Splice Beta. Come celebrate Asia's most awesome media startups.

Emily Goligoski

The Membership Puzzle Project

“Splice is leading the region in spotlighting what matters in journalism, design, and product development with a focus on human interaction. They offer a fresh take and tone that’s much needed around the world.”

Lars Bestle

Head of Department for Asia,
International Media Support

COMMUNITY PARTNER

“Beta is all about the power of entrepreneurs in Asia. IMS is excited to help bring this community together.”

2019 Speakers

Mavericks, rule-breakers, game changers, firestarters

Sonny Swe

Founder and CEO, Frontier Myanmar

Sonny served eight years in prison for bypassing censorship regulations at The Myanmar Times. Now he’s three years into building Frontier, Myanmar’s most important media startup.

Kirsten Han

Editor-in-Chief, New Naratif

New Naratif is one of the most agile startups we know. They report on Southeast Asia’s shared culture and history in a variety of formats (check out their comics and podcast), supported mainly by crowdfunding.

Splice Profile

Joji Thomas Philip

Founder and CEO, DealStreetAsia

As a business reporter, Joji saw the need to make financial deals in Southeast Asia and India less opaque. Today, venture-backed DealStreetAsia is taking on Bloomberg with their membership model.

Premesh Chandran

Co-founder and CEO, Malaysiakini

As the granddaddy of digital news in Asia (they launched in 1999), Prem will talk about keeping resilience and opportunity in mind when playing the media long game.

Splice Profile

Devi Asmarani

Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Magdalene

Magdalene is a staple for young Indonesian audiences who want an alternate perspective on women’s rights and gender equality. Devi will share her experience covering feminist issues.

Splice Profile

Minh Bui Jones

Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Mekong Review

Despite distribution issues and the watchful eye of authoritarian governments, Mekong Review has found a readership in Asia. Minh will talk about why a great print product matters (and why he still delivers his by hand).

Splice Profile

Tom Grundy

Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder, Hong Kong Free Press

If there’s anyone who knows how to run a newsroom on an absolute shoestring, it’s Tom, who does it in one of the world’s most expensive cities. He launched HKFP in 2015 with a crowdfunding campaign that was the largest and fastest-funded of its time.

Splice Profile

Hu Jianlong

Co-founder and CEO, The Passage

Jianlong wants to bridge India and China — he believes there isn't enough coverage to explain the tech ecosystem on either side. A Chinese citizen, he now lives in Bangalore where he started The Passage to cover tech on both sides of the border, and the rest of Asia.

Simon Park

Content Strategist, Mediati

Simon runs Mediati, Korea’s first and only media startup incubator. It is helping South Korea’s new media mavens navigate a tough market that has long favored legacy outlets.

Splice Profile

Emily Goligoski

Research Director, Membership Puzzle Project

How rare is this: Emily is first an advocate for consumers, helping newsrooms figure out how to build engaged communities. She was the first UX research lead at the NYT with plenty of membership case studies up her sleeve.

Joey Chung

Co-founder and CEO, The News Lens

You rarely see this in the media startup space. But Joey has been acquiring companies to build TNL into one of Taiwan's most forward-looking media companies. He'll explain how he got TNL to a Series-C round.

Splice Profile

Kristofor Lawson

Founder, Lawson Media

It's hard trying to build scale with podcasts in a place like Australia. That's why Kris has bigger sights: securing a global audience for his podcast, Moonshot.

Splice Profile

Bidhya Chapagain

Co-founder, Herne Katha

Bidhya quit her job as the presenter of a popular BBC show to start Herne Katha, a YouTube video series in Nepal. She wants to bring stories of everyday people to a digital-first audience, something that reflects the lives of people and communities of Nepalese.

Gaurav Sachdeva

Chief Product Officer, Singapore Press Holdings

SPH has never had a Chief Product Officer. Half a year into that role, Gaurav Sachdeva is trying to change mindsets at the 173-year-old company by focusing on users.

Splice Profile

Yan Naung Oak

Freelance data visualization developer

Yan’s experience is rare in Asia. This Myanmar native works at the intersection of civic tech and open data. He’s recently started to test some ideas through data visualization as a way to tell deeper stories around social change in Myanmar. Yan is also a senior advisor at Phandeeyar. He lives in Singapore.

Ling Huawei

Managing Editor, Caixin Media

Caixin pulled off something rare in China. In 2017, it became the first local media to put up a paywall. Huawei explains how they pulled it off, and she'll also talk about how Caixin drives innovation in the newsroom.

Namnandorj Bayaraa

Founder and CEO, Remo Media

Namnandorj — or Namka, as he's better known — started Remo to help drive media literacy in Mongolia, where much of the population is discovering the internet for the first time. Misinformation is rife and so he's building a digital literacy program for schools.

Aya Uryu

Director of Platform Sales, Nordot

Common plumbing is exactly what the media industry needs and this Japanese startup thinks it has the right solution. Nordot is building a common publishing platform to unite media outlets — and lower their costs. Aya Uryu, their Director of Platform Sales, will show us just how exciting this can get.

Splice Profile

Sidharth started The Wire 3 years ago to provide incisive opinion into Indian politics, society and culture. He was among the founding editors of the Mumbai-based daily DNA. Sidharth also speaks extensively on Indian cinema.

Sidharth Bhatia

Founder Editor, The Wire

Sidharth is a co-founder of The Wire, an Indian news portal which was started by three journalists in 2015. He was also among the co-founders of the English newspaper DNA. A journalist and author, he writes on politics and society and has written several books on popular culture.

Rajesh Tahil

Co-founder of Audiomatic; COO of Scroll.in

Despite having worked in print, music television, and advertising, Rajesh has a two-decade old infatuation with the audio medium. So when he co-founded Audiomatic, India's first podcast network, he learned a lot really quickly — about the medium, the audience, and the product. He is currently the COO of Scroll Media Inc.

Sasa Vucinic

Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Northbase Media

Sasa is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of North Base Media, a boutique investment firm which invests in digital media companies and technologies that support media. Notable NBM investments include The News Lens, IDN Times, Deal Street Asia, Piano, Rappler, Pocket Aces, and others. Prior to co-founding NBM, Sasa was Co-Founder and founding CEO of Media Development Loan Fund (now MDIF) which was the first investor in Malaysiakini and KBR 68H.

Ho Jia Jian

Co-Founder, Viddsee

Ho Jia Jian co-founded Viddsee, a Singapore-based video entertainment platform for short premium content that's getting traction across the region. Viddsee wants to help storytellers create more films — and get them to the right audiences. He'll explain how he connects the dots.

Splice Profile

Malcolm Ong

Head of Product Management, SCMP.com

Malcolm joined SCMP in 2017 from Silicon Valley. He co-founded Skillshare, and worked on product and growth at a little company called Lyft. He’s just led his team through an overhaul of SCMP and launched two new editorial products. Malcolm will share what he’s learned about bringing a product mindset to a 116-year-old media company.

Roshni Mahtani

Founder and CEO, Tickled Media

Roshni's Tickled Media runs some of Southeast Asia's biggest mother and child platforms, including theAsianparent.com, Asianmoneyguide, Nonilo and HerStyleAsia. She also started the Female Founders Network, a group of over 2,000 female founders. Roshni will share her insights around building a regional media startup, as well as supporting female founders in the region.

Henrik Keith Hansen

Media Management Advisor, International Media Support (IMS)

Henrik is a reporter and editor turned media strategist. He’s worked with news organizations across the world on digital transformation, balanced election coverage, and capacity building for media in war zones. At Beta, Henrik will facilitate a workshop on mission- and vision-setting as a foundation for your organization’s development.

Celine Wong

Product Manager, Tech in Asia

Singapore-based Tech in Asia decided to go all-in with subscriptions in September 2018, making it one of Southeast Asia's first movers in that space. As a product manager, Celine is responsible for driving that move. She'll speak about what they've learned in that process, and some of the ideas they'll be testing this year. Celine will also speak about product management as a career — an important function in all modern newsrooms.

Bobby Soriano

Digital Safety Advisor

This is one of the hardest snippets to write because there isn't much about this guy on the interwebs; he's that good. Bobby trains newsrooms on how to keep their data and their journalists safe. Everything from privacy, to security, to encryption. Bobby will run a masterclass on keeping your newsroom and your team secure. Bobby is an International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants-certified Security Analyst, Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, and Ethical Hacker (ask him what that means).

Kathryn Geels

Director, Engaged Journalism Accelerator, European Journalism Centre

Kathryn leads the Engaged Journalism Accelerator program at the EJC. She provides grants, coaching, mentoring and access to resources to help news organizations across Europe. At its core, the program wants to bridge media companies with the communities they serve. Kathryn will talk about how newsrooms can map, track and evaluate the impact of their work.

Thiti Luang

Co-Founder and CEO, Boonmee Lab

Thiti co-founded Boonmee Lab because he wanted to bring together tech, human-centered design, and data science in a way that would create impact for society. They recently launched ELECT, an online data journalism startup, providing data and insights into this year's election in Thailand. He'll explain how you can do it too.

Janie Octia

Strategic Partner Development, CrowdTangle

Janie trains some of the biggest newsrooms in Asia on the use of Facebook's CrowdTangle social analytics tool. She started her career at the Inquirer in Manila, and later moved to Yahoo and CNN. Her experience in the region's newsrooms have given her deep insights into not just workflows and tools, but how newsrooms work. She's especially passionate about helping young journalists build great careers and she'll talk about how to build one in the product space.

Jeremy Pennycook

Product Lead, Guardian Voice Lab

How do you build a voice-first news experience? Jeremy has been working to design voice interactions at the Guardian Voice Lab. It all starts with a simple prototype — little sketches to draft what potential interactions could look like. Jeremy also worked at SoundCloud and NPR in past lives. He'll bring his rich experience in this space to a Beta workshop.

Bhrikuti Rai

Podcaster, Boju Bajai

Kathmandu-based, Columbia University alum Bhrikuti is the co-host of the Boju Bajai podcast, created by and for young women. It translates as "grandmas" — the kind of unfiltered advice you'd get from one about growing up as a young woman in Nepal. Slut shaming, body image, sexual assault and other "taboo" issues are all fair game on her show. Bhrikuti will talk about how she started the show with Itisha Giri, and where they are taking it.

Vivian Schiller

CEO, Civil Foundation

Civil is founded on the principle that a free press is essential to a fair and just society. Vivian wants to build a community-owned platform that would help enhance the sustainability of trustworthy journalism. A longtime executive at the junction of media, tech and journalism, Vivian will talk about how newsrooms can benefit from a blockchain-based network.

Naoyoshi Goto

Deputy Editor-in-Chief, NewsPicks

Uzabase's NewsPicks is a business social news platform that brings together a high-quality community around original content. Naoyoshi is one of three core members who built the editorial team at NewsPicks. The company now has over 95,000 paid subscribers in Japan. In 2018, Uzabase acquired Quartz to expand its business model globally.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn

Co-founder, Prachatai

Chiranuch — or Jiew — is a co-founder of Prachatai, a Thai startup that focusses on human rights and democracy development. Jiew has worked as a media activist and journalist who has wrangled with issues like freedom of expression and HIV/AIDS campaigns for over a decade, including being convicted for not immediately removing a comment deemed to have insulted the Thai monarchy. A few years ago, Newsweek magazine named her one of the world’s 150 most fearless women.

Tariq Ansari

Managing Director, Next Mediaworks

Tariq took over Mid-Day, his family’s small newspaper business in Mumbai, India, when he was just out of university. He proceeded to completely change the way the company — and the industry — worked, with constant experimentation with how news served audiences across print, radio, and the web, introducing cross-functional roles in the newsroom, hiring talent from outside traditional industry lines, and rapid, feedback-driven productisation for new audiences. He continues to champion the media ecosystem with funding, support, and ideas on building value in new media enterprise.

Vidya Balachander

Editor-in-Chief, Roar Media

Vidya handles all things editorial at Colombo-based Roar Media. She is best known for her work as a food and travel journalist — she was the features editor of BBC Good Food's Indian edition. Her work has also appeared in Saveur, CNN's Parts Unknown, and NPR's The Salt. At Beta, Vidya will talk about how Roar is building a regional media empire across South Asia.

Jakub Górnicki

Co-founder, Outriders

Jakub co-founded and runs Outriders, a Polish non-profit magazine that stemmed from a crowdfunding campaign supported by 630 people. They focus on migration, tech and the environment, producing about 2-5 stories a week. Outriders recently launched its Studio custom content business, which helps fund the journalism done by the editorial team.

Roby Alampay

Founder and CEO, PumaPublic

Roby Alampay started PumaPublic Productions, which aims to be the top audio production outfit in the Philippines. PumaPublic's PumaPodcast is a first-mover in the Philippine podcasting space, producing daily news roundups, explanatory journalism, and features since January 2019. Roby is also the editor-in-chief of BusinessWorld, the Philippines' oldest and leading business news organization.

Sean Ho

Senior Product Manager, Malaysiakini

Sean studied to be an architect, but got his first job designing websites. He then founded W3C Sites to promote web standards and accessibility. Sean is all about best practice across the news user experience. He now has a wide role managing Malaysiakini products for media, tech, and advertising across all departments.

Matthew Illes heads up Civil Media, a community-owned platform for independent journalism. Civil is a growing network of news organizations and supporters committed to a free press, civil discourse and public accountability. Matthew studied journalism at Duke University before embarking on an entrepreneurial career in digital marketing and innovative business modeling.

Matthew Iles

CEO, Civil Media

Matthew heads up Civil Media, a community-owned platform for independent journalism. Civil is a growing network of news organizations and supporters committed to a free press, civil discourse and public accountability. Matthew studied journalism at Duke University before embarking on an entrepreneurial career in digital marketing and innovative business modeling.

Michala Sabnani

‎Branded content director, South China Morning Post

Michala's job is to create engaging content that communicates a brand’s campaign while maintaining the South China Morning Post’s tone and values. Before joining SCMP, she spent more than eight years creating video and sponsored content for CNN International. Previously a producer on its special projects unit, she had a diverse portfolio ranging from documentaries, travel and lifestyle to social and digital content.

Chad Williams

Editor-in-Chief, Coconuts Media

In March 2018, Coconuts Media became one of the earliest adopters of the paywall model in Southeast Asia. Chad Williams, the first journalist to hold the title Editor-in-Chief at the regional news outlet, will be discussing the challenges and opportunities presented by that decision. Before joining Coconuts, Chad was EIC at the Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia, and previously served for several years as international news editor at the Hollywood Reporter in Los Angeles.

Barrett has been at The Economist for 7 years. He's part of the Publisher Team which combines the circulation and subscription side of the business with the media businesses including advertising, content and events. Barrett works with corporations, foundations, NGOs and governments to use The Economist Group’s platforms for branding, government relations and marketing.

Barrett Bingley

North Asia Media Sales Director, The Economist Group

Barrett has been at The Economist for 7 years. He's part of the Publisher Team which combines the circulation and subscription side of the business with the media businesses including advertising, content and events. Barrett works with corporations, foundations, NGOs and governments to use The Economist Group’s platforms for branding, government relations and marketing.

Dilrukshi Handunnetti

Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Sri Lanka

Dilrukshi Handunnetti is the Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Sri Lanka. A senior journalist, media trainer and a lawyer, Dilrukshi is also the Co-Convener of South Asian Women in Media- Sri Lanka, a regional group of women journalists.

Syed Nazakat

Founder, editor-in-chief of DataLEADS

Syed Nazakat is one of India's best known investigative reporters and founder and editor-in-chief of DataLEADS. Syed is on the board of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), and will speak on on sustainability strategies, fundraising, and nonprofit media models, and on his own entrepreneurial work with DataLEADS and Health Analytics India.

Jenny Chua

Head of Partnerships & Communities, Rappler

Jenny is a hybrid. She has spent 8 years in the telco industry, mastering Brand Equity and Marketing, and has been an entrepreneur for 10 years. She has applied her marketing and product development knowledge in growing communities and revenue channels in one of the most challenged industries: journalism. She is the head of partnerships and communities in Rappler where she is responsible for collaborating with advertisers and creating movements that matter. She also launched the first paid membership model in Philippine media to push its communities towards action.

Ross Settles

Adjunct Professor, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, HKU

As both a consultant and media marketing executive, Ross has worked with revenue and product marketing teams to develop and market the best mix of advertising and content packages. Past work has focused on marketing, product and revenue development work for companies in the structured listings space (Zvents, CareerBuilder, ShopLocal), online news content (Yahoo! Local, The Knight Foundation) as well as the promotion and marketing of social networking services to advertisers and communities of audiences. Ross is an adviser to Splice.

Carla Yap-Sy Su

Chief Revenue Officer, Rappler

As chief revenue officer of Rappler, Carla creates new business models for the newsroom in a disruptive environment requiring constant pivots with content, data intelligence, user technology and community strategies. As Rappler's situation heats up, she continues to be a firm believer of carving out your own space in the market using the best principles of the newsroom applied in innovative and creative ways.

Irene Jay Liu

News Lab Lead, Asia Pacific, Google

Irene Jay Liu leads Google News Lab in the Asia-Pacific region, based in Singapore. She was previously an investigative reporter and data editor at Reuters, where she was a 2017 Pulitzer finalist in the national reporting category, and taught data-driven investigative journalism at the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong. Earlier, she worked at the South China Morning Post and as a political reporter with the Times Union in Albany, New York.

Chua Boon Ping

CEO, SPH Ventures

Boon Ping is an experienced VC with proven track record. He joined SPH Ventures in 2014 to spearhead the corporate venture initiative of SPH, a Singapore-listed entity. As CEO of the fund, he is responsible for the overall investment strategy.

Erika Tapalla

Senior Business Development Manager, Reuters

Erika is an experienced and successful multimedia professional who has spent the last 9 years working in content production and business marketing across both traditional and digital environments. Erika's role at Reuters spans media strategy, commercial partnerships, creating efficiencies in workflow management systems, and leveraging digital media and technology to drive performance and innovation.

Joyce Hau

Head of News Partnerships, YouTube Asia Pacific

Joyce manages partnerships with news organizations for YouTube in Asia Pacific. She leads YouTube’s efforts to elevate authoritative news sources on the video platform in the region, as well as various initiatives to help the news ecosystem thrive on YouTube. Prior to this role, Joyce was part of Google’s Communications team for 8 years where she worked on Google Search, Hardware, and YouTube.

Colum Murphy

Founder, Chinarrative

Chinarrative Founder Colum Murphy is an award-winning editorial leader and global journalist. He helped create Sixth Tone, an English-language news and media organization based in Shanghai, and is a former China correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, and a past deputy editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review. He is currently Managing Editor at TechNode, a leading provider of China-related tech news.

Praveen Krishnan

Head of Products & Marketing, The Ken

Praveen is the Head of Product at The Ken. Before joining The Ken, his last role was Director of Product at InMobi - the world's largest independent ad-network. He holds an MBA from IIM Bangalore and an engineering degree from NIT Trichy.

Nasr ul Hadi

Co-founder, PROTO

Nasr ul Hadi helps run PROTO, a startup exploring community-driven skilling models for civic media in India, in partnership with the the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). As a Knight Fellow, Hadi has led innovation experiments across print, broadcast and digital media, in legacy and startup newsrooms, even top journalism schools, both in India and the United States. He speaks about learnings from this work often, at leading media conferences across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Beyond work, he has also taught digital storytelling in postgraduate and mid-career classrooms.

Niki Torres

Founder, Chief Best Friends

I started Chief Best Friends out of the desire to hear more women’s voices in a growing medium like podcasting. We want to be the first few to create a quality podcast from Asia that’s globally recognised. It was also a way to feed my curiosity on all the women movers, shakers, and creators from all corners of the globe whose voices we may not have heard yet. We truly believe podcasting is changing the game for our stories to be told.

Duncan Greive

Founder and editor, Spinoff

Duncan Greive is founder and managing editor of The Spinoff, a startup digital magazine in New Zealand which creates text, audio and video across politics, pop culture and social issues. The Spinoff is distinguished by having been bootstrapped from day one and eschewing CPM advertising to focus on branded content. It has grown from a standing start to 20 full time staff, winning multiple awards for its fresh, urgent and often funny perspective.

Edna Belleza

Head of Digital, Summit Media

Edna is a true veteran of the Philippine media industry. She's worked across the sector, from esteemed mastheads like BusinessWorld, to driving strategy and business development at the Inquirer Group. Edna is now the head of the digital media group at Summit and is at the center of the company's shift from print to digital.

Kevin Brockland

Senior Investment Officer, MDIF

Kevin is rare in this media space. He's a CFA with plenty of experience in private equity. He's based in Kuala Lumpur, where he's a Senior Investment Officer supporting the good work that the Media Development Investment Fund is doing in Asia. Kevin is also a business coach to various companies.

Hugo Diba

CEO, Kumparan

Hugo founded Kumparan in 2016. Kumparan isn't your typical platform -- it combines user-generated content with that created by its own editorial team. All of this naturally comes down to the tech. Formerly from Detik, Hugo is building Kumparan as a tech-led platform with a focus on AI-led personalization.

Dibyo Haldar

Director, Small Business Programs. Facebook

Dibyo's mission at Facebook is to help small- and medium-sized enterprises connect with the customers they want. He's been at Facebook for 5 years, using data science to solve problems that businesses face. Dibyo has an amazing way of explaining the complexities of targeting, bringing together insights from marketing and data. Catch his masterclass at Beta. Essential knowledge for publishers seeking to connect with their audiences.

Kara McCloskey

Customer Success Manager, Chartbeat

Kara is an experienced relationship manager, working with global sports, news and lifestyle publishers to deliver content intelligence, reporting and analytic insights for Chartbeat. Advising partners across industries and cultures on publishing, planning and analyzing of brand-centric content is her core strength.

Prateek Pradhan

Founder and editor, Baahrakhari

Prateek started Baahrakhari about 3 years ago, bringing together more than two decades of experience in journalism. Prateek started his career at Kathmandu Post, and was its editor from 2003-2008. He was also the founding editor of Karobar Economic Daily. Prateek holds a master's in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government.

Kuang Keng Kuek Ser

Data journalism trainer

Keng started DataN as a training resource to help newsrooms with data journalism. He is a data journalist, based in Kuala Lumpur. He was a Google Journalism Fellow at PRI's The World and went on to join the newsroom full time. He was also a fellow at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. Keng also worked at Malaysiakini for eight years as a journalist.

Aung Zaw

Founder, The Irrawaddy

Aung Zaw is the founder of The Irrawaddy, and a journalist, writer, and former activist. He went into exile following the 1988 military coup in Myanmar, and launched The Irrawaddy four years later. He contributes to various publications around the world, and lives and works in Chiang Mai.

Lars Bestle

Head of Department for Asia, International Media Support

Lars stepped off a plane in Sri Lanka in 1997 to intern in TV and ended up writing his Master’s thesis on the role of the internet for diasporas. Since then, he has been engaged with media development and access to information in Asia for over 20 years, working for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and currently for International Media Support (IMS) as Asia programme director. Media and journalism startups are a core focus area of the IMS Asia team under Lars’ leadership.

Chiman handles news partnerships at Facebook where she helps bridge the company with publishers. She was formerly an anchor and China correspondent at i-Cable News. She'll run a masterclass on how news orgs can use Instagram in their storytelling.

Chiman Ng

News Partnerships, Greater China Region, Facebook

Chiman trains and provides the strategic vision for the biggest news organizations in the Greater China Region. As a multi award-winning journalist, she has covered many historical moments and breaking news in Greater China region in the past decade. Her experience in the TV news industry has given her deep insights into news-gathering and video production. She'll run a masterclass on how news orgs can use Instagram in their storytelling.

Pitiwat Wattanachai

Assistant Director at Science and Technology Park, Chiang Mai University

Pitiwat is a technology development and innovation management practitioner, and is Deputy Director at STeP, Thailand's vision for a business innovation hub in the region. He will speak about the projects that STeP is involved in, and will showcase several of their startups.

Tarutr Malhotra

Growth Lead, Homescreen Network

Tarutr is part of the founding team at India-based video content startup Homescreen Network. Tasked with building out a network of video producers, Tarutr has led a team that currently publishes daily videos in 5 languages from 15+ regions in India.

2019 Partners

Thank you for building the future of media with us.

“The creativity and focus of the founders, product leaders, and journalists at Beta are exactly what we want to champion. I can't wait to meet them all.”

— Anjali Kapoor

Director of APAC News Partnerships

Facebook

Partner with us in 2020

Let's talk!

Program

Many thanks to our speakers and delegates for these engaging sessions.

View the Splice Beta schedule & directory.

Travel

Chiang Mai. 700 years of history, great wifi and coffee, and that legendary Thai hospitality.

Thailand’s ancient mountainous northern city is known for its temples and elephants, but also for its cafes and creative culture. We thought it would be the perfect place to talk about building the future of media together.

We’re making this a district festival

Sessions will be held in various creative venues across Chiang Mai: the Old City, the funky Nimmanhaemin art district and the CMU STeP spaces. You’ll get a chance to see the town, not just the inside of a windowless conference room!

And it isn’t all work. We’ve got loads of fun stuff planned too — street food, a rooftop bar (or three), and a Chiang Mai edition of Splice on Tap. Did we mention the coffee?

Getting there

Chiang Mai International Airport is well connected, with direct flights from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok.

Thailand has one of the most open visa policies anywhere in the region.

Aim to get there on the morning of May 1 (the program rolls out that afternoon), and out on May 4 if you’re in a hurry to get back.

Premesh Chandran

Co-Founder, Malaysiakini

SPEAKER

“One of our lessons from the past two decades is the importance of pulling together a community of media professionals. I believe Splice Beta is one of the best ways to do that in Asia.”