Al Jazeera wants you to help make storytelling better using apps

We use apps for a lot of things: entertainment, communication, sharing and so much more. There’s a reason, after all, that the various mobile operating systems‘ app stores contain millions of apps and have seen billions of app downloads.

One area where both mobile and web apps could do with constant innovation however is in the field of story-telling. It’s pretty pleasing therefore that the Innovation and Research group at Al Jazeera Media Network has kicked off its first major community initiative with an online Innovation Challenge, an open competition aiming to surface new ideas about storytelling in mobile and web applications.

Among the prizes on offer for the competition are the possibility of future incubation of winning ideas, invitations to large innovation events in the future, and US$25 000 in cash prizes.

The competition, which is open to software designers, technologists, and developers from around the world, will explore “nonlinear narratives” as its first topic.

“Typically, the stories and content we create and consume are linear, and follow a logical, cause and effect structure,” says Morad Rayyan from Al Jazeera Innovation and Research. “Yet our minds and memories work in a nonlinear way, and this offers an opportunity for new types of storytelling, and new methods of media consumption”.

“The applications and software put together for the Innovation Challenge should provide new, flexible, and reusable methods of creating or consuming such nonlinear narratives.”

Challenge participants can also team up through the platform with others who are looking for assistance with their ideas. Registration is open until 30 September.

Image: Osama Saeed via Flickr.