In October, over the course of 30 hours, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) will do just that at an international hackathon designed to show the value of open innovation and digital development for news publishing.
The WAN-IFRA Media Hack Day on 5-6 October will challenge teams of developers, designers and journalists – drawn from Berlin’s exciting tech community and beyond – to come up with solutions to make newspaper content archives more relevant. Registrations open today.
The partners behind this event reflect the changing faces of news publishing: it is powered by heavyweight digital group Axel Springer, specifically, its Media Entrepreneurs initiative, and partnered by CCI Europe, a leading provider of editorial and advertising solutions for cross media environments, and Storyful, the fast growing social media newswire for journalists.
Teams will be able to hack the content archives of Axel Springer publications (a first), The Guardian and AFP. Storyful is providing its full archive of videos, social media content and photos. Other API partners include photo sharing interface EyeEm, ebook reader Readmill and TV programme guide Watchmi, a mix which should enable imaginative teams to develop interesting solutions.
There are loads of prizes on offer, including the top Axel Springer sponsored reward of a trip to Silicon Valley for the winning team and a quirky WTF prize of dinner with Bild Editor Kai Diekmann.
The MediaHackDay is taking place on the eve of the World Publishing Expo, the news publishing industry’s biggest annual technology event. The expo mirrors the industry’s transformation and has evolved to an event now jammed with everything a news publisher might need – including cutting edge digital solutions and platform intelligence.
WAN-IFRA CEO Vincent Peyrègne said driving digital transformation in the industry was vital and urgent: “The world of news publishing is changing fast. Rapid advances in digital technology and a spirit of innovation have transformed almost all aspects of newspapers and news media. Yet the value of one of the biggest assets that publishing houses hold, their content archives, has yet to be unlocked. We look forward to some innovative ideas that will help the industry transform this aspect of their business.”
The Berlin MediaHackDay is part of a series of WAN-IFRA innovation initiatives taking place around the world. This Friday (13 September), teams are competing in an App Development challenge in Bangalore, India as part of the Publish Asia conference and expo and the Newsplex Asia News App Challenge is taking place in Singapore in October.
The Berlin event’s Twitter hashtag is #mhd2013.