Fifteen managers from VRT and RTBF (Belgium), NPO (Netherlands), Sveriges Radio, France TV, Radio France, ERT (Greece), YLE (Finland), BBC (UK), RTP (Portugal) and Media City Bergen participated in the Sandbox Hub gathering. These are media organizations from all over Europe which cooperate to promote innovation in the media industry, through their sandboxes that invites external startups and own employees to test and validate solutions and ideas.
Sandbox Hub is a project financed by the European Commission with EBU as a central partner. The main goal is to build an international network of media innovation accelerators, enable local startups and SMEs to scale in Europe, and exchange experience and expertise. Sandbox was established one year ago and has so far reached 14 members.
This was the first evaluation sandbox meeting. In the past the meetings have taken place via monthly video meetings and industry events. In these industry events it was possible for the startups in the sandboxes to pitch their ideas - which VIS Mediekuben did at Slush in Helsinki, December 2018.
The group visited TV 2's studios in Media City Bergen.
The group held their meeting in MCB Media Lab, but did also visit several of the other companies in MCB, including TV 2 and Centre for Investigative Journalism at the University if Bergen.
The meetings has boosted the pan-European cooperation between sandboxes for the benefit of innovation in the sector. It is critical for the startups to be able to test their solutions, and sandboxes are the perfect arena for this. The group plans for this to be an annual event.