The largest media innovation event in Latin America took place virtually in the midst of a global pandemic from September 16–18, 2020, attracting more than 2,000 participants from 45 countries.
This year, Media Party, supported by Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires, launched an unprecedented virtual format with a global premium speaker line-up that brought together more than 40 sessions. The three days were dedicated to thematic verticals: Audiences, Product and Monetization with a line-up featuring presenters from The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Associated Press, Facebook Journalism Project and Google News Initiative.
The virtual format allowed for speaker and audience members who previously had never been able to be in Buenos Aires for the annual conference. As a testament to the new format, the conference was rated an average of 9.2/10 by participants for the event overall.
Among the most compelling keynotes: Charo Henríquez of The New York Times on how to develop an environment of constant learning and innovation in the Newsroom; Caspar Llewellyn Smith on the lessons The Guardian is still learning about its revenue model based on readers; and Ranjan Roy on newsletters and relationship management.
Workshop topics included how to know what things are viral on networks and WhatsApp by Matías Di Santi and Lucía Martínez; good practices for email as a platform by Agustina Gewerc; and how to graph the COVID pandemic and not lie by Andrés Snitcofsky.
Other featured speakers included Greg Barber, Chief Product Officer of The Washington Post, Jeff Jarvis of CUNY, and Lisa Gibbs, Associated Press Artificial Intelligence Specialist.
Media Party continued to be a place for platforms to reach out across regional and global landscape, with Facebook’s David Grant explaining the scope of the Facebook Accelerator Program, and that of Arun Venkataraman Google News Initiative announcing the focus of the Digital Growth Program for small and medium news sites.
The monetization lineup on the third day focused on presentations from Jay Rosen from the Membership Puzzle Project program at New York University, Grzegorz Piechota, Researcher at the International News Media Association (INMA), and Tomás Bella from the team of Remp, an open source management system for relationships.
As in previous Media Party events, attendance was free, although this time hundreds of people donated a cup of “coffee” through our website mediaparty.info. In addition to the keynotes (with more than 400 participants simultaneously) and the sofa hubs (boutique meeting spaces with industry leaders), the workshops were productive spaces that were filled with an average of 120 participants, comfortably located in their homes. This allowed the participants to focus the activities through Zoom, Facebook Live and YouTube. For a recap, we recommend the meticulous coverage by the La Izquierda Diario team.
In addition, each day’s transitions and closings presented opportunities for networking meetings announced through the Spatial.Chat/s/MediaParty platform. The platform also allowed for the famous Konex photo to be recreated in virtual format with little bubbles of people’s photos.
The tenth Media Party will take place in 2021. Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires ended the event with an invitation to have all participants who have passed through Media Party in the last decade to start brainstorming for next year’s event.
The 2020 Media Party was powered by Facebook Journalism Project, and sponsored by Google News Initiative, Hacks/Hackers global and received the support of the Hacks/Hackers Buenos Aires community with more than 12,000 members.
