Future Week; Discover what’s brewing

Published 02.05.2019
Come one, come all - From Bergen, Norway, Scandinavia, or around the Globe! Media City Bergen, home to the Norwegian Media Cluster, opens its doors to the city and the world for Future Week on June 11-14, and welcomes anyone to attend the more than 50 events - most of them FREE - hosted inside the world's most advanced campus for media and technology.

Get a first glimpse of new technology, things you’ve never seen, learn from industry experts and researchers, and enjoy lots of exciting happenings. During Future Week, you can learn how to build a fancy AR-app, your own little robot, or your very own sensor driven weather station to take home. You will get a look at new journalistic formats, learn how algorithms runs the newsroom, and discuss the digital warfare and worrisome conditions for the free press around the world. We declare death to the traditional PowerPoint presentations and say hello to the new virtual presentations. You can deep dive into artificial intelligence with researchers, students and industry authorities, or have a go playing the e-sports pros. And so much more!

How will YOU shape the future?
Future Week consists of a number of research seminars, workshops, breakfast meetings, popup-talks, entertainment, demos, presentations, debates, talks and discussions. All taking place inside the Media City Bergen campus, and all focusing on topics that challenge our common future as it is driven and shaped by technology.
This is your opportunity to get a first-hand experience of what the future might look like, and how YOU want to shape, form and influence the future. The full program will be launched here over the next couple of weeks.

Strong joint effort
The topics are mostly within the Media Cluster’s disciplines and are arranged by NCE Media in collaboration with the cluster members; The University of Bergen, NRK, TV 2, Mediability, Fonn Group, Bergens Tidende, Vizrt, Vimond, Highsoft, Screen Story, IBM, Ludenso, Myreze, Rainfall, Scary Weather, VIS and many more are all hosting several events during Future Week. Our partners from different industries and other future oriented environments in the region, including sister clusters Finance Innovation and PropTech Innovation, will also contribute with activities this week.


Who should join?
Everyone! Future Week is the place to be for journalists, coders, designers, developers, executives, students and scientists during the days of 11-14 June 2019. If you are just future and tech curious, you are encouraged to join. The city’s population and visitors are warmly welcomed to the Media Cluster’s headquarters, Media City Bergen this week. At more than twelve different venues inside the building you will find a great variety of activities. Most of the events are completely free to attend.

Academia and research
The Norwegian Media Cluster is especially strong in its academic environments and has several universities and research facilities at its core. A range of different sessions will explore how to discover unexpected connections in the news with better video workflows via real-time collaboration and AI techniques. The University of Bergen will host a seminar where dark data and surveillance is on the agenda: “Surveillance, rights to own data and technology”, where David Carroll, the US Professor who took Cambridge Analytica to court for not revealing how they obtained and used his voter data, and several other authorities in the field will attend.

Artificial Intelligence
Future Week includes a special AI-track with several different case presentations. You will meet Lars Kristensen (NRK) who will talk about how artificial intelligence will impact the media industry in the years to come. You will also be able to enjoy Machine Learning on the edge with Martin Gravråk (Sonat) and the Fonn Group spinoff Mjoll’s Steinar Søreide, specializing in using AI for metadata, video analysis, object recognition, speech to text analysis and captioning, and more.

E-sports
No Future Week is complete without challenging one of the broadcast and media industry’s
largest areas – sport. How does the traditional sports world adapt to its digital and much younger sibling - the e-sport. Across several different sessions, including a live matchup, you will meet NFF, North (FCK) and several others, and you will be able to test your skills against the pros.

Build your own weather station
Sensors and bacons open a world of new opportunities to push content to users and to collect data for analysis or predictions. Future Week will look at this technology through weather data an meteorology. During a series of talks, including a workshop where you can build your own sensor weather stations to take home, we will experience meteorology gone tech. To top it off, Eli Kari and Ingeborg Myhre – aka EKING will do their live podcast from inside MCB. Check the program for time and day details. 

Troubling times for journalists
Future Week will also discuss the new formats of the media industry and will offer insight and discuss reporting in challenging times where the press is declared the enemy of the people in countries normally associated with democracy. We will have a screening of Korrespondentene, and Screen Story and TV 2 will discuss how the radical transparency – the media behind the media – comes into play. Øystein Bogen, TV 2’s foreign reporter for many years, will give a talk on the new digital warfare from Russia, giving the audience a glimpse into cyber attacks, data espionage, propaganda and fake news.

Back to the Future
Future Week will also look into how some ideas and concepts survive the test of time without the help of new technology, modern gadgets or fancy overhauls. One example is NRK’s show Norge Rundt, now going on its 43rd year and still as popular as ever. And of course, – no Future Week in MCB without a “what’s the future for the NRK Slow TV”- session. This amazing concept now has a global footprint, having originated in NRK Hordaland in Bergen, and still continues to evolve with new ideas and audience-winning shows.

Tinius Talks
Future Week will be visited by the popular podcast Tinius Talks. From the bar scene in the atrium, the podcast will be taped live with exciting guests and topics.

Head on over to our Future Week portal to see all events. Stay tuned for the full launch of the detailed programs over the next couple of weeks.