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over 11 years ago

Challenges

These are the answers we got:

1. An app that allows us to easily network with women working near us (geographically) and network / bounce off ideas.

2. A clearinghouse where people can form groups. Sort of like personal ads but for digital news projects only, and I guess it could be women only too. So when you want to start a new project, you post a "Seeking x, y, z" announcement, and if you have spare time, you list your skills and resume.

3. An application that helps build women's confidence. I find one of the biggest hindrances to women's success to be the mentality not just from others but within themselves that impedes us from our goal. There seems to be a dearth of material that advise women on the playing field. For example, personally, I peruse through Askmen.com for career advice since I don't find too many organized, empowering articles targeted toward women. We can use technology to change the landscape of our culture, which is my goal for this Hackathon event.

4. Something that helps promote the work and leadership of women reporters and leaders to make their impact more visible. Maybe a bot that surfaces the latest stories of women journalists or articles about women leaders that are easy to find and meant to be shared / retweeted?

5. I think the most important app for journalists would be anything that helps with encryption and security. Protecting sources and documents is so important, and there are tools for doing that, but they can be daunting to use.

6. A complete and easy-to-query database of all funding opportunities from women-supportive institutions, foundations, credit institutes and private organizations worldwide. I am not talking only seed money, in fact I find it more difficult to find the appropriate funding opportunity as a non-startup and not-so-young woman.

7. I am thikning of something like the Trip Advisor or Booking.com app that allows you to compare opportunities, dates, requirements, scale of funding, countries and so on. Many projects just stay there because there are no funding entities in my country which might support them appropriately. I think it would be good to have a global database and an app to navigate it, so to have an immediate and complete view of all funding routes that might be looked upon in support of a specific project.

8. A complete database (and a good app to query it) of all sponsored and/or accessible opportunities of life-long training for women in the digital skills. There are now many such initiatives at local or subregional level but it would be nice to know training opportunities worldwide for women who want to improve digital skills and internationalize their work, not to remain confined to their national market. I strongly believe that internationalization is a key of strong empowerment and improvement of women conditions within the digital media environment, providing better chances of a decent salary and good opportunities to have their work known and disseminated in a proper way.

9. A mobile application for easy uploading, commenting and reviewing of video pitches. Enables entrepreneurs to receive feedback on their pitches from other successful female figures in digital media and allows them to connect with each other over the pitch ideas. Users can browse through and view other members’ pitches as well for practice and to learn from each other.

10. Online mentor app that would enable women at different stages of their career/with different skills/contacts to connect to each other.

11. An app for identification of military hardware and gunfire patterns for reporters working in conflict zone.

12. I think a tool that would be useful for all entrepreneurs, but especially for women, is a web app that allows founders to anonymously upload venture capital deal terms. Eventually, a founder could upload a document and the app would analyze it, highlight important clauses and compare it to other documents in the database.

13. A multi-platform tool that allows the quick creation and deployment of news stories - with image and audio. If a fact-checking component could be tied into this, that would be amazing.

14. Perhaps it would be interesting to allow for a platform for idea-sharing where users need to create real, verified accounts before they share a proposal for an idea on the platform. Other users will vote on their idea (and possibly contribute/promise to sponsor) if they like it. The creator will always appear anonymous (gender, name, profile) until they choose to reveal who they are after they have accrued enough support - this is an idea borrowed from the past practice of female authors using male names until the public is ready to accept their accreditation. This can be a great practice for breaking stereotypes through demonstration of ability. Men and women alike are allowed to participate. This platform can be called ""Inherent.ly"" or something akin to that.

15. A virtual incubator, run by and for women, for training in the skills needed to successfully fund a digital news startup. This would include:

*resources targeted to female news entrepreneurs;

* a mentor bank, where successful women in the digital news field could advise and support others striving to get started;

* advice on targeting crowd funding campaigns in ways that address any barriers or opportunities that arise when the asker is a woman;

* In addition, it would allow women to coach each other on pitches through real time video with immediate feedback.

According to a survey by the Kauffman Family Firm, men start businesses with twice the capital that women do, a trend that appears to hold true in the nonprofit news business as well. Research also shows that while men sell investors on a vision, women tend to sell projects based on their track records. Thus, some chronically limp along, only scratching at the door of success.

This kind of one-stop shop would allow women in the field to network and mentor each other, either on a personal basis or in developing specific skills. It could help overcome undeserved obstacles, in a field where women are greatly outnumbered and their seriousness of purpose often questioned on the basis of gender.

16. Predictive Analytics - Understanding sentiments of readers and rank comment

• positive
• negative
• neutral

Age and Gender will play a big factor.

Solution would be a predictive analytics app that will help identify how to target reader audience and understand reader sentiments, so that the women in the digital news can advance their publishing capabilities.

17. I would imagine an app that would work as news curator so that news could be in our access and control. This app should also allow us to get connected globally.

18. Any tool where we could exchange ideas and experiences, as well as crowdsource tasks -- and maybe even crowdfund projetcs!

Also, I think this is a great reference (it's for women in the creative and marketing businesses): http://weareshesays.com/

And they already have a collaboration platform: http://www.everybodyshout.com/

Another possibility is something along these lines (time sharing): http://bliive.com/help

19.  Responsive web design

20. I believe that many barriers that prevent women in Nicaragua and Latin America from being in the digital news are similar to the barriers facing women to positions in senior management or boards . Therefore, an integrated tool should allow not only that women are empowered through information and education, but to help them acquire the necessary resources to accomplish their goals. An example of this would be a crowdfunding platform, but it also can serves to access a proxy server to publish the news. I Think it would be interesting to use an ibook