Welcome

We are disrupters, problem solvers, builders, and changemakers who question conventions, embrace uncertainty, and invent what’s next and new.

The SOJC Media Innovation Lab is a team of University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication students, faculty, and consultants who are strategic thinkers, designers, coders, project managers, writers, and visual storytellers who take on bold challenges facing industries, organizations, and start-ups. We invite industry partners to engage our support in tackling critical problems that could redefine their futures.

For fall term 2024, the lab will manage paid student/creative internships for two industry partners:

1. MusoLingo – is an Australian startup which  helps people learn English as a Second Language using song lyrics. Their first target market is Mexico and LaTam, so native Spanish speakers who are or wish to learn English.  Assignment: user-testing of their prototype product plus content creation, marketing collateral, and focus groups.
 
2. Athlysium – is a new concept physical “gym” targeting the Gen X/older Millennials (35-50) demographic, helping them recapture their love of sports like baseball, cricket, soccer, tennis and golf with high-tech simulators, integrated wearables, cameras, and social connectivity. Users can level up their skills if they still play club sports or use the sports they love as a workout. Given the immense popularity of Top Golf, Pickle Ball, Ax Throwing et al, Athlysium is seeing a rise in single-sports, high tech venues and high performance academies– but there is nothing for the former athlete who either plays on the weekends or wants to get fit playing the sport they love.
 
For the Winter Term, we will add: 
3. Laava is a global market leader in digital product authentication, creator of the next-gen QR code, and the world’s only invisible digital ID and seeks to solve for the $3 trillion global counterfeit market. Laava’s patented AI-driven, digital fingerprinting technology creates a secure, unclonable ID for every item, enabling real-time authentication, tracking, and personalized consumer engagement. Highlights include: Top brand customers include: HEYDUDE shoes (Crocs, Inc.), Shell Pakistan, Macallan, Niagara Bottling and many others.
Assignment: Create social media content (text, images, video) and contribute to the company’s website and blog.
 
To Apply, Click Here 
 

Previous Projects:

Focal: Reimagining Local News

In winter 2023, as their pilot project, lab participants reimagined local news for Gen Z and Alpha.  

In spring 2023, teams developed and pitched a sports channel concept to Nike.

During the 2023/24 academic year, a student team created Unify, an AI-powered student advisor.

 

About the Lab

The SOJC Media Innovation Lab is co-led by Professor Ed Madison and entrepreneur-in-residence Chris Adams.

Chris Adams is an internationally recognized new media pioneer, entertainment executive, and media, entertainment, and technology executive with twenty years of experience creating partnerships, programs, and revenue-generating initiatives between and to the benefit of brands, their customers, and users around the world.



His clients have included Facebook, for which he helped to produce “Facebook Diaries,” the first-ever hybrid user-generated video/reality TV show distributed on Facebook.com, Ziddio.com, Comcast VOD, and the IFC Channel, HBO, Comcast Cable, and Interactive, Glam.com, where he built GlamTV, Amazon.com, Lycos.com, and many others.
 Chris joined eBay’s Jeff Skoll as Chief Vision Officer to build Participant Media through its first slate of movies, including  Syriana, North Country, Good Night and Good Luck, and former Vice-President Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Ed Madison’s multifaceted career in media and journalism began as a high school intern at the Washington Post-owned CBS television affiliate in Washington, D.C., during the height of Watergate. Shortly after graduating from Emerson College in Boston, at age 22, he was recruited to become a founding producer at CNN. His own companies have produced content for Paramount, Disney, CBS, ABC, Sony, Geffen Records, Discovery Networks, and A&E Networks. Madison enjoyed a 23-year-long journalism and media career in Los Angeles before returning to academia.  He continues to actively develop, and executive produce high-profile media projects internationally.  

Currently, Madison is an associate professor at UO’s School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) and has affiliated faculty status with the College of Education (COE). Madison’s books include Reimagining Journalism in a Post-Truth World (2018 – Praeger Books) with co-author Ben DeJarnette. He is also co-founder and executive director of the Journalistic Learning Initiative (JLI), a 501(c)3 educational nonprofit organization that uses journalistic strategies to empower student voice and academic success in partnership with the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication and the College of Education. 

Participation in the lab is open to all undergraduate and graduate students.

Want to Participate and Invent the Future?

Contact: Ed Madison, madison2@uoregon.edu.

Student Team Leader Contact: Isa Morton: Isa@laava.id

About the SOJC

The UO School of Journalism and Communication community is dedicated to excellence in learning, research, and creative projects. We study issues that champion freedom of expression, diversity and equity, and democracy in service to current and future generations. By integrating theory and practice, we advance scholarship and prepare students to become professional communicators, critical thinkers, and responsible citizens in a global society.