Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) 2025 Conference

Creativity has always been about adaptation—whether painters feared the camera or travel writers faced the rise of short-form video and AI. In this keynote, photographer and storyteller Andy Austin explores how to evolve, capture attention, and thrive in an ever-changing media landscape.

People in the search mindset rarely stay in a single lane. They weave in and out of many platforms – not only search engines – to find stories and information. As an outdoor communicator, this can create overwhelm - or opportunity. This presentation can help writers, DMOs, vendors, publications, and outdoor communicators of all kinds to navigate the changing search/digital landscape in a digestible, easy-to-process way.

With Google’s long-time dominance, writers and publications have put all their eggs in the SEO basket. But the reality is much messier - and it's changing in real-time as AI changes how people discover information. This talk will tackle the fast-changing search landscape, and propose a more simple way to think about where you should focus your energy to make your work discoverable.

Unlock the power of AI to elevate your creative voice. This keynote will provide a foundational understanding of AI and a practical framework for evaluating and implementing it to magnify your creative voices. Whether you’re a writer, artist, musician, or designer, this session will equip you with the insights and tools to harness AI’s potential, amplifying your artistic expression across any medium.

Join editors from various publications as they discuss what they look for when hiring freelancers, changes they're seeing in the industry (and yes, how much they pay).

The digital media era is here to stay, and as such has our narrative around who we are as hunters, and our impact through hunting changed to meet this new world? Who are we really portraying ourselves to? Who do we think is watching? And why should we care?