(Friday update)

Join me and Sarah Schmalbach (USA Today mobile product manager), Brian James Kirk (co-founder/business development of Technical.ly) and John Miller (president, Scribewise) at BarCamp NewsInnovation Saturday at 11 a.m.

(Not registered yet? It’s the best $10 you can spend on a journalism conference, breakfast and lunch included.)

The first (and only) rule of my favorite session at last year’s Online News Association conference was simple: No articles.

The ideas we came up with to deliver news and information represented both new ideas and fresh spins on old classics, ranging from data visualizations to events, social media campaigns and a “choose your own adventure” app.

Done right, they would allow organizations to go beyond merely selling against pageviews and instead create content that addresses the audience’s wants and needs, while capturing their attention (and advertisers’).

But as with too many journalism conferences, the session was missing an important piece: Our colleagues responsible for selling those ads.

At Saturday’s BarCamp News Innovation, we’re going to fix that.

With the help of product and sales professionals from USA Today, Technically Philly and Scribewise, I present to you “We hijacked the article machine…and turned it into an ATM.”

(The session as told through two Breaking Bad gifs)

At the workshop, we’ll think about building engaging content FOR our audiences, brainstorm how to make that part of a sustainable business plan, and discuss measuring the impact of our work when we go beyond focusing solely on words.

We’ll leave with ideas to bring back to our own newsrooms – and also learn a bit more about how the other side operates to help bridge the editorial-business divide.

Articles will always be with us – as should the wall between sales and editorial (although wouldn’t a nice picket fence be better?) – but working with our friends on the business side to think of engaging and marketable ways to deliver information is one of the keys to our future success.

I hope you’ll stop by Saturday to help us brainstorm doing just that.