The University of Missouri School of Journalism on Friday hosted a technology summit to close out three days of panel discussions and parties celebrating its centennial.
The sessions were short (20 minutes) and organized in three tracks: digital storytelling, disruptive innovation and future economic models. Many (though not all) featured entrepreneurs pitching their start-ups’ products — some of which are not yet in wide release.
It’s impossible to provide a comprehensive single post on the sessions, but you can check out the J-school centennial’s blog for coverage of many of them (as well as those on other topics on Thursday).
In the several sessions I attended, I didn’t see anything that blew me away. But the demos reinforced the reality we in newspapers live with daily: the competition for people’s attention and time is exploding.
In fact, several of the start-ups I saw in the disruptive track, while different in their specifics, are essentially aiming at the same goal: making it easier and faster for individuals to find, consume and share just the content we want. The projects presented here are a sliver of those being pursued to find ways to help people cut through the digital noise. Just take a look at some of the start-ups that won coveted presentation spots at Tech50 and Demo, two of the biggest tech demo events, which were this week in California.
