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Dear partners, followers, and friends

The time has come for the MediaRoad project to bid goodbye, at least for now. To support the European Media Ecosystem for Innovation, we kicked off in September 2017, and on 31 October 2019, it completed its cycle. 

Below you can read the highlights of our project Hubs: Sandbox, Policy and Network.

Thank you for keeping up with our project developments and being part of MediaRoad community in the past 26 months. We will continue to work to advance European media innovation, and we wish to stay in touch with you. Feel free to contact us and join a conversation in our group.

With our best regards,

the MediaRoad Team

Shaping future vision for the media sector

In the last two years, the Policy Hub has, amongst other things, developed a long-term policy vision to promote innovation in the European media sector, and monitored the evolution of  European media markets and policies.

On behalf of the MediaRoad consortium, we have responded to 7 public consultations. Just to mention: the Public Consultation on Fake News and Online Disinformation launched by the European Commission in February 2018 or the Consultation to prepare a ‘Strategic Plan’ for Horizon Europe that will guide the work programmes and calls for proposals for Horizon Europe’s first four years (2021-2024) launched by the European Commission in September 2019.

The Policy Hub has further developed the long-term vision through 2 Vision Papers, the first one on the Future of Media Innovation (published in October 2018), and the second one on Future and Emerging Technologies for the Media Sector (published in October 2019).

The Policy Hub’s objective has been to give the European media sector’s view on topics such as fake news, artificial intelligence or the place that media innovation deserves within the forthcoming Horizon Europe. We expect the Policy Hub’s impact to last through these Vision Papers (and their further exploitation in academic, educational and professional settings) and its diverse contributions to media policy dialogue in the European Union.

A persistent MediaRoad network

During the MediaRoad project runtime, the Network Hub established a large variety of activities to enable the creation of a forum to strengthen collaboration, joint research, information sharing and project initiation between all participants. The overall aim was to raise the innovation potential amongst the representatives of the various sectors.

As part of the Network Hub, over 15 topical events have been organised during the past two years, often addressing transversal themes like Artificial Intelligence, platformisation and 5G. These events brought together representatives from various backgrounds, be it media companies, R&D institutes or the creative sector. The MediaRoad’s Network Hub was also extended (in close cooperation with the Sandbox Hub) to the network of Sandboxes and related startups (e.g. by promoting them during networking events like Sandbox Pitching in Munich). The networking was accompanied by many comms activities, like our quarterly Newsletters, mailings and social media.

And the MediaRoad network will continue to exist! We aim to further exchange information, ideas and proposals for collaboration and joint research now and in the future. Hence, it is still worth your while to contribute to the MediaRoad network – do not hesitate to contact us with ideas and suggestions either by mail or through our dedicated Linked In group. We’ll see you soon!

European network of media innovation accelerators

Sandbox Hub’s primary goal has been to build a network for accelerators of media innovation, enable local startups and SMEs to scale internationally, and exchange experience and expertise. In the last 26 months were very exciting – 18 media innovation accelerators (or Sandboxes) were powered up and linked by MediaRoad’s Sandbox Hub.

Sandbox Hub has enabled numerous collaborations between broadcasters and start-ups, both on national and European level. We are delighted to share with you a preview of 60+ projects that were conducted between our Sandbox and stat-ups. Watch our page as more is to come! We have awarded the quality label to the successful collaborations as well as with the Sandbox Prizes we recognised the achievements of start-ups and SMEs in terms of innovative concepts.

We will continue to inspire media organisations to collaborate with start-ups, share our know-how, and spread the Sandbox Hub-vibe.

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