Whether or not you were there, a lot of valuable information surfaced that’s worth sharing.

Videos on the way
The Career Summit sessions, three keynotes, three tracks of Friday and Saturday sessions and Online Journalism Awards Banquet were live streamed, thanks to our partnership with Livestream.com and a partial sponsorship by USC Annenberg. They’ll be available online soon. (Sessions of poor quality are in the process of being upgraded.)

Tweets, maps, clips and clouds
Here’s some of the most helpful and (of course) creative coverage and takeaways:

• State of ONA 2010: Where are the ONA innovators? A filter map by Anthony Calabrese (@2mrw).

• ONAmagazine, compiled by Hacks/Hackers, auto-created an editable news Web site around a single event (see below). Created by Alina Barbuceanu, Andrei Stupiak and Daniel Bachhuber.

• Terrific ONA10 Student Newsroom coverage. The 20 students (and mentors) captured the essence of the three days while depicting the future of journalism through their own lens.

• 10,000 Words details the top three design highlights from the conference.

• Five personal ONA10 highlights.

• Nieman Journalism Lab recaps ONA10 through Twitter (Friday and Saturday).

• Executive Director Jane McDonnell talks digital journalism with the European Journalism Centre.

• Notable Moments from MediaShift.

• Media experts share tips with MediaBistro.

• Follow what attendees are doing with what they learned.

• One educator’s take on the conference and academic meet-up.

• The view from a first-time conference-goer. (Thanks, Maureen.)

Hackers and journalists unite
Hacks/Hackers, a grassroots group that brings together technologists and journalists, hosted a hackathon in conjunction with ONA10, uniting ONA members with other coders. A WordPress campaign widget won the top prize by aggregating information about candidates’ campaign finance records, data visualization tools, and the Daylife content API. The widget was built by Benjamin Balter, Chris Barna, Alex Byers and Beth Davidz; see it here, with source documentation here.

So, how many …
Attendees (Thursday through Saturday): 1,135
Sponsors and Exhibitors: 34
Job Fair Recruiters: 30
Sessions: 43
Presenters: 115
Foursquare check-ins: 771
Tweets: Uncountable

Congrats to our raffle winners
Member Mary Kay McFarland took home an iPad; Nano No. 1 went to John Ehruch, and Nano No. 2 to Theresa Schmedding of ACES; and ONA founding member Doug Feaver won the 2011 Society for News Design conference registration.

And finally:

ONA11
Sept. 22-24, 2011
Boston Marriott Copley Place

Please, so we don’t have to turn anyone away, make your plans now!

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Online Journalism Awards honor the best of the best

Awards reveal a few surprises

• msnbc.com, General Excellence in Online Journalism, Large Site
• California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting , General Excellence in Online Journalism, Micro Site
• The Texas Tribune, General Excellence in Online Journalism, Small Site
• The Las Vegas Sun and the Greenspun Media Group, General Excellence in Online Journalism, Medium Site
• La Nacion, General Excellence in Online Journalism, Non-English, Small Site
• OWNI, General Excellence in Online Journalism, Non-English, Large Site award
• NPR.org Mobile Applications won the award for Outstanding Use of Emerging Platforms
• NPR API, Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism (includes a $5,000 prize)
• Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Flipping Fraud, Knight Award for Public Service
• Theheart.org by WebMD, Specialty Site Journalism, Independent
• CHOW.com, Specialty Site Journalism, Affiliated
• CNN.com: Technology, Online Topical Reporting/Blogging, Large Site
• Mother Jones: Team Coverage of BP Oil Spill, Online Topical Reporting/Blogging, Medium Site
• Voiceofsandiego.org: Building a Community around Education Coverage , Online Topical Reporting/Blogging, Small Site
• The New York Times: Oil Spill Tracker, Outstanding Use of Digital Technologies, Professional
• Knight Center for International Media, School of Communication, University of Miami: My Story, My Goal, Online Video Journalism, Student award
• Yale Environment 360: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, Online Video Journalism, Small Site
• The Las Vegas Sun and the Greenspun Media Group: Bottoming Out , Online Video Journalism, Medium Site
• The Toronto Star: William and the Windmill, Online Video Journalism, Large Site
• Caring.com: Dad Has Dementia, Online Commentary/Blogging, Small Site award
• ESPN.com: Howard Bryant, Online Commentary/Blogging, Large Site
• Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald award, Medium Site
• The New York Times: Toxic Waters, Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism, Large Site (include a $25,000 prize)
• ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Frontline: Law and Disorder, Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism, Small Site (include a $25,000 prize)
• Martin Ricard, Multimedia Feature Presentation, Student: A Seed is Forever
• National Film Board of Canada: This Land, Multimedia Feature Presentation, Small Site
• The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, Domani Studios, The Martin Agency, AOL, AOL News, AOLSHOUTcast: We Choose the Moon, Multimedia Feature Presentation, Medium Site
• The New York Times: Held by the Taliban, Multimedia Feature Presentation, Large Site
• West Seattle Blog, Community Collaboration
• The Tennessean: Nashville Flood, Breaking News, Small Site
• CNN.com: Haiti Earthquake, Breaking News, Large Site
• Kinsey Wilson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Media for NPR, Rich Jaroslovsky award

Hari Sreenivasan of PBS NewsHour emceed the awards ceremony. The award for Community Collaboration went to West Seattle Blog. Since its inception five years ago West Seattle Blog has been a major source of news for its neighbors, delivering current and comprehensive community news coverage. Self-coined as “West Seattle’s only 24/7 news source,” the site that began soley as a blog now provides breaking news stories and emergency updates for the community.

“The community has really participated in setting the agenda for the news we create,” said Tracy Record, the site’s editor, co-publisher and founder. “We encourage our readers to text, tweet, send emails and post on our Facebook wall when they have news,” said Record.

West Seattle Blog has one of the largest Twitter followings in Seattle for @westseattleblog, with more than 8,200 followers. More than 5,000 people have subscribed to its Facebook page since West Seattle Blog hit the social networking scene three years ago. The site accepts tips for potential news stories and even gets articles and pictures from readers.

“In my opinion, 2010 will be remembered as the year that grassroots independent news sites took off,” said CEO and founder of Placeblogger.com Lisa Williams, one of the Online Journalism Awards judges.

Solo win for Berkeley grad Martin Ricard

A Seed is Forever, created by Martin Ricard, won the student award for Multimedia Feature Presentation. Ricard received his master’s degree from the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in May. Ricard spent 10 days in Sierra Leone focusing on youth and their attitudes toward agriculture since the country’s civil war ended in 2002. Multimedia journalist Ricard is editor of the San Bruno, Calif., division of Patch.com.

“Everyone knows about Sierra Leone because of [the film] Blood Diamond, but now that diamonds are at a decline,” he said, “youth are looking toward agriculture to revolutionize the country and to revolutionize their own lives.”

Partnerships pay off for ProPublica, Times-Picayune and Frontline

The Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism, Small Site, went to ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and Frontline for Law and Disorder. Since receiving the 2009 Online Journalism Award for General Excellence from the Gannett Foundation, Mike Webb, ProPublica’s director of communications,  said the site has expanded to do more complex partnerships.

“Being received by your peers is as high an honor as you can get,” said Webb. “We want to keep doing great investigations that really have meaning and impact lives.”

Complete list of award winners available here.

Robin Sloan of Twitter introduces the panelists, from left to right: Laura Brunow Miner of Pictory, and Alexis Madrigal and Sarah Rich, both of Longshot Magazine. Photo by Heather Hodder

At “Don’t Call it UGC,” panelists shared advice for journalists who seek to produce quality work through crowdsourcing.

Laura Brunow Miner, founder of Pictorymag and the quickly expanding Phootcamp, joined Alexis Madrigal and Sarah Rich, co-founders of
Longshot Magazine, to talk strategy for how their projects have been able to publish high quality content from online submissions.

“Finesse, hard work and respect are the three words to keep in mind and walk away with from this panel,” said Robin Sloan, who works on media partnerships at Twitter. “They’re not tech words but craft words. Crowdsourcing is a skill you can learn.”

Panelists asserted that User Generated Content (UGC) is misleading because it implies inferior quality work; content for Longshot and Pictory is carefully edited and fact-checked similar to traditional publications. Instead, panelists preferred the term “community editorials” to convey the craftsmanship they say is innate within crowdsourcing.

“With UGC more often there’s terror about opening the floodgates to send a lot of crap in. What we’re doing is different, our content comes through a very fine filter,” said Sarah Rich, former senior editor for Dwell Magazine.

Longshot is a magazine that is created over only 48 hours, with the theme announced right before the clock starts ticking. Submissions are accepted only within the first 24 hours, and in the next 24 the magazine is edited, compiled and made available for purchase online. The contributors are paid, but through “socialism” and “meritocracy” as explained by Longshot’s website.

One-third of the profits from the first 48 days of the magazine’s sale are divided evenly among contributors and staff. However contributors and staff vote on all of the published content, and the contributor whose piece comes in first gets the second third of profits. The remaining third of the profits goes toward future publication efforts.

For the majority of the contributions to the magazine, it’s not big bucks. For the first issue, the average contributor was paid $8.93, Rich said.

With little compensation, and none at all for contributors to Pictory, all of the panelists agreed that there is something stronger behind community motivation.

“It gives people exposure, and a chance to vent emotionally. If you need convincing, look at Post Secret …people find it cathartic,” Brunow Miner said. Her site pictorymag.com displays weekly photo showcases connected by a theme. Anyone from around the world can submit a photo along with a caption, and photos are chosen based on how the theme was interpreted. “I look for photos that tell a story,” Brunow Miner said.

Of course there are difficulties in producing community editorials, such as finding a way to connect a seemingly disjointed staff of strangers.

“Voice is wrapped up in a lot of ways, and there is often assumption you sacrifice voice [through crowdsourcing]. How do you make sure voice is behind all of it?” Sloan asked.

“A great edit is the secret to community editorials,” said Brunow Miner ” I do line edits–highlighting words that I think are important helps it become cohesive–and I e-mail them back to my contributors for changes.”

Editors show respect for contributors’ work so that contributors will submit again. Pictory gains respect from contributors by letting them check edits before publication, and Longshot magazine instructs those whose submissions aren’t chosen to publish them on their own blogs, and then Longshot usually links to them.

All of the panelists have a strong presence on Twitter, where much marketing takes place. You can follow them at @pictory or @longshotmag.

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Some of his tips were surprising.

“I didn’t know that the best time to tweet was between 10 a.m. and noon,” said Jeremy Caplan, who found “Twitter Hours” useful since he teaches twitter at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

For those who couldn’t catch at the conference, here is a short video of Sloan’s top twitter tips.