SRCCON-style collaborative, community-led sessions will be at the heart of SRCCON:WORK. (photo/Erik Westra)

We’re thrilled to announce the opening of the call for proposals for SRCCON:WORK, a two-day event this December that explores how we as a community can help each other take on the hard work of journalism.

Many of the problems that keep us from our best work aren’t technical at all, so we’re focusing this small conference on three big themes:

• Collaboration & teamwork
• Hiring & career growth
• Mental health & self-care

We’ll dig into these topics together on December 7 & 8 in Philadelphia, in sessions led by community members and a schedule built to support them. SRCCON:WORK will build on conversations emerging from SRCCON in recent years, gathering more than 100 people from organizations of all sizes: people who are new to newsrooms or interested in working with them, technical managers who lead editorial and product teams, and journalists at pivotal moments in their careers. This conference is intentionally small and will create more spaces for shared experience, starting with talks that challenge us as a community and provide context for discussions and workshops throughout the day.

The program at SRCCON:WORK will follow SRCCON’s peer-driven approach, with collaboration at its heart. Our Call For Proposals is open now, and we hope you’ll share your ideas for:

• discussions that help us learn from each other, and leave with heads full of ideas that can transform the way we work.
• sessions that make something to live on beyond this event, from shareable guidelines and best practices to lesson outlines that attendees can take back to their own newsrooms.

We also want this event to be a place where work starts, not ends, and we’ll be looking for opportunities to support facilitators in sharing new resources and continuing conversations once SRCCON:WORK is over. We’re excited to hear about the outcomes you want to see from your session.

Our call for proposals closes at midnight Eastern time on Monday, September 18. We’ll have a lot more to share later this month about the participant experience at SRCCON:WORK, and we plan to announce our conference program the first week of October. We hope you’ll keep in touch, and help us make this the kind of event that renews the energy and resolve we need for an inclusive, representative, and responsive journalism community.