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Winners of Penplusbytes #HackAgainstEbola Represent Ghana at 2015 GEN SUMMIT

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Having emerged winners of the “#HackAgainstEbola” competition at the 2014 Editors Lab organised by the Global Editors Network (GEN) and Penplusbytes in Accra, Citi FM will be in Barcelona from 17th to 19th June, 2015 to participate in the 5th annual GEN Summit: Prototyping the Future of New.

At the 3 day summit, the Citi FM team represented by broadcaster Betty Kankam Boadu and the station’s Social Media Manager, Mawuli Tsikata, will compete with other major media houses including the BBC, RFI among others in a bid to win the title as 2015 Editors Lab World Champions.

Citi FM, last year, competed with other major new rooms in Ghana at Penplusbytes New Media Hub in a two-day #hackathon to develop digital tools for newsrooms to effectively report on challenges posed by the Ebola outbreak. Their product, Citi Ebola Updates – a Mobile Platform that enables people, both educated and uneducated to receive information and updates on the status of Ebola in the country in their preferred local language, was adjudged the best to win the 2014 Editors.

The 5th annual GEN Summit: themed ‘Prototyping the Future of News’ is aimed at providing practical solutions for immediate implementation in newsrooms. Many diverse media organisations will be represented, providing an ideal setting to network with GEN’s growing community of media innovators.

According to the President of the Global Editors Network, Ricardo Kirschbaum, “It is the mission of the Network to bridge the gap between the different generations of editors, between content creators and technology providers, and between established media and new storytellers.”

Over the 3 days, the Editors Lab Final, the “world cup” of news hackathons, will bring together more than 40 contestants from all over the world to compete in creating an innovative newsroom prototypes and also the brightest minds in the industry to discuss and challenge the future of media.

Jerry Sam, Projects Director at Penplusbytes said “Citi FM earned their accolade with a functional and impressive product and as promised them, the 2015 GEN Summit will provide them with the needed insights from world class industry experts from whom they stand to gain more to influence information dissemination in their newsroom.”

Delivering at this year’s GEN Summit are a diverse group of speakers drawn from the world’s most innovative newsrooms such as CNN, Storyful, Mashable, Knight Foundation and Google. The event will provide practical solutions for immediate implementation in the newsroom. Some highlighted topics for the 2015 Summit are Wearable News and Augmented Reality Journalism; Bitcoins and the One-Cent Article, The Data-Driven Newsroom: How to Implement? How to monetise? And Web traffic is 50% mobile. How can your newsroom adapt?

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Penplusbytes is a leading organization in Africa innovating in 3 key areas: the use of technology to drive governance and accountability, new media and innovations as well as oil, gas and mining since 2001.