Check the ISOJ program here and click here to register. Seats are limited, and in previous years the conference has been sold out quickly. Last year’s event set a record with more than 400 academics, journalists and media executives from 40 countries.

Kicking off the proceedings this year, starting at 8:45 a.m. on Friday, April 17, is Bonita Stewart, vice president Americas and partner business solutions at Google. Other keynote speakers include: Susan Glasser, editor of Politico; Isaac Lee, president of news and digital for Univision and CEO of Fusion; and Robert Picard, from the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford.

Unique to ISOJ is the mix of communications professionals and academics discussing their cutting edge research. Journalists representing some of the top media organizations in the United States, such as Vox Media, The New York Times, Vice Media, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Politico, and the Texas Tribune, will join colleagues from Hungary, Venezuela, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa, Spain and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“ISOJ will be again an amazing global conference, covering a variety of topics, from the extraordinary success of Google in digital advertising to new business models and new formats for news, including the pioneer use of virtual reality,” said Prof. Rosental Alves, founder of the Symposium and director of the Knight Center. “Our speakers are coming from the front lines where they are re-imagining journalism for the digital age and trying to make it sustainable and prosperous as the news industry was in the industrial era.

“We are grateful for the support of all speakers and attendees who come from around the world to Austin for the ISOJ conference and especially thankful to our sponsors: Knight Foundation, Google, The Dallas Morning News, Omidyar Network, Scripps Howard Foundation, Univision and the Moody College of Communication at UT Austin,” said Prof. Alves.

One example of a top-notch panel, chaired by Jennifer Preston, vice president for journalism at the Knight Foundation, will tackle the topic of “Reformatting the business model: Native advertising, crowdsourcing, paywalls and revenue diversification.”

Preston will be joined by: Tim Griggs, publisher and COO of the Texas Tribune; Maria Ramírez, co-founder, El Español, Spain; Jim Moroney, publisher and CEO of Dallas Morning News; and Joy Robins, vice president of advertising at Quartz. Also invited to this panel is Chia Ting Ting, head of advertising and digital marketing of MalaysiaKini, an innovative news website in Malaysia.

Another panel, led by Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Media at Columbia University, will discuss “the art and science of audience development.” Journalists and executives from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mashable and The Verge will show “how news organizations navigate a world where they don’t control the distribution channels.”

ISOJ will also be showcasing three research panels where academics from the United States, England, Australia and Brazil will present original research on a variety of issues falling under topics that include, “The changing tide in journalism structures, systems and processes,” “All about the Twitter,” and “Influence, consumption and participation: Paths to news engagement.”

“As we head into our 16th year of the symposium, it’s exciting to see the stellar work and innovativeness of the research being done by digital journalism scholars currently,” said Amy Schmitz Weiss, associate professor at San Diego State University and the Symposium Research Chair. “We are excited to feature 13 great research projects in this year’s program.”

ISOJ will be held at the auditorium of the Blanton Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. General admission costs $120 for two days of engaging speakers, but faculty members can pay a discounted ticket of $60 and students can pay just $40. The fee includes entry to all sessions of the conference, plus breakfast and lunch on both days.