran the music content platform for BuzzMEDIA, including Stereogum, Idolator, and SPIN magazine. He now consults newspaper and other media companies to implement new digital strategies and revenue streams. He recently had a development deal with Cartoon Network, and just launched Epic Playgrounds, a non-profit with the singular goal of building the coolest playgrounds in the world.

Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian and Founder of the Internet Archive, has been working to provide universal access to all knowledge for more than twenty-five years. Since the mid-1980s, Kahle has focused on developing technologies for information discovery and digital libraries. In 1989 Kahle invented the Internet's first publishing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) system and in 1989, founded WAIS Inc., a pioneering electronic publishing company that was sold to America Online in 1995. In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive which may be the largest digital library. At the same time, he co-founded Alexa Internet which helps catalog the Web in April 1996, which was sold to Amazon.com in 1999.

Joe Larkin is senior VP sales operations at VMG Advertising div. of Voice Media Group.

Rodney Mayers is chief revenue officer at Proximic and an experienced media and business development professional with over 15 years of extensive knowledge in both traditional and digital media. Before joining Proximic he was the COO of Adify and was instrumental in the acquisition of Adify by Cox. Prior to joining Adify, Rodney held senior executive positions in Business Development, Strategy and M&A at Cox Enterprises in Atlanta, Georgia. His digital life began at Prodigy Communications in White Plains, NY. Rodney holds an MBA from Kellogg and BA in Economics from Syracuse University. Contact: LinkedIn

Doug Mitchell is a nationally recognized media trainer, project strategist and career coach. His former students who are now working professionals send him wedding invitations (he shows up) and birth announcements. Doug is a former Knight International Press Fellow and William S. Fulbright Scholar to Chile and spent 21.5 years as a producer and director at NPR, where he still consults on diversity related projects. While at NPR he created and managed a professional development program called "next generation radio" and built NPR's "Intern Edition." Currently, he's co-director of a startup camp funded by the Ford Foundation to develop journalists of color as tomorrow's media CEOs and a consultant and project manager for NPR. He likes to create substantive, progressive media projects from scratch.

Scott Murtaugh is a Vice President of Business Development for Infogroup, a company that enables local businesses to Fortune 100 companies to increase sales and customer loyalty through high-value data and innovative targeted marketing solutions. Scott works closely with startups and large enterprises developing strategic partnerships and tailoring real-time data solutions with Infogroup's proprietary data platform the Data Axle™. Prior to joining Infogroup, Scott worked for a number of financial service start-ups fostering key relationships and managing the development of products in equity research, financial CRMs, and in secondary markets. Scott started his career at Marsh McClennan as a Risk Analyst after graduating from the University of Georgia.

A certified media junkie, Latoya Peterson provides a hip-hop feminist and anti-racist view on pop culture with a special focus on video games, film, television, and music. Skilled in interviewing and creative non-fiction, Latoya Peterson spends her time editing the award winning blog Racialicious.com – the intersection of race and pop culture. She is a Contributing Editor for The Root.com and a former Content Producer for the Online News Association. She is currently a John S. Knight Journalism 2012-2013 Fellow at Stanford University focusing on mobile technology and digital access. She was also a Poynter Institute Sensemaking Fellow, and one of the inaugural Public Media Corps fellows.

Mikal Rohde is the Executive Vice President, Finance & Corporate Development at cXense. Mikal's move to cXense followed a 20-year career in finance, marketing, and business development. He was most recently a Director and Vice President of Strategy and Business in the Norwegian media company Schibsted. and before this as the CEO of a Schibsted local search and directory subsidiary department. Before this, he served as Executive Vice President for marketing at NetCom GSM, and also served as an Executive Vice President for marketing and business development at the directory publishing firm Findexa (Eniro).

Will Scott, founder and president of Search Influence, has been helping small businesses get online since 1994 – that’s right, 1994 – before most people even knew there was an Internet. Since then, Will has been focused on making information more accessible online. In the classroom teaching technology to professionals or in the boardroom presenting the value of online business to fortune 1000 companies, Will is passionate about the impact of the Internet on business.

Lisa Skube is the founder and architect of the Journalism Accelerator (JA) project, the subject of her 2010-2011 Fellowship year at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. The JA is an online journalism business intelligence exchange focused on sustainability and publisher innovation. Lisa's background spans marketing, interactive branding and customer relationship design. Working across for-profit and non-profit organizations, client programs range from Hewlett Packard to Daimler Trucks to the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Lisa develops the overall program, including partnerships, services, and structure. An engagement strategist and capacity builder, Lisa has provided professional services to serve clients’ communities with unique issues, products or causes over the past couple decades. Her work targets, refines, connects and cultivates deeper relationships among causes and the people they serve.

Andy Sutcliffe is a veteran of the alternative newspaper industry currently serving as the editor of the Salt Lake City Weekly newspaper. While working for the Boston Phoenix in 1988, Andy pioneered the voice personals system, eventually founding Tele-Publishing, Inc. Over the years, Andy has held positions at numerous alt-weeklies, and also served as CEO of DesertNet, where he helped transform the company into a major force in the alternative media landscape.

David Tolioupov is co-founder of the Local On web marketing company. David's impressive professional background, fluency in four languages, and three degrees from Boston College in Computer Science, Economics and the French Language provide a solid foundation for his entrepreneurial pursuits. Prior to attending BC, David lead a team in the Resources System Development Unit for the Air Force, and later designed and developed policy server security software for M86 Security.

Hotel Info

We'll meet at the fabulous Argonaut Hotel once again. Click here to make your reservation. The rate is $145 per night single/double. Make your reservation prior to the cut-off date of Jan. 11 and you will receive a $10 per room per night rebate at check-out. Don't delay.

UPDATE: The AAN rate is no longer available; however, a limited number of rooms remain at higher rates. Please check the Argonaut's website for available rates.

Argonaut Hotel
495 Jefferson Street at Hyde
San Francisco, CA 94109
Tel: (415) 563-0800
Toll-free: (866) 415-0704

For a map and directions to the Argonaut Hotel, click here.

Attendee Registration Info

• AAN Members: $199 early registration; $224 for registrations received after January 11, 2013.
• Associate Members: $199 early registration; $224 for registrations received after January 11, 2013.
• Nonmembers: $229 early registration; $254 for registrations received after January 11, 2013.
• Registration fees include lunch on Friday and Saturday.
  

Click here to register.

Exhibitor Registration Info

• A very limited number of table-top spaces is available for exhibitors. Exhibit space will be assigned in order of registration.
• Exhibit space fee includes one 6' skirted table, and lunch on Friday and Saturday.
• Additional exhibitor fee includes lunch on Friday and Saturday.
• Associate Members: $400 for table-top space and one exhibitor; $200 for each additional exhibitor. Click here to register.
• Nonmembers: $500 for table-top space and one exhibitor; $250 for each additional exhibitor.
• Nonmembers, please send an e-mail to Debra Silvestrin to register.