More than 100 media innovators from the United States and Latin America attended Media Party Miami on Feb. 13 and 14 at Florida International University and The LAB Miami.
eyesontherise.org co-sponsored the event along with FIU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Latin American & Caribbean Center at FIU, Hacks/Hackers Miami and the International Center for Journalists.
Above, Jennifer Preston, Vice President for Journalism at the Knight Foundation, delivered the keynote speech about the importance of innovation to the future of journalism.
One of the innovators from Brazil, Gustavo Faleiros, Manager of the Earth Journalism Network, explains InfoAmazonia, which focuses on storytelling about the Amazon.
Mariano Blejman, founder of the media incubator and accelerator HacksLabs, and The Media Factory and of Media Party Buenos Aires.
Media Party Miami featured a Media Fair/Startup Showcase where innovative projects and media startups from the United States and Latin America showed their work. Charnele Michel with eyesontherise.org was on hand to show the award-winning documentary South Florida’s Rising Seas and to demonstrate the project’s sea level rise app.
The Fusion Interactive Team (Mariana Santos, Simon DuCroquet, Miguel Costa, Victor Abarca, Olman Hernandez and Kit Cross) livened up the afternoon presentations with a colorful display of unity.
Trei Brundrett, chief product officer at Vox Media, closed out Friday’s activities with a talk on media companies as technology companies.
Throughout Friday and Saturday, innovators found many opportunities for networking. In the foreground, Rebekah Monson of Miami startup The New Tropic chats with media investor Marcus Brauchli, former executive editor of The Washington Post. In the background, are Hacks/Hackers Executive Director Jeanne Brooks and Andrew Quarrie of Miami startup Jurnid.
Day 2 of Media Party Miami featured an all-day hackathon with hands-on workshops on everything from using Tableau Public to creating animated infographics to working with social media.
In the end, the two days focused on innovative and international ways of storytelling. Above, WLRN’s Maria Murriel leads a workshop on using TimelineJS and StorymapJS.
