Come help us build the program for SRCCON:LEAD! (Photo: Alyson McClaran for Colorado Media Project)

We have a brand-new event to share as we bring 2019 to a close: SRCCON:LEAD will gather 125 people in Philadelphia this November to reimagine how leadership works in journalism.

Our industry needs to talk about how to truly prepare and support the people it asks to lead—and how often it asks people to do the work of leadership without the recognition that goes with it. We need to get better at understanding money and handling hiring, at communicating across teams and resolving conflict when it comes up. And we need to make some space to dream about what truly responsive and inclusive leadership strategies could be.

SRCCON:LEAD will take place this November 19 & 20, with a program built around different opportunities to plan and learn together. We’ll have:

• hands-on sessions (it wouldn’t be a SRCCON without them!) that inspire us to look to the future and teach us the practical skills that can take us there.
• talks that create a shared experience, challenging and even provoking us, getting us excited about doing the work.
• open, emergent conversations that respond to the moment, from ideas that pop into people’s minds on the way to Philadelphia to connections that kick up during a session right there at SRCCON:LEAD.

Each piece of the program will be peer-driven, representing backgrounds and experiences from across the journalism-tech community. SRCCON:LEAD is for people doing leadership work with or without the title, and it’s for people ready to see journalism redefine what leadership looks like. Coming up with plans that work means listening to everyone in the room, and that’s where we’ll start—we even have scholarships that can help you get there.

This will be the third in a series of smaller, thematic OpenNews events that started in 2017. At SRCCON:WORK, we explored how people in this community can support each other and collaborate to make journalism more representative. Last year, SRCCON:POWER took on the ways power operates in our newsrooms and our relationships with communities, and what that means for ethical decision-making in this industry.

Our goal throughout has been to work together on strategies that can make our journalism more inclusive, in practice and outcome. We’re excited for these themes to carry us into SRCCON:LEAD, where we’ll work on new models for journalism leadership. We hope YOU will be there to help us.

If you’d like to be a part of SRCCON:LEAD, our call for participation form is open through October 7. It’s one place to tell us any way you’d like to participate, to propose a session, and to apply for a travel scholarship. If you have any questions, please reach out!