Australian hyperlocal among 16 projects at workshop with Google and New York Times experts

Experts from industry giants including Google and the New York Times shared tips with those at the heart of community media in Australia and New Zealand last weekend.

Hyperlocal news site, StreetCorner.com.au was one of just 16 projects treated to one-on-one mentoring at a special workshop in the Sydney Opera House, after being selected for the latest XMediaLab event.

The 'Global Media Ideas' workshop brought together experts including Amin Zoufonoun, director of corporate development at Google, Dana Al Salem, former co-founder of Yahoo Europe, Anand Giridharadas, technology columnist with The New York Times and Haidong Pan, founder and CEO of Hudong, China’s largest online encyclopedia.

Projects were chosen from across Australia and New Zealand, to receive personal mentoring in recognition of their own projects' originality and global commercial appeal.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk after the event, Angela Clark from StreetCorner.com.au said it was a enlightening experience.

"Access to the XMediaLab mentors is a priceless gift," she said. "To hear them speak at the conference was motivating in itself but to be given one on one mentoring is a humbling experience. Few of us have international networks with such depth of experience in start-ups and knowledge of what’s happening elsewhere in the world."

She said their advice has opened up ideas to new avenues to explore.

"One of the consistent messages was only the brave and bold will succeed,” said Clark. "The mentors didn’t all see things in the same way but all of them challenged our thinking, so since that weekend we've certainly been looking at directions we would never have considered before."

StreetCorner recently launched in three new regions in Sydney: Inner City, North West and South West, and hopes the recent advice will help develop their future success.

"XMediaLab has been timely and many of the key outtakes from the Lab will definitely make their way into some of site developments for later this year," she added.

Brendan Harkin, from XMediaLab, said StreetCorner was selected for the potential it offered to local news production.

"We were particularly interested in the local/global issues and possibilities raised by the StreetCorner site," he told Journalism.co.uk."One need only realise with dismay the static, repetitive, irredeemably systemic US-centric content in Google news, to want to seek out and assist alternative news platforms using digital and interactive media technologies."

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