The 38th MINDS International Conference concluded in Athens with a final 'family' photo of the roughly 100 participants from the 25 top news agencies of the world against the backdrop of the Acropolis, after a successful two days of discussions and speeches on Thursday and Friday.
The conference, hosted in Athens for the first time and organised with the assistance of the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA), also unanimously approved the addition of a new member, the UK-based PA Media, in addition to the 25 members of the MINDS International network from Europe, the United States, Canada, India, Australia and Japan.
It covered crucial topics for journalism and news agencies, including AI, the safety of journalists, cybersecurity challenges and alternative sources of income through the use of new technologies.
The ANA-MPA, on its part, presented the ways in which it is making a transition to actively adopting technological and other developments through its paln for digital transformation and new communication and promotion services that it has already presented and offered to its subscribers and clients, or is about to launch in the near future, always based on the provision of news content (text, videos, infographics, social media campaigns etc).
Participants from the other organisations in MINDS presented their own innovative ideas and proposals, new business models, initiatives and synergies. Concerns were raised regarding developments in AI and the uncontrolled use of agency material and archives by online platforms and language learning models (LLMs) of AI applications, as well as the ways in which society must first be protected from disinformation and fake news. The common conclusion was that news agencies, as producers of primary news content, will have an increasingly important role in maintaining the credibility of the entire Media.
Particularly emotionally charged were the speeches of two of the network's oldest executives, whose participation in the Athens conference served as their professional "epilogue", due to retirement. Jan Kontera from the Czech Republic (CTK) and Meinolf Ellers from Germany (dpa), the former having participated in all 38 conferences since the founding of the MINDS network and the latter in most of them, declared themselves lucky and proud that the completion of their journey coincided with their presence in such a historic city as Athens, in the shadow of the Acropolis, and their participation in the conference that the ANA-MPA helped to organise.

Several participants praised the ANA-MPA for its successful hosting of the conference, among them MINDs board chairman Kimmo Laaksonen (Finland, STT) and MINDs Managing Director Wolfgang Nedomansky, MINDS Deputy Chair Poliina Hepola (Reuters) and Malcolm Kirk (Canadian Press), as well as its development and modernisation, giving credit to ANA-MPA President Aimilios Perdikaris. He, in turn, declared himself a fervent supporter of the actions, synergies and the overall philosophy governing the MINDS network. In fact, he recalled that, four years ago, ANA-MPA was ready to quit the network due to difficulties and yet today, with the assistance of all employees, it had reached the point of hosting the conference and people from 25 news agencies around the world, restoring its image and looking to its future with optimism.
The network's next meeting was scheduled for Rome in October.