Participating in MELD Lab

During the week from 10.-14.December 2007, the MELD lab was organised at University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) in Preston. The goal of this workshop was to bring together journalists and technologists, for exploring the possibilities of creating projects in New Media domains and to produce pitches of these projects to three media stakeholders. The event was held at the newly set-up venue "Sandbox" in the Media Factory of UCLAN. From about 40 applicants, 15 were selected to participate in this workshop.

From Leeds Met, I (Reinhold Behringer) took part with proposals for applying information technology and human-computer interaction systems to information gathering and presenting. At the workshop, I worked together with journalist Garth Haley to produce the pitch to the industry partners. One of the days was devoted to visit BBC Radio Manchester and ITV Granada News - providing a fascinating insight into the workings of today's media and news production.

The event was a great opportunity for networking between technologists and journalists, bridging the gap between these two different work environments. I look forward to further discussions about joint projects.