2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

43 Tongues: Emerging Market Apps for IOS & Android

#sxsw #43tongues

Over the past year, the Voice of America set out to to create a universal mobile and tablet application for its global news services in 43 languages from Affan Oromoo (Let me Google that for you: it's used primarily in Ethiopia) to Vietnamese, on both Google Android and Apple IOS. The app focuses on what Facebook calls “The Other 5 Billion” internet users -- emerging and hostile media markets; our news service mission is to day-in-and-out cover the places Anderson Cooper only parachutes into -- the Middle East, Eastern Bloc, Southeast Asia, Africa and Cuba, countries without a free and established press and/or Internet freedom.

This frank, post mortem will present lessons learned, tricks and hacks including:
+ How to do global localization for digital content effectively -- including typographic sets that aren't supported naively by the Android and Apple IOS operating systems
+ Usability testing and designing apps with cultural awareness
+ OS & hardware quirks for international apps

Presenters

3817

Will Sullivan

Mobile Lead

BBG

Will Sullivan is the international Director of Mobile for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that operates international digital, information and broadcast properties including The Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, delivering news, information and language teaching resources in more than 61 languages to more than 100 countries with an estimated global audience of more than 203 million weekly and more than 300 million annually.

A certified scrum master, he leads the strategy, UX design, development and agile product management for mobile and tablet apps, Short Messaging Services (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), ebooks, mobile, responsive, and adaptive websites around the globe.

Sullivan was previously the Director of Mobile News for Lee Enterprises, managing a portfolio mobile and tablet apps and ebooks for more than 40 daily newspapers and more than 200 weekly and vertical niche publications. He was a 2010-2011 Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Fellow at the University of Missouri, where he studied mobile, tablet and emerging technologies. Before that, he was the Interactive Director of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he pioneered the organization's mobile, social and multimedia initiatives.

Sullivan was selected by Editor and Publisher as one of 2012’s “25 under 35” innovative young journalism leaders. His leadership and contributions to the digital media professional earned him two President’s Awards from the Society for News Design in 2011 and the National Press Photographer Association President’s Award in 2009.

His innovative work has won more than two dozen awards from organizations including the Online News Association, Society for News Design and National Press Photographer Association; projects he's worked on have twice been declared finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, twice been named to Editor and Publisher's annual list of "10 That Do It Right" and three times won an Online Journalism Award from the Online News Association. His personal website, Journerdism.com, was also recognized by Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab as one of the 10 best "future-of-journalism" blogs. He's the former secretary of the Online News Association’s board of directors as well as a board member for the Society for News Design foundation and co-creator and co-director of the NPPA's Multimedia Immersion.

Sullivan has been a judge multiple times for the Online News Association’s Online Journalism Award, Editor & Publisher EPPY Awards, Society for News Design’s digital and print competitions, Associated Collegiate Press and he has also judged the World Press Photo

He also frequently offers strategic and technical consulting in emerging technologies, as well as hands-on training at organizations, universities, workshops and conferences around the world including South by Southwest Interactive, The Knight Digital Media Center, Online News Association and The Poynter Institute.

He can be contacted at will [at] journerdism.com, Facebook.com/WillSullivan or on Twitter @Journerdism.

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