50 On Fire 2013

Update: This year’s 50 on Fire nominations will be open through October 10th, 2014. Submit now.

When I started on this I thought it would be easy: I was going to look through the list of nominees in the media category for 50 on Fire and pick a few favorites, ahead of the tech, media & marketing meetup tonight. 

Then I found out the list of media nominees for 50 on Fire is, for now, short. For BostInno’s top annual awards event, we’ve got a list of tech nominees as long as Buddy Cianci’s rap sheet. But the media names are pretty thin. (Nominations are open here.) 

It became clear that it’s up to me to pick a few good people. And that’s a problem. There are many in Boston news media I admire, and the list of extremely talented people I know is even longer. But who’s really on a hot streak? I mean, in an NBA Jams sense, not just “heating up,” but really “on fire.” There are stalwarts in Boston media. Their names aren’t on this list.  

I picked four who are showing new potential to shift Boston’s momentum. There are people on my own team at BostInno who meet that standard. Like Ed McMahon would, I left those people out of this sweepstakes, but you can meet some of them tonight at Carrie Nation at our tech, marketing & media meetup. 

Here are my picks for the media category at BostInno’s 50 on Fire, this December. None of them are people I know personally, but all of them are people I’ve noticed, admiring their work in media and at the intersection of media and technology.

Mona Vernon, Thomson Reuters.

Vernon started the Thomson Reuters Innovation Lab earlier this year. She worked for a couple of Massachusetts sensor technology startups (Bionex and Axsun) before joining Thomson Reuters in 2010. Since starting the Innovation Lab, she’s partnered with startups like Tamr and generally gotten out and evangelized the big-data opportunity in fintech. Here’s her keynote slide deck from the Boston Data Science meetup in April.

Eric Moskowitz, The Boston Globe.

An investigation into how a lenient state judicial system gave Jared Remy too many second chances; a 50th anniversary remembrance of 1964’s summer of civil rights activism; a day spent with track workers at the sunset of Suffolk Downs: Moskowitz is on fire this year. Can’t wait to see what he writes next.

Ricarose Roque, MIT Media Lab.

Roque was* the mentoring co-chair of the Graduate Women at MIT program and works on Scratch 2.0, an MIT Media Lab project designed to let kids and families tell stories and develop games using technology. “I ponder how can we design computing tools, activities and learning experience that can engage a broader range of people,” she told a teaching blog. She also did a kids computing event with Nas and Mayor Marty Walsh. 

Ben Fry, Fathom Info.

Ben Fry is making a business out of data visualization at Fathom Info. Projects include GE’s annual reports, a personal activity analysis using NikeFuel and weather data and a version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein published using abandoned fonts culled from the Internet. 

*Editor’s Note: Contrary to what I wrote earlier, Ricarose Roque stepped down from her co-chair role with Graduate Women at MIT last year. 

Photo Credit: American Inno
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