July 10-11, Minneapolis, MN

Attendee guide  •  Session proposal guide Propose a session!

There are many ways to take part in SRCCON, and we’ll help you find what works best for you. Our call for participation form is open through March 7 to pitch a session, apply for a scholarship, or tell us how else you’d like to take part.

Participation at SRCCON

SRCCON is a hands-on conference, which means that everyone who attends actively participates throughout the event. Our call for participation form is open until March 7 for session proposals, and it’s where you tell us about what you’d like to share, whether that be as a facilitator or attendee, and what you hope to take back home with you.

We keep the size of SRCCON intentionally rather small at 300 people, and we’ve experimented with different ways to allocate tickets. We’ve landed on this approach—one single form to gather session ideas, applications to attend, and scholarship requests—as the easiest experience for potential attendees and a streamlined process for us in organizing the conference, too.

The small conference size means that we have to be intentional about equitably distributing tickets and ensuring that there’s a mix of perspectives and skills at SRCCON. Our call for participation form will help us understand who would like to take part in SRCCON and what you want to get out of it. With those responses, we’re able to create a schedule and audience that reflects the dynamic interests and needs of this community.

The form is open from February 19-March 7 for session proposals and scholarship applications, and we’ll keep the form open for attendees as long as we can. After that, we will review entries and notify everyone by March 26. If invited to attend, you will have the chance to purchase a ticket, with prices starting at $295 plus fees.

Details about ticket prices

In 2019, we began experimenting with a tiered ticket-pricing system. Accessibility remains a core value for us, and this is our attempt to balance the actual costs of the conference with keeping prices as manageable for attendees as possible. We also continue to offer scholarships to attend.

Here are the tiers (plus Eventbrite ticketing fees):

In addition, we also offer a free scholarship ticket as one of the tiers. We have a limited number of free tickets set aside for people who otherwise would not be able to attend, in particular for laid-off and freelance journalists. We also give priority to people who identify as members of communities underrepresented in journalism and technology, such as journalists of color, and journalists from smaller and non-coastal newsrooms.

Here’s the most important thing to know about these ticket prices: We want you to choose the one that makes sure you can be at SRCCON 2025. We don’t review who pays what, and we won’t follow up with any questions. If you work for an organization where budgets have already been set or there’s not support available to you, choose a lower price and join us. By the same token, if you budgeted for higher travel costs you no longer have to spend and are able to purchase a ticket at a higher tier, please do. If you’re interested in contributing to a scholarship ticket, please pick the highest ticket tier you can afford. Paying for free tickets and scholarships is something we deliberately build into our ticket tier structure.

We based these tiers on community feedback encouraging us to find ways to share event costs. Ticket funds are a huge part of what makes it possible to organize event with dozens of travel and caregiving scholarships, live transcription, two lunches, dinner, and ample snacks and drinks, and the support of a skilled event team in preparing sessions and constructing a schedule that lets attendees focus on learning and talking together.

If you have any questions at all about ticket pricing, please reach out.

Not just attendees, but participants

At SRCCON, everyone participates in some way. Our hands-on sessions rely on participants who are ready to share their experiences and perspectives. Facilitators create space for in-depth conversations, design exercises, demos, and workshops, and participants bring questions and take ideas back to their newsrooms. In addition to sessions, people help make SRCCON an inclusive, welcoming place by leading group activities, volunteering, and even just saying hi to new friends and collaborators over breaks and activities.

Our call for participation form has a few questions for you about what you’d like to bring to SRCCON and how we can support one another. We look forward to seeing what ideas folks have and how we can make them possible during our days together. As one prior attendee put it, SRCCON “will be a special opportunity to take some of the brightest minds in journalism, data, and community-building to tackle everything that has come to a head in the past couple of months with positivity, frankness, and creativity.”

Facilitating sessions

At SRCCON events, session facilitators regularly make up more than a third of attendees. All of our sessions are peer-led by conference attendees—consider becoming a facilitator this year by learning more about sessions. You will be able to tell us all about your session idea on the call for participation form.

Welcome, first-timers

We think SRCCON is best when there’s a mix of folks new to SRCCON and veterans of the conference. And we want new folks to feel able to participate in whatever ways interest you. There’s a spot on the form to ask for more information if you’re interested in attending but not quite sure how you want to participate. In reviewing forms, we’ll aim to have a healthy balance of newcomers and returning SRCCON participants. So SRCCON alums, you can put your name in without worrying that you’re taking a new attendee’s spot.

Financial & family assistance

We offer a limited number of travel scholarships to help people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend. To apply for a scholarship to SRCCON, just let us know on the call for participation form.

These scholarships can also provide support for childcare or other caregiving needs and costs. In the past during in-person events there wasn’t sufficient usage of the free childcare we organized, so we’re not planning to offer it this year. But we’re very interested to explore other ways to make the event more accessible to parents and other caregivers. Please email us if you have any questions or ideas.