The Associated Press is joining thousands of digital and creative professionals from around the world converging at the 2015 SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, which runs March 13 through 17.

The Associated Press will be sharing expertise and learning from other data journalists from around the country at a computer-assisted reporting conference put on by NICAR and Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE). The annual event runs today through March 8 in Atlanta.

“Every year we pick up tools and techniques that become essential to our data journalism toolkit. And every year, I personally steal a few teaching ideas that help me bring the material back to the broader AP,” said AP Editor for Interactive Technology Troy Thibodeaux. “All this, and we get to compare notes and ask questions of the people in other news organizations whose work most inspires and challenges us.”

Here’s some of the hands-on training AP is providing:

THURSDAY, MARCH 5

• Grabbing data from websites without scraping
  AP data journalist Michelle Minkoff co-leads a tutorial on how to get structured data from websites using a web browser with free tools and ad-ons.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6

• Bridging the developer/journalist gap
  AP newsroom developer Maureen Linke shares best practices for bringing together coders and non-coders alike in newsrooms to tell great stories.

• Introducing Geomancer: Don’t let your data be lonely tonight
  Thibodeaux and AP data journalist Serdar Tumgoren talk about Geomancer, a new tool created by AP and a team of developers from civic technology company DataMade, that makes it easier for journalists to add context to a data set.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7

• Getting started with SQLite
  This workshop led by Thibodeaux will provide an introduction to the world of SQL (Structured Query Language), “the lingua franca of relational databases.”

• Summing and grouping in SQLite
  Thibodeaux will help journalists build their SQL skills in this advanced workshop.

• Visualization for reporting
  Minkoff co-leads a workshop on how to use visualizations and graphics as a powerful reporting tool.

The Associated Press has joined 25 other news organizations and journalism groups in endorsing an unprecedented set of safety standards designed to protect freelance reporters on dangerous assignments.

Social Media Editor Eric Carvin describes how and why The Associated Press is using @AP, our flagship Twitter feed, to highlight stories reported by member news organizations.

The Associated Press, working with Automated Insights and Zacks Investment Research, is now automatically generating more than 3,000 stories about U.S. corporate earnings each quarter, a tenfold increase over what AP reporters and editors created previously. Here, Assistant Business Editor Philana Patterson, who has been overseeing the rollout of this process in the newsroom, gives an update on AP’s automation efforts that began last summer.