Freedom Communications IT department hosted it’s inaugural Innovation Challenge. The event was devised to build teamwork, foster creative thinking, and allow teams to develop new web ideas without boundaries.  Eight teams participated from IT and Freedom Interactive departments.

Each team had 10 minutes to convince a panel of judges their idea was the most creative and innovative. 

Here are the teams and there ideas:

“Mavericks” – co-First Place Winner

Gat Sirvong
Reggie Estrella
Robert Enloe
Mika Kono

 
Idea is to feature and make “comments” (Pluck comments) the main content.  New way to read the news.

Morning talk show hosts have a loyal following.  People tune in to their show every morning as their getting ready, on their drive in. Oftentimes topics discussed on these shows become topics for the water cooler and
create a “buzz” within the community.

Interestingly enough, content discussed on these shows isn’t “original”. Hosts read some headline in the paper, see something in the tabloids and give their listeners a synopsis. Callers start calling in with their
comments and listeners engage in conversations. Soon you fill up the show with “free” content that entertains listeners and oftentimes creates “a buzz” within the community.

Sometimes it’s the “content” produced from the original content that is much more interesting!

“ACME” - co-First Place Winner

Laura Fama
Doug Arrasin
JP Congleton
Cristina Hanes

Media seach  tool and widget using Freedom’s Google Search Appliance (GSA). The portable widget displays a collage of photos returned from a search term. Search results include photos, video, and other media types. Team Acme had a iGoogle working widget.

“The Other Steve and the Amazing Asians” 

Steve Witkos – missing from picture
James Chheng
Soumya Mani
Amishi Hise

It’s no secret that media companies, especially businesses and newspapers are hurting because of the slowdown in the economy.

As a result, small, medium and large businesses still are constantly seeking a cost effective way to connect to their customers.

Our product, Deal of the Day, is designed to take advantage of sites with a large concentrated local user base and help connect them with attractive deals that could benefit both the consumer and the business.

The Deal of the Day is designed to announce great deals from local retailers and service providers throughout the day.  The topmost portion of the site lists one deal for any given day and does not change until it is sold out or until midnight CST.  This is the sponsored deal of the day and can be sold to any retailer or service provider.

The lower portion of the site lists user submitted deals of the day.  These deals are listed in order of the highest rating to the lowest rating.  Users are limited to two listings per unique IP and two votes per unique IP.  The listings can range from a garage sale to a car wash give-away.  The rating system is designed to keep the listings “honest” in that if there is a bogus or false listing, users will give a “thumbs down” rating.  There is also an area on the site where you can report inappropriate or false listings.  These listings also expire at the end of the day but do not have a “sold out” notification.

You can get a text alert if a new listing breaks into the top 3.  All listings expire at the end of a day (midnight CST). There are archived dotd’s going back 3 weeks only.

“Flashers” - Third Place Winner

Mark Robertson – missing from picture
Francisco Avalos
John Tang
Walis Wong

Today’s newspaper websites shows our news content, photos, and video technology in a flat and one-dimensional perspective that confines our readers to view the content through a funnel. By enriching our users to view our content through a holistic tool using our Rich Internet Application solution, users will now stay longer on our site because of the interactive components that allows users to stay active and engaged on the site. Having a holistic view through our virtual desk top solution allows our users to unifying article content with pictures, streaming video and statistical information about the subject matter (e.g. Our Varsity Presentation). In summary, the longer we keep our users active on our websites, the more active our revenue will be.

“Debbie Downers”

Ken wan
Kiet Lieng
Don Lee

The FI-To-Do-List can do anything you would do on a plain piece of paper for a shopping list, a daily reminder of things to do; or for bigger things like your vacation trip, your goal of opening a small shop to something even more significant like your life goals.

The FI-To-Do-List allows you to detail your step by step instruction on what you need to do in achieving a goal.    Since the FI-To-Do-List is sharable and viewable by friends and family who subscribe to your list, they can provide valuable suggestions/comments to anchor your goal or aspiration to reality.   It provides a simple to use dynamic task system that can be updated or change by a click of the mouse.   It has the flexibility to utilize any types of metrics or measurements for the completion of your goals.   It can be pounds (for weight lost), time (for task completion), or dollars (to complete a fundraising).

The FI-To-Do-List can be used for any of our community/broadcasting websites via browsers or mobile phone.  We can push local news article content related to a task or a location that the user lists.  Since each of the tasks within a list can be very specific, we can then develop a mechanism to target specific ads for the users.  

The FI-To-Do-List is relatively easy to use, and fast to implement.   We can utilize the existing OnSet structure with a few tweaks.   We can utilize function from the OnSet admin tool:  Google Maps, Images, Links, and etc.    We can even integrate Pluck for comments which would drive and increase membership for our local Pluck community.

“The Winning Team”

Melissa Monk
Clay Leeds
Andre Ingram
Sze Quak (missing from picture)

Seek and Speak.

You browse. You hear.

Our application provides instant audio access to Internet users with limited vision, mobility or
cognitive issues.

Our goal is make technology compliant with federal guidelines governing access of information to
people with disabilities.

Freedom could have the first newspaper and broadcast sites to integrate text-to-speech functionality.

 “Team Chow-Chow” - Second Place Winner

Patrick Tangney
SriDevi Soundarraju
Pranav Desai

Create a food and cooking community based website driven by user generated content.  Can be used as a template to transform Freedom Interactive food content sections from staff based content to food enthusiast community centers based on user generated content

Food community site will integrate latest community building tools:
1)  Community forums
2)  Profiles
3)  Cookware and recipe reviews
4)  User blogs
5) Select users designated as chef mentors
6) Live chat with local chefs
7) Widgets to upload ingredient lists to mobile devices and find local market with least expensive prices Cooking Videos

Team “maverick” had a working prototype for their presentation.

“Zua Media” – Swahili for “Create”

Jim Zisk
Vivek Kumar
Chara Braman
Munjal Shah

Video sharing and syndication across Freedom websites using Brightcove.

 Many thanks to our fantastic panel of judges:

Kevin McHugh – Suprise guest judge,
Lelani Bluner – VP Marketing, OCRegister
Eric Mogran –  Corporate Communication