ONA’s educational sessions are inclusive and supportive learning environments for attendees to encounter, share and discuss best practices, skills, trends, new ideas and challenging issues. Important guidelines to keep in mind when presenting an ONA educational session include:
1. The audience comes first
Consider: With what skills, tools and/or resources will attendees walk away from your session? How will they be able to apply this knowledge next week? In six months?
2. Engage, share and collaborate
To develop an interactive, collaborative and engaging session, it is essential that you consider your session’s format, area of focus and target audiences when building your presentation.
3. Diversity is a must
Because diverse perspectives encourage nuanced, innovative ideas, ONA prioritizes speaker and session diversity across dozens of factors when programming events. Considering how your session contributes to a diverse event will help align it to ONA’s broader goals.
4. Be specific, inspiring and solutions-oriented
The world is full of intractable problems, and journalism has more than its share. ONA seeks to lift up actual, concrete and specific solutions, even when incomplete or aspirational: It is much better to present a tight, if yet-unresolved, idea than vague, buzzy platitudes.
5. Bring something new to the table
What is it about your idea that makes for a fresh approach? Is it a new technical tool? Original research? An unexplored revenue stream? Bring something new and your audience will follow.
6. Consider including appropriate news organizations
ONA highly values community and collaboration and seeks to develop sessions with presenters from multiple organizations. Where possible, work with people outside your organization to help demonstrate your shared commitment to informed, thoughtful conversations of ideas.
7. Value speaker talent
Not everyone is good at everything! Prospective speakers should honestly appraise their presentation skills and engage colleagues with complementary backgrounds where appropriate.
