Welcome
This working conference explored the question:
What is possible when the public and journalists engage to support communities to thrive?
Our intent is to illuminate, inform, and support community information health that contributes to thriving, inclusive communities by learning about processes that grow it, creating products that support it, catalyzing a community of practice dedicated to it, and identifying actions to amplify it.
Every activity during the conference models a practice that can be used for community engagement. Additionally, we’ll be employing an evaluation practice called Developmental Evaluation, which supports innovation, adaptation, and systems change. We see it as a promising approach to understand the impact of community engagement work.
Who Attended?
Journalists, community activists, students, educators, researchers, funders, artists, social entrepreneurs, librarians, technologists, and other pioneers in engagement.
Hosted by Journalism That Matters and UO SOJC’s Agora Journalism Center.
About the conference hosts, partners, sponsors and donors
About the conference participants
Conference Location
The conference was located in the UO’s George S. Turnbull Portland Center, located in the historic White Stag Block of the city’s Old Town.
70 NW Couch St.,
Portland, Oregon
Tel: (503) 412-3662
Hosted by Andrew Haeg & Linda Miller
Beyond the “E” Word – Defining the language of engagement
Hosted by Ashley Alvarado & Amber Rivera
How do we develop citizen journalists?
Hosted by Carrie Watters and Steph Routh
How can journalists connect with artists/filmmakers?
Hosted by Jerry Millhon
What does meaningful engagement by journalists look like, and how does it differ from traditional journalism?
Hosted by Lee van der Loo
Building Empathic Narratives in Virtual and “real” (embodied) Space
Hosted by Michelle Bach-Coulibaly, Anne Stadler & Dan Archer
Do commercial/independent newsrooms have structural biases that prevent rich engagement with people of color? Do we too often not recognize the differences in diversity?
Hosted by Jo Ellen Kaiser & Elaine Cha
What is newsworthy? Who determines it and how?
Hosted by Mike Green
“What’s in it for me?” Adding capacity to newsrooms and convincing newsroom skeptics of the value of engagement
Hosted by Caitlin Moran & Fiona Morgan
How can media do well by doing good? What makes engagement strategic?
Hosted by Susan Gleason and Linda Miller
Hosted by Sarah Loose
How might we teach engagement in universities and high schools? How do we keep engagement dynamic?
Hosted by Samantha Shotzbarger, Margaret Staniforth & Elaine Cha
How do we honor different spheres of engagement and build stronger bridges to move people between spheres? Moving the audience to action
Melia Tichenor & Celeste Ham
How can JTM support those who are birthing the emerging ecosystem?
Hosted by Michelle Ferrier
How can we fund media through engagement?
Hosted by Meghann Farnsworth
How can we truly engage?
Hosted by Sydette Harry
Outlining the How-To Field Guide: What’s in it? Who’s it for?
Hosted by Elissa Adair
Creative ways to structure live and online public forums and conversations that combine art, data, facts, storytelling, and hospitality?
Hosted by jesikah maria ross
Using developmental evaluation to look at the patterns of our collective inquiry
Hosted by Yve Susskind & Chris Corrigan
What is objectivity in journalism?
Hosted by Nathan Stevens
Creating communities of practice: Visual maps by Nitya Wakhlu
On Sunday — the final day of the conference — graphic facilitator Nitya Wakhlu recorded key concepts related to Experience Engagement and creating communities of practice.
Conference livesketches by Dan Archer, graphic journalist
Dan Archer, graphic journalist and director of Empathetic Media, joined us in Portland for Experience Engagement and created some amazing livesketches of conference sessions and workshops.
Thirty Five: What’s a key idea that guides your engagement work?
At Experiencing Engagement on Friday afternoon, we used an exercise called “Thirty Five” — involving 3×5 index cards — to bubble up key words and phrases most important to participants.
Portland Marathon: A Sunday morning traffic snarl
The run will start down at SW 4th/ Salmon at 7 AM. They run north to Couch and then to Naito. So the westbound traffic across the Burnside and Morrison bridges are held until the full event gets moving down Couch.