A few words about the SND STL schedule and session strategy

We’ve really relished the feedback you gave us from the pre-conference planning survey. We heard a lot of ideas and found several themes that helped us plan our workshop. So here’s a little breakdown on what we’ve got brewing. The schedule grid will be available soon, in the mean time, we’d like to let you know some of the thought behind what we’re planning:

#1 – First off, every session at SND STL will be:

Inspirational and/or Practical

We’ve heard you. We don’t want sales pitches. We don’t want ego-boosting sessions that don’t share details. We want speakers that are going to ‘open the kimono’ and prepare content that will inspire you in your daily job and beyond and/or offer practical information that you can use in your career and life.

#2 – Take-aways from everything.

We’re also asking every speaker at SND STL to prepare some sort of take away for attendees. This could be a handout, or sharing their powerpoint/keynote, or a bit.ly link to a Google doc of bonus links; whatever they present, we want you to have materials to take home and apply what you learn at SND STL so the experience helps you and your staff beyond the 72 hours of heaven you spend in St. Louis.

#3 – The Three Core Tracks

We’ll have three core tracks, with a handful of extra sessions and events outside of those tracks. It’ll break down like this:

“Design Roots”
This will be the core design, typography, graphics, illustration skills that you’ve known and loved from SND.

“New Shoots”
This track will focus on emerging media, from mobile and tablets to social media to multimedia to interactive graphics and how you can apply it to enhance the journalism you produce in the digital age.

“Career Boost”
This track will focus on how to enhance and prepare you for the future of your turbo-charged career, including topics such as marketing, branding, freelancing, management and inspiring career advice for our industry in transition.

Please stay tuned for the official schedule grid and some amazing session announcements in the next couple weeks. We have a lot in the hopper and are really excited about this marvelous event. We look forward to seeing you in St. Louis.