OpenNews is a joint project of Mozilla and the Knight Foundation that supports the growing community of news developers, designers, and data reporters helping journalism thrive on the open web.

SRCCON heads to Portland, Oregon

We're back for another two days of group discussions and collaboration. (photo/Erik Westra)

This July, OpenNews’ flagship event, SRCCON, returns for its third year. SRCCON is a hands-on conference focused on the challenges news technology and data teams encounter every day, and we work to make it an inclusive and welcoming event.

We keep SRCCON intentionally small, and this year’s tickets have already been allocated, but we’re working on a bunch of options for remote participation and documentation to make SRCCON’s benefits available to all. The SRCCON spirit will also continue on with the Mozilla Festival in London in October.

About OpenNews

We believe a community of peers working, learning, and solving problems together can create the tools journalism needs to thrive. Through fellowships that place developers in news organizations around the world, conferences for newsroom designers and coders, and a wide range of community and project support programs, we support collaboration across organizations. Learn more about what we do or find out how you can get involved.

From the OpenNews Blog

• How We Facilitated a Huge, Participatory, Highly Charged SRCCON Session, a Guest Post from Alyson Hurt| posted 2016-07-12 10:00:00 -0400

  As the SRCCON organizers reminded us, our job was to *facilitate* a session, and our topic in particular felt like it was meant to be a conversation (rather than, say, a skill-share or lesson). We had some thoughts and past experience to share, but we by no means considered ourselves experts. In a group setting, we could all learn from *each other* about ways—as individuals, as managers, as teams, as organizations—folks are dealing with burnout and job satisfaction now, and maybe devise new strategies to try in the future. read more

• 3 Ways to Facilitate a Great Conference Session, a Guest Post from Sisi Wei| posted 2016-07-05 12:00:00 -0400

  If you've never presented at a conference with facilitators instead of speakers before, you're in for a treat. Facilitation is a much more interactive way of running sessions at conferences, and when done well, both the facilitator and the attendees walk away feeling inspired, motivated, and like they've learned a lot from everyone in the room. read more

• The Importance of Presence - Announcing a New Way to Connect| posted 2016-05-26 12:00:00 -0400

  We want to help you get to events that will enrich your work in the journalism code community. Today we announce a Ticket and Travel scholarship program. read more

• Gone in 60 Seconds--SRCCON Ticketing Changes| posted 2016-05-05 12:00:00 -0400

  Ticket sales for SRCCON are coming soon and we're making some changes to how we sell them this year. read more

• Why You Should Pitch a SRCCON Session (Today)| posted 2016-04-18 14:00:00 -0400

  Every year, the SRCCON proposal deadline comes up faster than seems possible, but it's not yet too late—in fact, this is the perfect time to submit your pitch. read more

• Tools, Bridges, and Five Years of Knight-Mozilla Fellows| posted 2015-11-05 14:05:00 -0500

  Today's announcement of our 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellows adds a fifth cohort to our fellowship community. read more

• Introducing our 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellows| posted 2015-11-05 14:00:00 -0500

  Today we get to announce our fifth cohort of fellows, and tell a little about how we found them. read more

• The (remarkably consistent) Data-Driven Decisions of the Final Day of Fellowship Applications| posted 2015-08-21 09:26:00 -0400

  Today is the final day to apply to become a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow. After more than two months, these last few hours are all that's left. We crunch the numbers to see what previous last days have looked like and to let you know that you're not alone in waiting to today. read more

• Beyond the Fellowship Year| posted 2015-08-20 10:45:00 -0400

  Tomorrow, August 21, at 11:59:59, the application for a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow closes. But if you become a Knight-Mozilla Fellow, your experience will last much longer than the 10 months. Today, Erin Kissane looks into life _after_ the fellowship. read more

• How to Think About Projects During Your Fellowship| posted 2015-08-19 11:45:00 -0400

  The deadline to apply to the Knight-Mozilla Fellowship is just two days away. As a Knight-Mozilla Fellow, you'll spend 10 months writing open-source code in the newsroom. But what do you build, do you need to have a plan *right now*, and how do you approach coding over your 10 months? Ryan Pitts digs in. read more

• How to Apply to Be a Knight-Mozilla Fellow| posted 2015-08-18 14:04:00 -0400

  The deadline to apply to the Knight-Mozilla Fellowship is just a few days away on August 21. If you're considering applying, but you're not sure about how to apply, this post will help you fill out the application. read more

• Follow Your Passions and Build Your Fellowship Year| posted 2015-08-17 16:04:00 -0400

  The final week to apply to become a 2014 Knight-Mozilla Fellow is here. Today we look at how flexible your fellowship year can be, and why YOU should apply to join the program. read more

• Our 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellowship Partners Make Their Case| posted 2015-08-14 16:30:00 -0400

  One week remains to apply for a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellowship, and our fellowship partners want YOU and your amazing skills in their newsrooms. Each newsroom that will host a fellow next year made a pitch this week, and here's why they think you should apply. read more

• How We Planned SRCCON's Sessions| posted 2015-08-11 15:30:00 -0400

  With just two weeks remaining to apply to become a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow, all of our current fellows write about why they chose to apply and what their fellowship year has been like. Read about their experiences and then apply to join next year's cohort! read more

• The Many Reasons to Become A Knight-Mozilla Fellow| posted 2015-08-07 15:30:00 -0400

  With just two weeks remaining to apply to become a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow, all of our current fellows write about why they chose to apply and what their fellowship year has been like. Read about their experiences and then apply to join next year's cohort! read more

• What It Is Really Like to Be a Fellow| posted 2015-07-31 16:30:00 -0400

  Twenty six people have had the chance to become Knight-Mozilla Fellows. This week and next, they are sharing their experiences. And, until August 26, you have a chance to apply to join them. read more

• Fellowships, Journalism, and the Open Web| posted 2015-07-28 11:30:00 -0400

  When we talk about the Knight-Mozilla Fellowships, and the work we do at OpenNews, we often talk about the influence the values of the open web have on journalism. As we gear up for the final push to find our 2016 fellows (deadline August 21!), we wanted to dive a little further into what we're talking about. read more

• One Month Left to Apply| posted 2015-07-21 16:00:00 -0400

  You have one month left to apply for the 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellowship. If you still have questions, we have lots of information coming your way. read more

• Apply Today to Become a 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellow!| posted 2015-06-10 08:00:00 -0400

  Our search for our 2016 Knight-Mozilla Fellows starts today. And you (yes you!) should apply now. Here's why. read more

• Meet the projects coming to Code Convening: Write The Docs| posted 2015-05-16 12:30:00 -0400

  Meet the seven projects we're bringing to our code convening at Write The Docs 2015. read more

• SRCCON Ticketing—What We Did and Why| posted 2015-05-12 12:30:00 -0400

  This year, as we prepare for SRCCON 2015, we're making an effort to document our work in public as we go. This post on our ticketing process will be followed shortly by one on session selection, with more to come between now and the end of June. read more

• The Coral Project is Go Go Go Go Go| posted 2015-04-28 12:30:00 -0400

  Exciting things are happening at The Coral Project and we thought you should know about them. read more

• Five Reasons You Shouldn't Come to SRCCON (and Why They're All Wrong)| posted 2015-04-22 12:00:00 -0400

  Tickets to SRCCON, the OpenNews conference, go on sale Wednesday, April 29 at 2pm EDT. But maybe you're still on the fence about SRCCON, or are worried that you won't quite fit in. If so, worry no longer—instead, check out our five top reasons why you shouldn't come to SRCCON (and why they're all wrong). read more

• Code Convening: Write The Docs. Come open your code with us!| posted 2015-04-20 14:00:00 -0400

  We'll be taking a cohort of news developers and journalists to the Write The Docs conference, May 17-19 in Portland, to write and revise documentation, release the latest version of their open-source projects, and talk journalism with the technical documentation community. read more

• Five Things We've Learned About Sessions| posted 2015-04-08 18:00:00 -0400

  As we near the deadline for SRCCON session proposals (April 10, pitch now) we wanted to share with you some of what we've learned about sessions so far. Thank you to everyone who shared feedback about last year's conference and helped inform how we're thinking about things this year. read more

• How to plan a great SRCCON session| posted 2015-04-07 18:00:00 -0400

  SRCCON sessions are interactive and collaborative, and if you've never led one, it can be hard to know what to expect. Here are some strategies to help you lead a discussion or skillshare that gets everyone involved and leaves everyone energized. read more

• Captioning a Multi-Track Conference - How SRCCON Did It| posted 2015-04-02 18:00:00 -0400

  One of the nerdiest elements of our first SRCCON didn't end up involving code or jokey references. As we were prepping for SRCCON last year, I caught a blog post related to !!Con, Your next conference should have real-time captioning. I had never heard of event captioning before. I found the blog post convincing, but we were less than two months away from SRCCON, could we pull off something like this? read more

• Hosting a Knight-Mozilla Fellow in 2016| posted 2015-04-01 16:15:00 -0400

  Next year will be the fifth year of the Knight-Mozilla Fellowship program and we're looking for our next group of fellowship partners. If your news organization is interested in hosting a fellow next year, fill out this form by April 24. read more

• Making SRCCON Good for Humans| posted 2015-04-01 09:00:00 -0400

  We wanted the attendees of SRCCON to be able to focus on the conference itself—sessions, activities, and other official stuff, but also the conversations in hallways and corners that are usually a highlight of gatherings of enthusiastic colleagues. To make that possible, we tried to arrange the SRCCON schedule, space, and life-support systems to be as accommodating and supportive as possible. read more

• Welcoming Lindsay Muscato| posted 2015-03-26 15:00:00 -0400

  After an involved selection process, we are very happy to introduce Lindsay Muscato, Source's new assistant editor, who will be working with us on an upcoming site restructure and leading much of the day-to-day editorial work of keeping Source connected to the news code community. read more

• SRCCON Needs You| posted 2015-03-25 12:00:00 -0400

  SRCCON is back in 2015 for another two days of building better newsroom code, culture, and process, this time in beautiful Minneapolis. And now it's time for you to propose a session. read more

• OpenNews at NICAR| posted 2015-03-04 07:00:00 -0500

  We're going to be at NICAR in force this year, and we want to see you there. read more

• SRCCON 2015 coming to Minneapolis| posted 2015-02-20 12:00:00 -0500

  We're excited to announce SRCCON 2015, which will take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 25 and 26. We can't wait to spend another two days building better newsroom code, culture, and process—together. read more

• Fellows Hack with the California Civic Data Coalition| posted 2015-01-26 12:00:00 -0500

  During the onboarding week with our new 2015 Knight-Mozilla fellows, we spent a couple days working with the California Civic Data Coalition on an open-source news app. Here's what our goals were, and here's what we learned. read more

• Source is Hiring| posted 2015-01-23 07:00:00 -0500

  OpenNews is hiring a part-time assistant editor on a contract basis for Source, our journalism-code community website—and you should totally apply. read more

• New Year, New Site| posted 2015-01-16 10:00:00 -0500

  While our 2015 Knight-Mozilla fellows have been in Los Angeles, getting to know each other and the world of newsroom code, we’ve given OpenNews.org a haircut and re-org to reflect the work we’re actually doing. read more

• 2015 Fellowship Onboarding is GO| posted 2015-01-12 09:00:00 -0500

  The OpenNews team brings our 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows to Los Angeles to start the work of their fellowship years. We also welcome Kavya Sukumar as our seventh 2015 fellow, who will spend her fellowship year working with Vox Media. Yay fellows! Yay Los Angeles! read more

• Announcing our 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows!| posted 2014-10-22 09:00:00 -0400

  Live from the 2014 Mozilla Festival in London, we're thrilled to introduce our 2015 Knight-Mozilla Fellows. The work that the Knight-Mozilla Fellows do during their fellowship year doesn't fit easily into a single sentence. Over the year a fellow will play the role of coder, teacher, mentor (and mentee), adventurer, colleague, and friend. They'll push themselves, and journalism, in new directions. They'll do work that has real impact--on themselves and on the web. It's a tall order, but a thrilling one, and the people we have lined up to do the work of a Knight-Mozilla Fellow in 2015 are among our very best yet. I can't wait for you to meet them. read more