How can established media and tech companies foster innovation from within large organizations? That will be the focus of our second annualCollab/Space New York workshop on July 15, 2015. The workshop is sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and hosted by the Ford Foundation. It will be an all-day, hands-on workshop focused on “intrapreneurial” innovation and spotlighting 8 cutting-edge media projects. We will choose eight innovative projects, which will present their work to-date in lightning fashion followed by directed questions from the audience.  We’ll do collaborative exercises — using improv comedy techniques — to learn how to work better together, and break out into groups to help these media projects get past their challenges. Our diverse group of participants includes entrepreneurs, journalists, publishers, technologists, designers, marketers, investors and major players in the tech and media scene in New York.

Collab/Space New York is a production of PBS MediaShift, with premier sponsorship from theDonald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism and hosted by theFord Foundation.

PRESENTING PROJECTS

The Atlantic’s Story Modules
BBC.com’s Home Page
Thomson Reuters’ Convene app
Climate Desk
AP’s Deaf Access News
Google News Lab
UNHCR’s The Hive
POV’s Web VR Starter Kit

You can read more about all the presenting projects here.

KEY SPEAKERS

Cory Haik is the Executive Producer and Senior Editor for Digital News at the Washington Post. With a journalism career solely in digital, Cory has a passion for the creative development of cutting-edge storytelling. She has been at the Post for the last four years, leading innovative initiatives — such as the new Kindle Fire app — and pushing the envelope on mobile and places to grow new audiences. Cory cut her teeth following the storms of the Gulf Coast at NOLA.com, site of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, where she was the Managing Editor. She shared in two Pulitzer Prizes with The Times-Picayune for the staff coverage of Hurricane Katrina, for breaking news and public service in 2006. She also shared in a staff Pulitzer in 2010 for the coverage of police officer shootings with the staff of the Seattle Times. Follower her@coryhaik.

Sree Sreenivasan is the first Chief Digital Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Met, he leads a world-class team of 70 working on topics he loves: digital, social, mobile, video, data, email apps and more. He joined the Met after spending 20 years at Columbia University as a member of the faculty of the Columbia Journalism School and a year as the university’s first Chief Digital Officer. In 2009, he was named one of AdAge’s 25 media people to follow on Twitter and in 2010 was named one of Poynter’s the 35 most influential people in social media; in 2014, he was named the most influential CDO in the US. In 2015, he’s joined CBS Radio’s new PlayIt podcasting network with the immodestly titled “@Sree Show: Talking tech, culture, entrepreneurship.” You can find him on Twitter @sree, on Facebook, on Instagram and on the web at Sree.net.

Mark Glaser is founder and executive editor of PBS MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is a longtime freelance journalist whose career includes columns on hip-hop, reviews of videogames, travel stories, and humor columns that poked fun at the titans of technology. Glaser won the Innovation Journalism Award in 2010 from the Stanford Center for Innovation and Communication. Glaser has been a guest on PBS’ “Newshour,” NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” KALW’s “Media Roundtable” and has been a speaker and moderator at many industry conferences. He has been running events for MediaShift and acting as the MC since 2012. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

Andy Boyle is a full-stack web developer for NBC News Digital Group’s BreakingNews.com. Previously, he worked at the Boston Globe, St. Petersburg Times and the New York Times Regional Media Group, where his work was cited in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. Most recently, Boyle was a news applications developer for the Chicago Tribune, where he built projects for the 2012 and 2014 elections, built tools for user-generated content, created new ways of tracking shootings and crime in the greater Chicagoland area and crafted other data visualizations. He also regularly writes and tells jokes throughout the greater Midwest. Boyle was a runner-up in the Chicago satellite round of the Great American Comedy Festival, and was a featured comedian in the Orlando Indie Comedy Festival. You can follow him on Twitter at@andymboyle.

REYNOLDS JOURNALISM INSTITUTE

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute works with citizens, journalists and researchers to strengthen democracy through better journalism. RJI seeks out the most exciting new ideas, tests them with real-worldexperiments, uses social science research to assess their effectiveness and delivers solutions that citizens and journalists can put to use in their own communities. Learn more here.

FORD FOUNDATION HQ

The workshop will take place at a fantastic spot: The headquarters of the Ford Foundation near the United Nations in Manhattan. The foundation has been supporting principled news reporting in the United States that illuminates social problems, sparks accountability and inspires action. The foundation’s support enables distinguished news organizations to pursue high-quality content that reaches large and influential audiences, including historically under-served audiences. Learn more about how the foundation’s strategies and approaches shape its grant making.

BONUS EVENT AT GENERAL ASSEMBLY!

We are collaborating with another great event sponsored by RJI and produced by the Associated Press the night before in New York on July 14: “Millennials: Engaging the Next Generation of News Consumers.” How can media companies create and deliver content to captivate younger audiences? Is there money to be made from this group? These are among the questions industry experts and academic leaders will tackle in this discussion led by The Associated Press at General Assembly. RSVP here!

Improv exercises lead to fun and serious learning at Collab/Space NYC

HOW IT WILL WORK

Media and tech companies in New York and beyond can apply to present at the workshop. We’ll choose 8 innovation projects at various stages of development, who will do presentations to the group and answer questions. They will list their 3 biggest challenges, whether that’s financial, technological, marketing, distribution or some other major challenge. Later in the day, we’ll divide into breakout groups around each project and develop solutions for their challenges. Solutions will be shared with the full group at the conclusion of the day.

The goal will be to collaborate to help those projects succeed in the long run, creating interest groups for them on the spot (and afterwards), while also networking between the tech and media communities.  We’ll end the day with a mixer which is open to the community, to encourage further discussion and networking.

REGISTRATION

Registration costs $149 for professionals and $99 for students. We will invite key people in the media and tech scenes in New York and around the country, and will open up registration to the public as well.

WHEN?

July 15, 2015, from 9 am to 5 pm for the workshop, and 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm for the mixer.

WHERE?

Ford Foundation
Headquarters

320 East 43rd St.,
New York, NY 10017
(212) 573-5000
Google Map location

The Ford Foundation is located near the United Nations on the east side of midtown Manhattan, 6 blocks from the Queens Midtown Tunnel and 3 blocks from the 4, 5, 6 and 7 subway lines at Grand Central Station.

See you there!

AGENDA

July 15

> Collab/Space NYC at Ford Foundation

> Targeted talks on collaboration and media innovation.

> Selected media innovation projects present their work and list their challenges.

> Networking lunch

> Collaboration exercise with improv comedy techniques

> Breakout into teams: Work collaboratively to help solve challenges for the projects, and present that to the group.

> Reception and mixer with drinks and food.

MIXER

After the workshop, we’ll convene for a happy hour mixer, with participants at the workshop as well as some folks in New York who couldn’t attend the workshop. If you’d like to attend the mixer, it’s free of charge, but please RSVP ahead of time to reserve your spot! We’ll serve wine and beer, and some light food.