Proposal FAQ

Are you thinking about proposing a session for SRCCON:POWER? We’ll have your back throughout the entire process—before, during, and after the conference. Here are some answers to questions that might be on your mind right now, and if you’re curious about anything else, please let us know!

Key dates

• October 26: deadline for session proposals and scholarship applications
• By October 31: if we’ve heard from you, you’ll hear from us

What if I kind of have a session idea, but it’s not fully formed yet?

That’s completely OK! If you’re excited about being part of the SRCCON:POWER program, we’re excited to work with you to refine your topic. Successful sessions often emerge from a single question or problem—if you’ve been struggling with just about any aspect of your work, you can bet others have dealt with it, too. Until we publish this year’s conference program, we’re the only ones who’ll see your session proposal, so you should feel free to talk about things at whatever level of detail you feel good about.

We don’t consult a list of the latest trends to figure out which sessions to invite; we want SRCCON:POWER to be a place where passionate facilitators challenge us in ways that couldn’t happen at any other conference. Whatever shape your ideas are taking, please share them with us! It’s OK to say “I don’t know exactly where to take this”—we’d love to think it through with you.

What kind of planning support is there for session facilitators?

If your session is selected, we’ll support you during your entire planning process. That starts shortly after we announce the program, when we’ll share a Facilitator Guide that should look a lot like this one (with a few tweaks specific to SRCCON:POWER).

We’ll check in with you over the weeks leading up to SRCCON:POWER, asking about any supplies or scheduling needs you might have, making sure you’re happy with your session name and description, and offering any feedback you need on the outline and activities you have planned. You’ll get regular emails from us, but we’re also always happy to jump on a call to talk through any questions or brainstorms that come up.

A couple weeks before the conference on December 13 & 14, we’ll make sure you know the date and room for your session. And we’ll offer a short facilitator training at the venue the night before SRCCON:POWER, where we can talk through a few facilitation tips, take a look at the rooms you’ll be leading sessions in, and give you a chance to meet other session leaders.

We also believe that conferences like SRCCON:POWER are where amazing work only begins, so we’re already thinking about ways to support you in moving ideas forward after your session is done.

What’s it like to lead a session at SRCCON:POWER, and how can I account for that in my session pitch?

You’ll hear “participatory” and “collaborative” used a lot to describe SRCCON events, and we unpack a ton more about what that means on our Sessions page. As you’re thinking about a proposal, some key points to guide you:

• Sessions last 60-75 minutes, so consider what you can realistically cover in that amount of time.
• The best session descriptions are clear and inviting, and describe an outcome that attendees can expect to accomplish.
• You’ll be in a room with a bunch of other smart, engaged people, and no one expects you to have all the answers. Sometimes it’s important just to bring the right questions!

What happens when the conference is over?

One of the most exhilarating things for us as conference organizers is to see people go out and DO THE WORK. Maybe that’ll be you, as a session leader, with newfound energy after talking through how you’re trying to get your organization to see power in a different way. Maybe it’s an attendee who learned something new in your session, and takes home a plan to change their community’s relationship with journalism. There are so many exciting things that can happen when passionate people get together at an event like SRCCON:POWER. And we want to help you plan for those outcomes! If there’s something you’d like to build together or move forward after the event is over, we’re here to support that work. We just want you to tell us what you need.