Applications for the International Press Institute (IPI) Media Blend Hackathon 2023 are now open. Media Blend is a hackathon designed to boost innovative synergy on the cutting edge of journalism and technologies.

Media Blend is a three-day offline event in Vienna gathering media professionals and innovators from around Europe. Anyone interested can apply within a team or alone (and they will find a team to match your ideas). The chosen format, a hackathon, ensures 72 hours of creative problem-solving through collaboration between experts and media professionals followed by a pitching session of workable solutions to a problem.

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Media Blend Hackathon will take place in the same week as IPI World Congress and Media Innovation Festival 2023: New frontiers in the age of AI. Successful Hackathon participants will get the chance to present their pitches in parallel with the event.

Benefits from Media Blend Hackathon

They will provide:

• Ideation support before the event;
• Cozy location in Vienna to work with your teammates and mentors on your dream project;
• Mentorship support for product development; business, action, promo-plan creation; and presentation of the project;
• Kick-off grants of €5,000 to support project ideas based on Hackathon competition results;
• Networking opportunity with the most innovative media startups from all over Europe.

Eligibility for Media Blend Hackathon

• Open to media experts and managers, journalists and technologists from newsrooms and startups around Europe;
• Applicants must be based in one of the following countries: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine.
• You can participate as a team working in the field of creative journalism and media startups. They expect the teams to generate new ideas and develop innovative solutions into working models or prototypes for the pan-European media market within these workstreams:
  • Analytics and monetization: this year the key focus for many publishers will be looking to hang on to new subscribers gained during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19. That’s why they encourage the participants to tackle this challenge and use technologies for improving subscriber retention.
  • Media research and data analytics: there is a negative trend of lost trust in the media, accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic. The main reason for that might be the spread of fake news and messages from the sources of information. Therefore, they identify countering fake news and verifying the information as their second challenge.
  • Content production and distribution: growing news avoidance among audiences seemingly keeps many newsrooms up at night. During this hackathon, they’d like to focus on people under 25, who due to their news consumption behavior are less interested in traditional news subjects and don’t have a strong affiliation with specific media brands. So, their last objective is to find a way to make Gen Z users engaged and instantly aware of the information that matters most to them.

Note that they offer you a main challenge within every hackathon category, but you are also welcome to suggest solving another one іn your application.

Teams / individual participants are welcome to apply if they have:

• A vision of a challenge they want to approach/opportunities they want to create;
• A rough plan on how to develop a solution to the challenge/problem addressed;
• A project idea within the main categories:
  • Analytics and monetization;
  • Media research and data analytics;
  • Content production and distribution.
• An ability to travel to Vienna in May (travel costs will be covered once your participation is confirmed).

Application of Media Blend Hackathon

• Get started and fill out the online questionnaire;
• Take part in an ideation workshop curated by media and tech experts. It is an opportunity for you to get support refining your project idea. Although participation in the ideation sessions is not mandatory – it will give ideation sessions participants an upper hand in the selection process. Apply for the ideation session by submitting your contacts here.
• In the end, 10 teams focused on incorporating technologies in journalism or establishing cross-border and cross-company ties in the European media sector will be selected to participate in the hackathon.

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Lastly, It is important to visit the official website link found below to access the application form.

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