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Don't miss the right moment for the Big Changeover in the Media RIA Novosti’s International Multimedia Press Center

The third International Future Media Forum will be held on June 27 at RIA Novosti. The main theme of the forum will be Big Data in the media. RIA Novosti is the first in Russia to open Big Data for the media. More than 300 media experts and representatives from business circles around the world will attend the forum in the RIA Novosti International Multimedia Press Center to discuss ways of finding and presenting information in the era of the Great Information Explosion.

Data – the future media asset

"We see that in the very near future the advantage in the media market will go to those who learn how to work with unstructured data," said RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk. "We are teaching ourselves to extract exclusive information from the ocean of data and we are willing to share our experience with others."

She added that the future belongs to those who can find the key to working with huge volumes of data in real-time and apply them to daily practice in the media.

Key discussion points of the Forum:

- Why is Big Data the "new fuel" for media companies?

- How should Big Data be used in the media so that audiences understand and revenues grow?

- Big Data for the media: statistics in stories and infographics;

- How can reader’s behaviour be monitored in real time?

- How are content consumption patterns changing?

- How are social networks and other accumulations of data useful for the media?

- Why should government organizations create "open data"?

The program for the Future Media Forum is available at: http://fmf.rian.ru/docs/about/programm.html. 

Today, extracting meaning from large volumes of data is one of the key tasks of researchers throughout the world, regardless of whether they work in the media, in financial organizations or research institutions.

"The topic of data journalism is very important right now – we have to deal with Web 2.0, where in order to find a single grain of truth you have to sift through huge amounts of information from open sources," Alexander Radayev, Head of the Multimedia Editorial Office at IT and Telecom. "But finding that grain of truth is not enough, you also have to present it in such a way as to make it understandable to readers."

He says that today "open data is everywhere, and anyone who wants to can work with it." "You can build a large number of useful services around open data. And the more useful a service is, the more successful its provider will be," Radayev said. A simple example of how a large volume of data can be used in the media is the map of traffic jams – users are not interested in the speeds and locations of every one of the hundreds of thousands of cars. They only want to know how congested the roads are, information which is presented as a score out of 10 and makes for an analytical product.

Ratings, navigators and background information are all ways of structuring and processing large volumes of data from open sources, and which the RIA Novosti Social Navigator project has been working with for over two years. "We regularly compile ratings of Russian schools using open data from government organisations and school websites; this year we updated the navigator of children's school holidays. All this is popular among the institutions themselves and the ordinary users," said Deputy Head of the RIA Novosti Department of Social Ratings Natalya Tyurina.

Global media experts at the Future Media International Forum

Among those attending the Future Media International Forum will be leading global media experts and editors who work with large volumes of data. Best media business practices will be presented by The New York Times, Deutsche Welle, the BBC, National Geographic, RIA Novosti and others.

The confirmed speakers at the Forum are available at: http://fmf.rian.ru/speakers/.

Experts: founder and head of the Department of Interactive Journalism at The New York Times Aron Pilhofer and Editor of the BBC Visualization Department Bella Hurrell will conduct a masterclass on creating stories based on open statistical data published by government bodies. Data journalism consultant from Deutsche Welle Mirko Lorenz will share his personal experience of organizing departments to work with data.

Analysts: global expert on analyzing big data Lutz Finger will talk about how to use big data to conduct effective business. CEO of At Internet Mathieu Llorens will deliver a presentation "Data driven media business: where to draw the line in the sand."

Information Visualizers: Art Director at National Geographic Juan Velasco will talk about new technologies for visually presenting information in the media. Visualization expert at IBM Corporation Noah Iliinsky will share his experience on how to choose the correct content and format for visualizing data.

Also taking part in the discussion of the future media market are representatives of associations and professional bodies of journalists from Russia and other countries. Speakers will also talk about the developments that are changing the media, and new opportunities for the media and the future of news journalism in general.

Who is the Future Media International Forum of interest to?

- Journalists and editors. "I'm interested in the Future Media Forum on data journalism primarily because of problems in the field of Russian humanities education. In a few years from now we will come up against an acute shortage of professionals capable of working in the area of data journalism. The problem of Russian humanities education is related to the fact that certain sciences like mathematics and programming are excluded from the process," said media expert Vasily Gatov.

- Technical specialists. Using traditional methods of working with data has become ineffective, time-consuming and expensive. The vertical growth performance of computers has been virtually exhausted. The time has come for distributed computing, where data no longer leads to calculations but the other way round, calculations lead to data," said Head of the RIA Novosti Software Development Department Anatoly Stoyanovksy. "It's important to experiment, use new methods for storytelling, presentation, different media, new data retrieval methods."                                                                      

- Media analysts, marketing professionals, advertising specialists. "Big Data tools enable the real-time adaptation of products, content and advertising to specific users, website visitors or advertisers. This is the main benefit for those who are already a part of the era of big mass data," said Executive Director of the RIA Novosti Research Center Yelena Slinko.

She said that in the era of short attention spans and a sharp increase in information, analytical tools offer the opportunity to personalize the agenda and to bring information to the readers that is of interest to them, which would otherwise be highly likely to pass them by. In actual fact this is about creating a product for each individual reader, the formation of which takes account of their interests, the time they access the website, geographical location, content type preferences and other settings.

For advertisers the era of analysis of big mass data opens up the opportunity of targeting advertisements to specific audiences, thereby increasing their effectiveness and optimizing advertising budgets.

You are welcome to the Future Media International Forum

The full Future Media Forum program, speaker biographies and information about how to register is available at the forum's official website http://fmf-eng.rian.ru/. For all enquiries about attending the event please contact Irina Kovshova by email i.kovshova@rian.ru or by phone on +7 495 645 6601 (ext. 7952), +7-968-766-06-76.

The Forum is being organized by the RIA Novosti Group.