### Innovators pitch ideas as NMG explores AI solutions in media

Hundreds of innovators pitched ideas on the potential usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline newsroom operations on the first day of the Nation Media Group’s (NMG) hackathon held at Strathmore University on Monday.

The two-day hackathon, organised in collaboration with Strathmore University’s iLab, is intended to chart the path for NMG’s digital transformation.

The pitches, mostly from young innovators, engineers, programmers, and media enthusiasts; mainly proposed new revenue models for media houses, audience engagement, and use of emerging technologies to improve newsroom operations.

NMG’s Chief Operating Officer, Monicah Ndung’u, said the ideas presented could offer digital transformation solutions for the Kenyan media industry and beyond.

“There is definitely scope for us to find solutions for challenges that we face as a business,” said Ms Ndung’u.

“The end goal is to find solutions we can adopt for the business, and also to find a community of people whom we can work with and collaborate to create solutions even for other fields,” she added.

In total 22 innovations, mostly deploying AI and big data technologies, were presented at the summit, out of which eight were selected by the judges to proceed to the next phase.

The 22 were pulled from a list of over 100 applications based on their applicability and uniqueness. Five were selected to proceed to the final stage of the competition that will be held on November 15.

“These teams will be judged on various things – creativity, scalability, their responsiveness to market, and teamwork,” said Strathmore University iLab’s data scientist, Abraham Ngetich.

The best three projects will be awarded $1,000 (Sh129,020), $700 (Sh90,314), and $550 (Sh70,961). They will receive support from both NMG and iLab to further develop their ideas into scalable and viable solutions.

According to Mr Ngetich, the hackathon comes at the right time for Kenya’s media industry, which is often ignored by both innovators and startup investors in the digital space.

“We have an opportunity for these people to challenge or to bring solutions in a market that has not really had people bringing up ideas in terms of hackathons,” said Mr Ngetich.

Ms Ndung’u noted that this is NMG’s first hackathon, informed by a series of innovations within the company that have helped sustain the business over the years.