Journalism at the MozFest House 2019

OpenNews is heading back to the Mozilla Festival, a multi-day, annual celebration of the open internet for technologists, makers, educators, and creators in all fields. Again this year, we're organizing a full day of journalism-tech sessions at the MozFest House on October 24.

Teams & collaboration: How an interdisciplinary approach gets the work done in journalism tech

All day on Thursday, October 24 we’ll have hands-on, collaborative sessions from local London journalists and visitors coming to town for the festival. The event takes place at the Royal Society of Arts in central London.

This years theme is about teams, collaboration, and the interdisciplinary perspectives that help us to work well in journalism and tech. We’ll have a range of sessions about how we work together, how we engage folks from disciplines outside of journalism, and what we need to do to create cultures that are welcoming to all perspectives and value innovative thinking.

Participants can register now and tickets are free. Many of the sessions will be scheduled that morning, and we’re working to confirm a bunch of sessions in advance, too. You can expect sessions on:

• “How can we be more Proactive than Reactive by harnessing technologies including AI to engage our audiences?” from the BBC News Labs team
• “How can multidisciplinary teams form and collaborate when working to different timescales and responsibilities?” also from the BBC News Labs team
• “How can we create a newsroom culture that attracts, retains and inspires young talent from non-journalism backgrounds?” from Paula Montana Tor of the European Journalism Centre
• “How can we start a project out right? What are the challenges in creating and evaluating project proposals, and what have we learnt about what works?” from Robin Kwong of the Financial Times
• “What are best practices and things to be careful of when working with communities and technology for data journalism projects?” with Romina Colman of La Nacion Data
• “How to organize reading groups that encourage continued learning about our work?” with Nicole Zhu of Vox Media
• “What changes when one newsroom becomes 70? Lessons and mistakes from building The Coral Project.” with Andrew Losowsky of Coral for Vox Media.
• “How to take care of yourself and your colleagues when the news doesn’t stop?” from OpenNews staff and community members
• maybe also a topic of interest you? If you’d like to lead a session, let us know or you can of course pitch that day as well

We’ll schedule several more sessions in advance of the event, and will update them here. On the morning of the event, we’ll finalize the schedule together with more sessions proposed that day. Sessions are often organized around a question, challenge, or case study and provide a chance for everyone in the room to share their experiences and feedback on that topic.

Throughout the day, we’ll have the chance to discuss stories, strategies, and tools in sessions and over breaks.

Our rough schedule will be:

• 9:30-10am - registration, unconference brainstorming
• 10-10:15am - schedule creation and introduction to unconferencing!
• 10:15-10:30am - transition to first session
• 10:30-11:30am - first session
• 11:30am-noon - break, with tea and coffee and conversation
• noon-1pm - second session
• 1pm-2:30pm - lunch on your own, explore the Strand!
• 2:30-3:30pm - third session
• 3:30-4pm - break, with snack and conversation
• 4-5pm - final session
• 5pm - wrap up

We expect it to be a busy, fun, and productive day filled with sharing about our work and building stronger connections with colleagues. Please help us to spread the word.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

We’re grateful to the BBC News Labs team and the Mozilla Festival team for their support of this event.