R&D Summary – week 7

This week, the Media Map trend report project went into its production phase. All members of the R&D team were given chapters or cases to write, which resulted in several late night working sessions. We've also hired some brilliant minds from the outside, who will contribute with cases and additional perspectives on the trends. They presented a first draft today, and it looks very promising.

Paulina continued her preparations for Bonnier Hack Day. The event went public this week, and Paulina describes it as an unconference. She also revealed that 30-40 participants have accepted the challenge to develop an original business concept in just 24 hours – so we're really looking forward to March 11-12. Further, Paulina had an interesting discussion about paid content with an analyst from Forrester Research. She also discovered a mood-based music app from Ghostly International.

Björn were interviewed about digital magazines, focusing on the digital reading experience. He also attended the price ceremony for Året ekonomijournalist (Business Journalist of the Year), held at Nedre Manilla in Stockholm. "It's was a really nice event. I was hoping to get some inside gossip at the lunch afterwards, but, well, let's say I had moderate success," says Björn. He also met with "some advertising people", "some venture capitalists" and "some good old editors" this week.

Not long after he landed in London, Emil proudly announced on his Twitter that he's (probably) the first Swede to have collected all 109 items in Gowalla. Both Björn and I took this very hard. But just hours later, Björn got his revenge when he discovered that a new item had been released. The real reason for Emil and Alex's London trip was The Story conference, hosted by Russell Davies. One of the best presentations, according to Emil, was Alexis Kennedy's story about Echo Bazaar. We're looking forward to hear more about that and the other stories next week when they are back in Stockholm. If you want to know what others thought of The Story, here's the Twitter backchannel.

If you haven't already, don't forget to check out our Best links for this week!

Yours truly,
Jonas O