On March 30th the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab will hold its first Innovation Summit. Building upon a conference held last year this newly-created Innovation Summit will provide international leaders from the private sector academia and the non-profit world an inside look at the Innovation Lab’s most exciting projects. Projects this year will include new social media analysis tools mobile applications and online platforms as well as the unveiling of projects from the winners of the Crunch Design Challenge. Confirmed corporate and non-profit attendees include Verizon IBM Intel Warner Brothers Digital Distribution Cisco EPB Levi Strauss France Telecom/Orange LACMA and DirecTV along with Microsoft and Apple. As part of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism the Innovation Lab utilizes art science design and engineering to foster innovation in media culture and society in order to develop projects with practical application and social impact. The Lab was founded to address the creative technological and cultural revolution that is taking place in media and communication fostering an open cross-disciplinary culture actively engaging collaborators from across several USC schools and the community at large. “The mission of the Innovation Lab is to be an advisor and active participant in innovation by bringing together minds from several disciplines and sectors ” says USC Annenberg professor Jonathan Taplin director of the Innovation Lab. “The Innovation Summit will be an opportunity for our project leaders to present their works-in-progress and for guests and visitors to have the opportunity to contribute some creative thinking.” This first Innovation Lab Summit will consist of project demos providing an in-depth look into the newest results from the Lab’s intense project work; ideation sessions for real-time brainstorm and contribution to current work; discussions and networking opportunities. The first annual Summit will focus on the following themes: Rethinking Urban Settings - How can we use communication technologies to connect neighbors like never before share community information in new ways and provide valuable public interactive experiences in big cities? Experiments in Participatory Cultures - How can we extract meaningful information from the digital traces left by participants in online social networks and create new opportunities for audiences to participate in shaping the way they experience news learning and entertainment? Also during the Summit the Innovation Lab will announce the winners of the Crunch Design Challenge. Crunch is the Innovation Lab’s design competition for USC students and alumni that challenges interdisciplinary student-led teams to design innovative devices mobile apps web platforms and business ideas. Artists filmmakers musicians designers writers policy makers educators curators researchers and marketers will all work towards rethinking and redesigning the world in which they live for the chance to win $30 000 in prizes and an opportunity to further develop their concept/prototype at the Innovation Lab.
