The five-module Product and Data for Media Summit provided INMA members with an overview of some of the available solutions for a complicated media world, said Ariane Bernard, lead of the INMA Smart Data Initiative, at the conclusion of the event on Thursday.

“Some of these topics are challenging what we think we can or cannot do,” she said, noting that machine learning offers different approaches to using data in news media products. At the same time, it allows publishers to keep in mind that the end users of these tech-driven solutions are human.

“We’re not building products for the sake of product managers who are having a kick out of building the most extreme product they can think of,” she said. “We’re also building with humans in our newsroom and our tech is changing; our users change. They have to contend with this.”

Bernard organised the summit with INMA Product Initiative Lead Jodie Hopperton. This is their second such summit.

Bernard pointed out that the summit talked about product and data from an editorial perspective and showed how technology could augment that mission and provide greater focus: “We can use our human brains on certain problems and not others. And [we learned] how we can also extend ourselves and our tech to touch different goals than what we originally built them for.”

 Read INMA’s coverage of the Product and Data for Media Summit here:

• AI offers much promise, several pitfalls for news media, featuring Kimmy Bettinger of the World Economic Forum and Arjun Moorthy of The Factual.
• Styria details benchmarking exercise comparing its brands, featuring Niksa Gopcevic of Styria Media Group.
• Spotify created 3 products to address challenges for podcast advertisers, featuring Michael Villaseñor of Spotify.
• Grupo Octubre incubates data tool to predict headline, story success, featuring Mariano Blejman of Grupo Octubre.
• Averages are not the way to analyse subscriber engagement, featuring Gadi Lahav of Wise.
• Start-up targeting Millennial women opted out of traditional data metrics, featuring Ana Bakalinova of Eliza.
• Gannett, CBC gather audience data with privacy in mind, featuring Jeff Burkett of Gannett and Aaron Sue of CBC.
• News media teams should know these 5 things about data, featuring Chris Miles, formerly of Meta.
• Media companies are making data more accessible for non-data teams, featuring Helen Hewitt of Dow Jones, Janis Kitzhofer of Axel Springer, and Michael Morisy of MuckRock. 
• Personalisation has a strong influence on product, newsroom decisions at media companies, featuring Julian Delany of News Corp Australia, Christoph Schmitz of Schibsted, and Uli Köppen of Bayerischer Rundfunk.

For a list of scheduled summits in 2023, see here for virtual events and here for in-person events.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .