Design Sprint

Artificial intelligence presents an opportunity for publishing and media organisations to better understand customers, power dynamic user experiences, and increase efficiency of internal processes. But to capture the opportunity, organisations need a structured approach which brings together a diverse range of stakeholders.

Join us on Wednesday, 15 November for this all-day session; an opportunity to accelerate your organisation's AI capability. Experts from the Google News Initiative and FT Strategies will facilitate this design workshop with your cross-functional team to identify opportunities for using AI and practical next steps suitable for your organisation. You should assign 3-5 individuals to the team, drawn from a wide range of departments, but with editorial, commercial, and tech departments as a minimum. All sessions are designed to be relevant for all, and collaboration is a core tenet of the programme.

The Design Sprint will commence at 9am and run until 4:30pm, followed by networking drinks. Lunch and refreshments will be provided throughout the day and will cater to dietary requirements.

Leading up to the workshop throughout October and November, Publishers will be inspired and informed by expert speakers in a series of 4 inspiration sessions as well as receive educational resources.

On the day of the workshop you can expect to:

• Explore the problem space to identify relevant use cases for AI
• Think strategically in order to prioritise potential AI use cases
• Learn from industry case studies
• Design potential solutions
• Create a set of actionable next steps for developing designed solutions and AI capabilities more broadly

Learn more about this opportunity in the detailed explainer document, here.

The longlist of ideas and notes generated on the day

Learn and share insights with other participants, GNI and FTS stakeholders

A worked example of the discovery process to guide future AI initiatives

Discussions with FTS consultants and other SMEs present on the day

The opportunity to network and connect with industry peers

A document capturing the details and next steps of the prioritised AI solution idea

1. Educational pre-read - Learning materials providing an introduction to AI and machine learning
2. Guidance on suggested use cases - A prioritised shortlist of AI use cases, based on industry analysis, to serve as the starting point for solution design in the workshop
3. AI strategy primer - to inform problem & solution prioritisation in the workshop Prompts for considering the organisation’s overall AI strategy - to be completed by the participants prior to attending the workshop
4. Diagnostics survey - to inform the development of the next steps Action Plan in the workshop - to be completed by the participants prior to attending the workshop

Tuesday, 31 October

Feel inspired, understand the major AI opportunity areas, and receive structured strategy templates.

• Linking AI to the Customer Lifecycle
• Large language models (outside of content generation)
• Receive relevant case studies

Friday, 3 November

Understand the different requirements for technical AI implementation.

• Data requirements for AI
• Importance of data models / taxonomies / metadata
• Making data available e.g. data systems and pipelines

Thursday, 7 November

Understand the building blocks of governance and be enabled to build your own bespoke frameworks.

• Sharing of ethics frameworks
• Managing experimentations in your organisation
• Developing our own usage and governance policies

Friday, 10 November

Get equipped with common definitions and knowledge to maximise the value of the in-person workshop.

• Setting up experiments with AI
• Identifying business problems to solve [exercise]
• Jargon-buster
• Find out more about what to expect on the day of the workshop