International Press Institute (IPI) Media Blend Hackathon 2023

Deadline: March 17, 2023

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 we 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.

We will provide the following:

•  Ideation support before the event;
• Cosy 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.

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 can present their pitches in parallel with the event.

Hackathon participants will be eligible to apply for IPI’s New Media Incubator, a new programme supporting the launch and growth of new media ventures.

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Eligibility Criteria

The Media Blend Hackathon brings together media experts and managers, journalists and technologists from newsrooms and startups around Europe to explore tech-powered solutions to improve and enhance journalism operations, production, monetization and storytelling. If you consider yourself one of those people, you are welcome to apply alone or with an established team!

You can participate as a team working in the field of creative journalism and media startups. We 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 to hang on to new subscribers gained during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19. That’s why we encourage the participants to tackle this challenge and use technologies to improve 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 we identify countering fake news and verifying the information as our second challenge. 
• Content production and distribution: growing news avoidance among audiences seemingly keeps many newsrooms up at night. During this hackathon, we’d like to focus on people under 25 who, due to their news consumption behaviour, are less interested in traditional news subjects and don’t have a strong affiliation with specific media brands. So our last objective is to find a way to make Gen Z users engaged and instantly aware of the information that matters most to them.

Please note that we offer you a main challenge within every hackathon category, but you are welcome to suggest solving another one in your application!

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

• 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).

What A Team Should Look Like

• The team consists of 2-4 people focused on the media sector;
• Your team has to include at least one company decision-maker and one IT specialist as team members;
• At least two people from two different countries have to be part of the team;
• If there are people in your team representing different companies, we’ll consider this an advantage.

Application Process

1. Get started and fill out the online questionnaire;
2. 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 session participants an upper hand in the selection process; Apply for the ideation session by submitting your contacts here: https://bit.ly/402oCvq.
3. Ten 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.

Application Registration Deadline: 17th March 2023

To Apply: Click here

Official Website: Click here