World Association of News Publishers


Start-up Park: WAN-IFRA and Future Media Lab bring new tech talents to DCX Digital Content Expo

Start-up Park: WAN-IFRA and Future Media Lab bring new tech talents to DCX Digital Content Expo

Paris, Frankfurt – 2017-06-30

Partnering with Future Media Lab , WAN-IFRA and its Global Alliance for Media Innovation (GAMI) launch a Start-up Park: the new exclusive business platform allows the next generation of tech entrepreneurs and start-ups to meet and engage with the global network of media executives attending the incoming DCX Digital Content Expo (Berlin, 10 to 12 October 2017). The start-up Park will accelerate the dissemination of creative solutions needed to boost the innovation potential of media organisations.

The geography and process of innovation are now more open, collaborative and disperse than ever. Innovation efforts in the news media industry are simultaneously more globalised and more localised while the increasing variety of players contributes to enrich the innovation landscape. But the separate efforts, prototypes and roll-outs by hundreds of different tech companies get inconsistent attention and analysis. Vital lessons and examples are not being widely enough or rapidly enough disseminated.

Advancing innovative technologies to the market

With its Start-up Park, WAN-IFRA’s DCX Digital Content Expo brings those companies together in a central and accessible place: the exhibition is a unique environment for early stage start-ups to engage with a global network of thousands of media executives from around the world. Its goal is to rapidly advance innovative technologies and talents to the market and lead to better economy of scales for news publishers. The new area is designed to promote new ideas of start-ups and connect them with potential customers (media executives) and incubators. Young tech companies (less than 3 years on the market) have the opportunity to exhibit their solutions at attractive special conditions. It combines networking opportunities, series of 30-minutes lectures and pitches. WAN-IFRA will celebrate the best of show in a special start-up contest held during the Expo.

The success of media companies is to a large extent driven by the collaboration capabilities of all parties involved. We are proud to contribute to this essential collaboration work that unlocks the innovation potential of tech entrepreneurs with outstanding creative solutions but a lack of market access to commercialise them successfully”, says Vincent Peyregne, CEO of WAN-IFRA and founder of GAMI. “WAN-IFRA believes that traditional news publishers need to evolve from a culture that is insular, guarded and top-down in its decision making to one that is collaborative, intellectually curious and data and tech driven. The Start-up Park is one of the initiatives of our Global Alliance for Media Innovation that helps news media organisations to shift their business in a constructive and collaborative way”, adds Peyregne.

Looking at the wide range of innovations happening today, driven by the smartest and most creative entrepreneurial minds in Europe, we get a feel for the changes Europe’s media sector is going through” says Max von Abendroth, founder of Future Media Lab. “Journalism media faces new challenges in the digital sphere as the audiences move to new channels, it is making its trusted content accessible for a wider range of audiences, and it is exploring new ways of monetizing media content. Start-ups presented in Berlin in October offer forward-looking solutions. The Future Media Lab. is very happy to facilitate a successful matchmaking in the media innovation space.”

From innovative ad-tech tools to new forms of narrative

The Start-up Park will focus on innovations that combine short-term and long-term priorities for news organisations to move into an era dominated by innovative ad-tech tools, new forms of narrative and engagement with the audience like virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, automated generation of content. Furthermore, entrepreneurs will present the next generation of productivity tools powered by machine learning, predictive analytics, and business models for the monetisation of digital content.

PandaSuite, for example, offers a solution to create an app without any coding skills. The start-up provides an online studio for creating all kinds of interactive stories, communication tools, magazines or games. Another start-up represented at the exhibition is Apollo: Based on extensive studies in the field of artificial intelligence, Apollo developed tools that help media companies to automate labor-intensive jobs like PDF segmentation or article clustering. Ownpage uses an algorithm for personalisation: Its software allows news companies to show readers stories based on their reading habits and what other similar users are reading. Additionally, users can build personalized email newsletters.

The start-up Park is an joint initiative by WAN-IFRA’s Global Alliance for Media Innovation (GAMI), and the Future Media Lab that is hosted by EMMA, the European Magazine Association.

Further information and tickets are available at www.ifra-dcx.com.

Details about the Start-up Park can be found at the following link : Start-Up Park


WAN-IFRA und Future Media Lab bringen Tech-Talente zur Digital Content Expo


About IFRA – DCX

Since 1970, IFRA World Publishing Expo is the must attend annual event for newspaper and news media executives. Exhibitors at IFRA World Publishing Expo include innovative suppliers to the publishing industry who will present solutions and products that help boost efficiency, lower costs and increase the margins. At the Expo, there will be several presentations on key trends and experts discussing the hottest topics in news publishing. The new DCX Digital Content Expo that will beheldconcurrently with IFRA World Publishing Expo, presents ideas and solutions for creation of all form of content and distribution over mobile, social, online and new emerging digital platforms.

The combination of an international market place and a high-quality congress programme makes IFRA and DCX the place to be for media companies and digital publishers.

ABOUT THE ORGANISERS

WAN-IFRA is the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. Its mission is to protect the rights of journalists across the world to operate free media, and provide its members with professional services to help their business prosper in a digital world and perform their crucial role in open societies. With formal representative status at the United Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe, it derives its authority from its global network of leading news publishing companies and technology entrepreneurs, and its legitimacy from its 80 national association members representing 18,000 publications in 120 countries. A joint venture of WAN-IFRA and børding Holding GmbH (børding messe), Publishing Exhibition GmbH & Co. KG is responsible for the organisation and the fair development of IFRA / DCX. More on www.wan-ifra.org


GAMI, the Global Alliance for Media Innovation powered by WAN-IFRA, is a global multi stakeholders network that serves the need for a sustainable innovation and collaborative ecosystem for the news media industry. GAMI supports and coordinates international research and innovation programmes, develops platforms for news publishers to better work and engage with emerging technology entrepreneurs and innovation centres. Its goal is to rapidly advance new technologies and talents to the market and lead to better economy of scales for news publishers and tech companies in developing and acquiring the next level of innovation tools.
Future Media Lab. (www.futuremedialab.org), partners with WAN-IFRA at DCX Digital Expo. The Future Media Lab is an open forum that brings together media professionals, tech innovators, journalists and policy makers to create a new level of knowledge and unique insights at the interface of media- and tech innovation and public policy.

CONTACT AND INQUIRIES

Stefanie Hornung
Head of Communications & Media Cooperations Publishing Exhibition GmbH & Co. KG, Rheinkaistr. 2, 68159 Mannheim, Germany / Phone: +49 621 40166-331 / s.hornung@ifra-dcx.com

Manfred Werfel
Deputy CEO WAN-IFRA, Rotfeder-Ring 11, 60327 Frankfurt am Main, Germany / Phone +49-69-240063-281 / manfred.werfel@wan-ifra.org

Contact information