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 Cantallus 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.

Jodie Hopperton

Lead, Product Initiative, INMA

Karen Silverman

CEO and Founder, Cantallus Group

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

Transfer to San Francisco Chronicle

10:30 a.m.-12:00 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.-2:15 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

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

Transfer to Mind the Bridge

2:30 p.m.-3:45 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

3:45 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 cocktail hour

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

Cocktail hour

Join us for a drink and debrief from our first full day of study tour meetings.

7:30 p.m.-Onward

Explore San Francisco

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

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

Bus transfer to Silicon Valley

Grab breakfast and board the bus for Silicon Valley. 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

Simon Rogers

Data Editor, Google

Jim Albrecht

Senior Director Product Management, News Ecosystem, 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.-2:30 p.m

Transfer to Yahoo

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

In this session, we'll be joined by Arjun Moorthy, The Factual's co-founder, to learn about a true data-driven way to dig out the best articles and surface them to curious readers. Starting with the questions: How do you determine what makes news "well-written?" They looked at criteria and identified data points that could be measured in order to score articles. The results were surprising. They have built up a loyal following including thousands of paid subscribers and were acquired by Yahoo. What can we learn from using a data-driven approach in an AI world?

Arjun Moorthy

CEO and Co-Founder, The Factual, and VP Products, Yahoo

3:30 p.m.-5:00 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

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

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 JSK school at Stanford

We’ll have further meetings at Stanford to discuss how AI may affect media companies. We’ll converse with international Jonathan S. Knight fellows currently studying at Stanford to look at the future of news media, as well as faculty and staff focusing on the new wave of spatial computing.

Alberto B. Mendoza

Managing Director, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford

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

We’ll be joined byThe Trust Project Founder, Sally Lehrman, to discuss one of the obvious concerns around AI: trust. What is real and what isn’t? How can people tell? The Trust Project is a consortium of publishers looking to work to the same trust indicators to show consumers that their content is something that can be relied upon.

Sally Lehrman

Founder, The Trust Project

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

Lunch at Stanford

Over a casual lunch, we will have time to further the conversations, meeting with this year’s cohort of JSK fellows, including their liaison with the Human Centered Artificial Intelligence lab. We will have some time to explore the campus before we head deeper into Silicon Valley.

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.-6:00 p.m.

Transfer back to hotel

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

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

Transfer to central San Francisco for a morning of AI products and companies

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

10:30 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

Lunch and AI-focused startups

During this time, we will be getting practical with AI-focused startups. What technologies can you use for your business right now? What should you be planning for in the future? These sessions will equip you to give solid answers to these questions, and ensure that you are asking the right questions internally.

2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

We then head over to meet with Memberful and Patreon, where we’ll learn about best practices in memberships and subscriptions, working with individuals and small brands, and, from a product perspective, how we’re expecting AI to change membership and subscriptions for news organisations.

Jen Matichuk

Strategic Partnerships, Memberful

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.

Closing dinner

Our final evening together will be dinner in San Francisco featuring some intriguing California wines and a full debrief on what participants have learned during the Silicon Valley Study Tour. These lessons are crucial to unpacking and contextualising our week together

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

Transfer to KQED

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

This morning, we head to 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.

Hamish McKenzie

Co-Founder, Substack

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

Transfer to hotel

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

Wrap-up lunch

Location to be announced

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, Cantallus Group