Jakarta, Batamnews - The Local Media Summit 2022 (LMS 2022) initiated by Suara.com and International Media Support (IMS) was successful. This activity was officially closed on Friday (28/10/2022) night at the National Library auditorium, Jakarta.

More than 300 participants, local media leaders, CEOs and Editors, agencies, companies, donor agencies, global platform managers, and government attended offline and online.

The closing ceremony was highlighted by a conference themed "Reinventing Local Media: Finding Opportunities and Overcoming the Challenges," with the speaker from Radar Selatan Editor-in-Chief Sunarti Sain, Press Council Member Sapto Anggoro, Corporate Communications Director of Danone Arief Mujahidin, and Inventure Managing Partner Yuswohady.

This interesting session attracted much discussion, especially regarding the challenges of local media and the future of digital media in general.

All activities were held at the National Library of Indonesia for two days, October 27-28, 2022. The event included two conferences, 9 workshops, 2 sharing sessions, 3 coaching clinics, an exhibition, and a networking night.

Discussions include the sustainability of the media business, how to get donors or funding, local media business strategies, content distribution, utilization of technology to platforms, and production of interesting and up-to-date content.

"The development in the digital media industry is incredibly fast, and it can be a matter of days. This must be anticipated so that local media remains adaptive, following the development of audiences and establishing collaborations. Local media means not only geographical scope but also media with a special segment of readers," said Suwarjono, CEO of PT Arkadia Digital Media Tbk, who is also Editor-in-Chief of Suara.com.

In the Networking Night session hosted by Inaya Wahid and the team from Hamburger Podcast, several local media representatives even had the opportunity to present in front of guests from various donor agencies, companies, agencies, and foreign embassies to share their media concepts.

These local media practitioners, such as Yulianus Ario Jempau from Floresa, Siti Latifah (Kutub. id), Nuril Arifin (Sukabumi Update), and others, on the average, admitted that building collaboration and networks is one of the important things needed by local media, and are therefore grateful to be able to participate in activities such as LMS 2022.

"This is a great event and very helpful. We salute Suara.com for holding an event like this. There has been no previous media that held this. This should be held regularly every year," Kabar Papua boss Syamsuddin Levi said on one occasion, and many other participants agreed.

Interestingly, on several separate occasions, local media leaders also suggested that the location of future events can be held in their areas, such as Sukabumi, Banyuwangi, Pekanbaru, Batam, or even Manado.

Fakhrurrodzi from RiauOnline also brought and registered one of his IT team personnel to participate, learn, and discuss directly in various sessions held during LMS 2022.

"This is a great opportunity; we don't want to waste it. It is rare to be able to learn many things directly, including technical issues such as servers, programmatic, video monetization, and others, from one great activity like this," he said.

There was indeed a lot of insightful and useful knowledge that participants could gain from the event. Discussions and insights about the business ecosystem and the future of digital media - especially local media, included topics discussed by competent speakers since the first seminar session. During the closing seminar session, hundreds of participants still felt at home.

While in the workshop sessions held, participants gained various insights and knowledge, starting from exposure from IMS, about strategies to raise funding, podcast business models, video monetization, hoaxes and the role of the media in overcoming them, how to handle Cyber Attacks, maximizing social media and SEO aspects, to local community development and other collaboration ideas.

Local Media Summit 2022 is not only supported by hundreds of local media but also by the collaboration of various parties as collaborators. Including the Norwegian Embassy, the Dutch Embassy, Kurawal Foundation, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), BNI, BTN Bank, BTPN Bank, AWS, Daily Motion, Notix, MGID, Danone, Telkom, Pertamina, Chandra Asri, Adaro, Djarum Foundation, Sinarmas and Merdeka Copper Gold.