June 24
Lundi

• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  08:00

  • General Programme

  Registration

  Location: 

  Lobby - Ground floor

  Pick up your registration badge early in the morning. 

• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  09:00

  • General Programme

  Introductory session: Why have product roles become crucial in news media companies?

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  There is a growing understanding amongst industry experts that product roles are vital to the future of news media companies and a  gold rush towards Chief Product Officers, Product VP’s, Product Managers, etc., is taking place. These positions enable media companies to grasp and quickly adapt to change. In this introductory session, participants will understand why and how media companies have been adopting product strategies and mindsets, as well as the challenges around this trend.

  Intervenants 

  • Anita Zielina

    

    Director of Innovation & Leadership, Craig Newmark J-School/CUNY, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  09:40

  • General Programme

  Session 2: Fireside Chat on Product strategy and revenue objectives

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  Product roles are rare, expensive, hard to find and difficult to retain. Some publishers and CEOs are often reluctant to hiring or truly empowering such roles. In this session, we’ll show to what extent investing in product roles has a direct impact on a company’s revenue strategies, and what is needed to achieve that.

  Moderator 

  • Anita Zielina

    

    Director of Innovation & Leadership, Craig Newmark J-School/CUNY, USA

  Intervenants 

  • Julia Beizer

    

    Chief Product Officer, Bloomberg Media Group, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  10:15

  • General Programme

  Session 3: Breaking newsroom walls. Aligning company goals. Responding to the audience’s needs.

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  A product role not only enables a smoother connection between the newsroom, the business and the tech side of a news company. It is also key in connecting the newsroom to the ever-changing needs of the company’s digital audience, while keeping business goals in mind and understanding any technological complexity a given project might have.

  Moderator 

  • Emily Ingram

    

    Director of Product, Chartbeat, USA

  Why Newsrooms find "Product" Hard

  10:15-10:45 - A presentation by Nick Petrie on the how product can help a company transition from centuries of similar workflows and processes, into a company that needs to constantly adapt to the changing needs of its digital audiences in extremely competitive business and technological ecosystems, followed by a Q&A with Emily Ingram.

  Intervenants 

  • Nick Petrie

    

    Deputy Head of Digital, The Times & Sunday Times, UK

  Fireside Chat with The Atlantic

  10:45-11:15 - Join The Atlantic's Andrew Phelps for a look at how the publication is laying the groundwork to elevate its product and subscriber experience across platforms and expand its digital consumer business.

  Intervenants 

  • Andrew Phelps

    

    Senior Director - Product, The Atlantic, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7497

  11:15

  • Networking

  Networking Break

  Location: 

  Lobby Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  11:45

  • General Programme

  Session 4: Elements of success: user-experience and design

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  User experience and design have become a must have in today’s digital era. Companies of the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, AirBNB and Uber provide the smoothest and friendliest user journeys. News media companies cannot afford to stay behind and risk losing their audiences’ invaluable attention. News companies with a product strategy and mindset are a step ahead when it comes to creating the most adapted tech solutions and provide top-level user journeys.

  Moderator 

  • Peter Gray

    

    VP, Product Optimization, Dow Jones, USA

  Intervenants 

  • Nicole Dingess

    

    Senior Director of UX and Design, Gannett | USA TODAY NETWORK, USA

  • Trei Brundrett

    

    Chief Operating Officer, Vox Media, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7495
  • 7496

  12:45

  • Sponsored sessions

  • General Programme

  Session 5: Talk less, Experiment more

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  Much too often, when creating a new product, media companies spend too much time and effort discussing, instead of testing. But one of they keys to creating successful products is embracing a culture of constant experimentation. Experimenting can be costly, but surely less costly than taking a wrong decision and creating an unsuccessful product. In this session, we’ll explore how it is possible to create a product, in this case, a successful video strategy, through smart experimentation techniques and technology.

  Intervenants 

  • Alexis Johann

    

    Executive Managing Director, Styria Content Creation, Austria

  Sponsored by:

  

• Stream IDs:

  • 7497

  13:25

  • Networking

  Networking Lunch

  Location: 

  Café & Terrace (3rd floor) - SUNY Global Center
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  14:25

  • General Programme

  Session 6: Defining priorities and changing cultures in local media companies

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  Product roles have become paramount to news publishers. Great product teams can uplift an entire media organization. But building an elite product team is challenging, particularly for local publishers. 

  How can local media companies hire strong product talent despite resource challenges and stiff competition for these assets? Once teams are assembled, how can product leaders activate these essential functions to spark transformation companywide? How can they drive a customer-first mindset that pervades all aspects of the organization, creating products and experiences that users love (and will pay for)? In this session, digital leaders at large North American media companies share their vision for building strong product cultures. 

  Moderator 

  • Jed Williams

    

    Chief Strategy Officer, Local Media Association, USA

  Intervenants 

  • Robertson Barrett

    

    President of Digital Media, Hearst Newspapers, USA

  • Leanne Gemma

    

    Director of Product, McClatchy, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7495
  • 7496

  15:15

  • Sponsored sessions

  • General Programme

  An Introduction to GNI's Innovation Challenge in North America

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  The Google News Initiative is a global effort to work with the news industry to help journalism thrive in the digital age. Come learn about their new Innovation Challenge in North America focused on funding creative projects that aim to generate revenue and/or increase audience engagement for local journalism.

  Intervenants 

  • Valerie Streit

    

    Partner Operations Lead, News and Search, Google, US

  • Google News Initiative

    
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  15:30

  • General Programme

  Session 7: Fireside Chat: The intricacies of product roles

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  How to find the right profile and make the best of it? How to attract and retain such profiles? Should they have a media background or not? What are the tensions between product and other areas (editorial, tech, business) and how to diffuse them? How to empower a product leader? 

  Moderator 

  • Trei Brundrett

    

    Chief Operating Officer, Vox Media, USA

  Intervenants 

  • Dheerja Kaur

    

    Chief Product Officer, theSkimm, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7497

  16:10

  • Networking

  Networking Break

  Location: 

  Lobby Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  16:30

  • General Programme

  Session 8: Fireside Chat: Towards a new era of internal collaboration

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  A conversation with Renée Kaplan on the importance of internally adopting a cross-departmental collaborative approach between editorial, business and tech, in order to better respond to the audience’s ever-changing needs, to achieve revenue objectives and to produce relevant content in an increasingly competitive and complex digital ecosystem.

  Moderator 

  • Anita Zielina

    

    Director of Innovation & Leadership, Craig Newmark J-School/CUNY, USA

  Intervenants 

  • Renée Kaplan

    

    Head of Audience and New Content Strategies, The Financial Times, UK
• Stream IDs:

  • 7496

  17:00

  • General Programme

  Session 9: Portfolio: What makes a product (un)successful?

  Location: 

  Global Classroom - SUNY Global Center

  This session will provide tips on how to create a successful product and showcase some of the most interesting news products recently launched: how are they conceived, developed and finally deployed? What are the keys to their success or failure?  

  Moderator 

  • Millie Tran

    

    Deputy Off-Platform Editor, The New York Times, USA

  Intervenants 

  • Greg Doufas

    

    Chief Technology and Digital Officer, The Globe and Mail, Canada

  • Greg Barber

    

    Director of Newsroom Product, The Washington Post, USA
• Stream IDs:

  • 7497

  17:45

  • Networking

  North American Digital Media Awards Winners Announcement & Drinks

  Location: 

  Global Classroom

  

  It has been an incredible year for news to rethink, reshape and rejoice on extraordinary digital journalism. Pure players and traditional media outlets have shown us how innovation and remarkable storytelling are still fuelling the engines of great journalism. 

  Join us for the announcement of the 2019 North American Digital Media Awards winners followed by casual drinks to network with conference speakers and participants and hear more from the winners' and finalists' projects!

  Competing this year are:

  Best News Website or Mobile Service

  A Future Based on Investigative Journalism, The Globe and Mail, Canada

  PGNewsSlide, Block Communications, Inc., USA

  washingtonpost.com, The Washington Post, USA  - WINNER

  ---

   

  Best Digital Marketing Campaign for News Brands

  Democracy Dies in Darkness, The Washington Post, USA

  Good Things Campaign, The Wall Street Journal, USA

  The Truth is Worth It, The New York Times, USA - WINNER 

  ---

   

  Best Data Visualization

  Orchestra Gender Disparity, Quartz, USA

  Self-driving cars: Who to save, who to sacrifice?, Radio-Canada, Canada

  The four days in 1968 that reshaped D.C., The Washington Post, USA - WINNER

  ---

   

  Best Digital Project to Engage Youger and/or Millennial Audiences

  The leaders' dialogue, Le Devoir, Canada

  Made in PGH, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, USA

  Playing Games with Politicians, The Washington Post, USA - WINNER

  ---

   

  Best Use of Online Video

  Explainer Videos, Le Devoir, Canada

  The Future of Gaming (in collaboration with Retro Report), Quartz, USA - WINNER

  ---

   

  Best Paid Content Strategy

  From IBM Watson to Health Tech: Our journey to creating a new, cross-channel vertical, STAT, USA - WINNER

  The Truth is Worth It, The New York Times, USA