Welcome cocktails

Welcome cocktail with introductions and a briefing for the week ahead.

7:30 a.m.-8:00 a.m.

Registration and welcome breakfast

Collect your registration creditionals outside the Barclay Room I-II on the second floor of the Intercontinental and meet your tour mates over breakfast.

8:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.

Introduction to San Francisco and the Silicon Valley ecosystem

In the opening session, we will have a welcome address for the tour, icebreakers to get to know each other, and hear from Karen Silverman, CEO and founder of the Cantellus Group, on the AI landscape as it currently stands. She’ll also share what we should be looking out for and questions to ask as we delve into our meetings for the week.

Earl J. Wilkinson

Executive Director and CEO, INMA

Jodie Hopperton

Lead, Product Initiative, INMA

Karen Silverman

CEO and Founder, Cantellus Group

10:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

Transfer to San Francisco Chronicle

10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

During this session, we’ll meet with San Francisco Chronicle executives and learn about some of the unique expansion areas that the Chronicle has been able to execute on, including weather and climate reporting teams, walking tours, SF Next (from a joint poll with Stanford on what’s on the mind of San Francisco residents), legalisation of cannabis (advertising, SEO, and a new product), as well as how the company is viewing and using AI.

Bill Nagel

CEO and Publisher, San Francisco Chronicle

Sarah Feldberg

Editor of Emerging Product and Audio, San Francisco Chronicle

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz

Editor in Chief, San Francisco Chronicle

Grant Marek

Editorial Director, SFGATE

Sean Jacobsen

Chief Revenue Officer, Hearst Bay Area/ SF Chronicle/ SF Gate

12:30 p.m.-1:45 p.m.

Lunch with CEO of Cityside

We’ll hear about a non-profit model for sustainable local journalism that is focused on communities: How and why it was founded and how they have managed to find sustainability when so few others have. We’ll also hear how Cityside uses technology. They need to find an efficient model of operating, and as AI is fast approaching mainstream, Lance will take us through how he and the team are thinking about this and what tools they are currently using.

Lance Knobel

CEO and Co-Founder, Cityside

1:45 p.m.-2:15 p.m.

Transfer to Mind the Bridge

2:15 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

What exactly is it that makes Silicon Valley such a hub for global innovation? Before we head into Silicon Valley, we’ll hear from the ex-Googler and now CEO of Mind the Bridge to look at the ingredients that have come together to produce so many hit tech companies. Mind the Bridge has a mission to take the innovation and entrepreneurship mindset international. We'll learn about innovation, what to do as a company, and what to look out for over the coming days in Silicon Valley.

Marco Marinucci

CEO, Mind the Bridge

3:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m

Transfer to Microsoft

4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.

555 California, San Francisco

One of the clear leaders in AI, Microsoft, will talk to us about their approach to AI, the possible impacts on media and their relevant offerings to the journalism community.

Sam Schillace

Corporate Vice President, Deputy CTO, Microsoft

Joaquin Alvarado

Partner, Studiotobe, and Consultant,Microsoft Journalism Project

5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Transfer to wine tasting

6:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m.

California wine tasting at Cultivar

2379 Chestnut Street, San Francisco

Join us for a California wine tasting. Wines from Cultivar are from highly-acclaimed small lot, terroir-driven wineries sourced from California appellations. You’ll have the opportunity to learn about each of the wines and enjoy farm-to-table light bites as the perfect accompaniment.

7:30 p.m.-Onward

Explore San Francisco

The rest of your evening is free to explore San Francisco and its excellent restaurant scene.

7:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m.

Bus transfer to Silicon Valley

The traffic between downtown San Francisco and Silicon Valley can be unpredictable so we leave with an abundance of time, at 7:30 a.m. sharp. We’ll have a briefing on the bus as we head to our first stop of the day, Google.

9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Our first study tour stop today is at the Google Mountain View campus. Our discussions will cover three main areas: holistically how Google thinks about news, what the advances in AI mean for data gathering and data journalism, and AI from the general consumer perspective. This will include a look at what that means for journalism and news brands and practical tools for creating efficiencies around the gathering and dissemination of journalism.

Richard Gingras

Vice President News, Google

Justin Kosslyn

Director, Product Management, Google

Simon Rogers

Data Editor, Google

12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m.

Lunch at Google

We’ll enjoy lunch on the Google campus, and have some time to look around the campus and visit the Google shop.

2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.

To look at changing consumer habits, we need to look at social. In this session, we will hear from data experts Chartbeat and Tubular on what we can tell about changing consumer patterns and what are the triggers that will signal mass shifts to AI. We’ll discuss data, habits, trust, and misinformation in a world of AI.

John Saroff

Chief Executive Officer, Tubular and Chartbeat

3:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m

Transfer to Otter.ai

3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

Many journalists have discovered Otter.ai as a useful tool for recording and transcribing interviews. In fact, the tool goes well beyond this into business and internal meetings. In this session, we will meet the founder and c-suite executives for a live demo of Otter as a tool and discuss the future of work.

Sam Liang

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Otter.ai

Zack Cable

Chief Revenue Officer, Otter.ai

Kurt Apen

Chief Marketing Officer, Otter.ai

5:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Transfer to dinner

5:30 p.m.-8:00 p.m.

Debrief, dinner, and fireside chat

Over dinner, we will debrief from our first two days of the Silicon Valley Study Tour and do a fireside chat with Jonathan Knight, head of games for the New York Times, about the NYT gaming business, how it is contributing to digital subscriptions, lessons learned to date, and plans for growth.

Jonathan Knight

Head of Games, New York Times

8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

Transfer back to hotel

7:00 a.m.-9:00 a.m.

Bus transfer to Stanford

For our second day in Silicon Valley we will depart by 7am to reach Stanford in plenty of time for our visit.

9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.

Today we head over to Stanford’s design school where we will meet with Justin Ferrell, an award-winning former journalist, designer, and currently in charge of strategic partnerships at Stanford. AI is going to bring about enormous change for the news media industry, and we need to ensure that we are approaching it in a smart and effective way. In this tour of Stanford’s d.school, Justin will discuss human-centered design and an approach to business that is centered around delivering true solutions for our current and potential customer base.

Justin Ferrell

Fellowships Director, d.school at Stanford University

10:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

Walk from the d.school to the JSK building

10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m

The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford

At Stanford we will also look at AI through a journalism lens. In addition to hearing about the renowned JSK program, we will learn about the collaboration between JSK and the Human Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) Lab, we’ll have time to converse with international Jonathan S. Knight fellows currently studying at Stanford to look at the future of news media.

Alberto B. Mendoza

Managing Director, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford

11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Travel to SmartNews, San Francisco

12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

Lunch with SmartNews

Smartnews is one of the largest aggregator apps on the market with over 20 million monthly users. It has been using machine learning for some time to make personalized recommendations and in this session we will hear more about their success and how they are staying up to date in a rapidly changing environment.

Wendy Bounds

Global Head of Content, SmartNews

Bernie Davis

Executive Director of Media Business Development, SmartNews

Rich Jaroslovsly

Vice President of Content & Chief Journalist, SmartNews

1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.

Transfer to Nextdoor

2:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.

Nextdoor, a hyper-local social networking site, has grown to 40 million registered users since its launch in 2008. In some ways, they are a competitor to local press, but in many ways they provide opportunities. Perhaps this will really come into force as a top-of-funnel audience stream for news companies. In this session, we’ll hear how Nextdoor partners with other organisations, and look at how they are using AI for moderation and to hep users draft better posts.

Jason Hwang

Business Development & Product Partnerships, Nextdoor

4:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Transfer to OpenAI

4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.

Arguably the company that has pushed Generative AI to the forefront, OpenAI has led the way for mass consumer adoption. In this session, we’ll talk with OpenAI about the future of the technology and how they see AI and news working together.

James Dyett

Head of Strategic Accounts, OpenAI

5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Transfer back to hotel

We will debrief from the day on the way back to the hotel, and then you have a free evening to explore San Francisco.

8:00 a.m.-8:30 a.m.

Transfer to Andisearch

8:30 a.m.-10:00 a.m.

Search is undoubtedly going to be completely transformed with the advent of AI. In this session, we will meet a challenger in this area focusing on the next generation of search using AI. Is SEO dead? Will generative AI chats have mechanisms to funnel users to originating sites of information? These are just some of the questions we’ll be asking these recent graduates of Y Combinator.

Nick Chan

Chief Operations Officer, Andisearch

10:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

Transfer to On

10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Using AI chat to connect the dots on audience through chat, data, and more, GameOn has been highly successful working with sports brands. After raising significant funding, the company has built AI-based technologies that enable companies to find significant improvement to products, save human hours, and make better decisions. As they start working with media companies, we’ll learn what the opportunities are as well as overall insights on audiences and changing habits.

Alex Beckman

Founder and CEO, GameOn Technology

12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m.

Lunch at On roof deck

Over lunch, we’ll have time to debrief from the morning and have intimate chats with media and tech friends working on AI in the Bay area.

Craig Forman

General Partner, Next Ventures, and Former CEO, McClatchy

Ed Shrager

Founder and CEO, Summari

1:15 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

Walk to Connections to meet with Resemble.ai and Deepgram

1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.

Audio has suddenly boomed, especially for news media. where it has taken companies 9 months to build a synthetic voice, this can now be done in minutes. Why has this change happened so quickly? What does the future hold for voice? And how can news media leverage this technology to create an improved user experience? These are all questions we will cover with the founder of resemble.ai.

Zohaib Ahmend

Founder and CEO, Resemble.ai

2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

Technology that allows greater understanding and interrogation of speech is accelerating at a rapid rate. Language AI models are becoming an essential part of any consumer-facing business. In this session, the CEO and VP of Product at Deepgram will talk about how they are working on “voice intelligence”, take us through their product, and talk to us about how they see this landscape change in the next 3-5 years.

Natalie Rutgers

Vice President, Product, Deepgram

3:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.

Transfer to Wired

4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.

Wired was one of the first media organisations to publish their AI rules. In this session, we will meet with the executive editor at Wired along with her colleagues from different departments, to look at two sides of the AI conversation: how Wired is planning for AI as a publisher, and how they are covering it. We’ll also discuss some of the fundamentals of AI such as trust, changing consumer habits, existential threats (to media and humans!), and how we are a training tool for AI.

Meg Marco

Executive Editor, Wired

5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Transfer to hotel

7:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.

Dinner at acclaimed Fog Harbor Fish House

On our final evening, we’ll experience Fog Harbor Fish House, a San Franciscan institution set at Pier 39 on the San Francisco Bay. Known for their sourdough bread and freshly caught seafood dishes, you’ll have a chance to try their famous clam chowder or ciopinno. A comprehensive and diverse selection of wines will be available to pair with your meal. We’ll unpack what we’ve learned and contextualise our week together overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

Study Tour Day 5, San Francisco

8:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.

Transfer to KQED

9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

This morning, we head to radio broadcaster KQED’s new headquarters where they have made in-person events a real focus. In this session, we will learn about advances in audio, tests with AI, smart speakers, and synthetic voice.

Tim Olson

SVP Strategic Partnerships, KQED

Kate Alany

VP, Strategy and Organizational Performance, KQED

Jill Patrone

Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, KQED

10:30 a.m.-11:00 a.m.

Transfer to Substack

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Substack has had an enormous influence on the news industry as news media are grappling with new ways to work with talent. AI will again change this and trust is likely to play an even more important role in the ecosystem. We’ll meet Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack, to talk about individuals as brands, how Substack is looking at the likely impact of AI, and what are the opportunities for brands to work with Substack.

Chris Best

Chief Executive Officer, Substack

Hanne Winarsky

Head of Acquisition and Development, Substack

12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m.

Transfer to lunch

12:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.

Wrap-up lunch at Cafe de la Presse

We’ll grab a bite to eat with Karen Silverman to discuss what we have learned during the week and how opinions of AI have changed since Monday morning.

Karen Silverman

CEO and Founder, Cantellus Group