The Integrated Media Association will be holding their 10th annual conference in conjunction with SXSWi this March 7 and 8.

The iMA is an organization created in the late 1990s (officially incorporated in 2004) as a common landing ground for public media operations around the nation. The main goals of iMA are to enable public media innovation and experimentation, facilitate effectiveness and efficiency, and to become a self-sustaining organization. These are common goals across the board of public media, from PBS to the smallest member station, so it makes sense to have them all meet at one place in order to create a community dialogue. iMA works by collecting member fees from public media organizations in exchange for an open market place of ideas ranging from educational opportunities, webinars, grant eligibility, and a Public Media Knowledgebase which contains contact info, industry events, research, strategies, technology advancements, etc.

This year’s conference has a promising line up with varying tracks for the technical minded or for the digital innovation and management side of the business.

The technology side will be covering Drupal, WordPress, Django, HTML5, as well as other clinics and presentations on the application of emerging technology to public media. The innovation/management track has numerous panels covering the future of media, the role of women, online engagement, pitch tools, as well as many others. There will be keynote speakers addressing mobile audiences, innovation investment, multi-platform creation, and a special appearance by the new president and CEO of NPR, Gary Knell.

The conference begins at 8am on Wednesday at the Omni Hotel in downtown Austin, SXTXState will be there reporting on all of the action as it happens!