Innovation Journalism program started in Slovenia

Slovenian mineral water available at the conference that tasted like the smell of my shaving soap. Quite original. More photos from the conference.

I was invited as a key note speaker to the “Stanford po Stanfordu” innovation journalism conference at the University of Ljubljana 20 April. I’m very impressed how far and fast the program in Slovenia is moving. They got hold of the concept less than a year ago and have now signed a Letter of Intent for the Innovation Journalism program with the University of Stanford by the University of Ljubljana and the Technology Agency of Slovenia (TIA). And I find myself an honourable advisor to the program.

Slovenia is a small country (2 million citizens), but small countries have also its advantages. Sweden is often a test lab for new technology, and Slovenia is a perfect test bed for this concept. When you get people interested in a topic you can really get all levels of society to cooperate.

Most of the conference was in Slovenian, but there is a conference blog in English. The discussions were mostly on the same topics as we have in Sweden.

There are four daily newspapers in Slovenia, selling no more than 240.000 copies. Slovenia traditionally has good journalism schools. The faculty of journalism at Ljubljana University where the conference took place has been around since the 1970’s. It was the first in all former communist countries. The media legislation in the Republic of Slovenia is surprisingly modern, almost like the Swedish. The constitution is explicit in giving the right to obtain ‘information of public nature’, given a ‘legal interest, based on the law’. More here: http://www.ejc.nl/hp/mas/sedmak.html