Gather large numbers of Knight funded-projects in Silicon Valley and some remarkable collisions of talent are sure to take place.

That was one of our goals in inviting representatives from 42 projects we’ve funded to spend two days at the Stanford d.school in Palo Alto, Calif., Aug. 25-27. There were Knight News Challenge winners, old and new—and even four companies from the Knight Enterprise Fund. They had a chance to talk with us and each other about what’s happening with their projects.

The meeting was organized around the themes of “people” and “product,” with roundtables designed to discuss the challenges of hiring and managing people, building a successful organization and bringing a service or item to market.

Just seeing the group together offered a look at the diversity of Knight’s work in one of our program areas: journalism and media innovation. The attendees included such projects as Umbel, a for-profit startup that uses data to increase publishers’ understanding of their audiences and online advertising revenue; the Wikimedia Foundation, which is expanding mobile access to Wikipedia; MapBox, which is launching tools that make it easier for communities to contribute to OpenStreetMap; and Frontline SMS, which is creating a new platform that allows journalists to effectively use text messaging to inform and engage rural communities.

The d.school, a center of design thinking, offered a creative environment for sharing sometimes highly personal stories about the challenges and opportunities common to new or expanding ventures.

It also presented an appropriate location for technology thought leaders to drop in, share advice and answer questions, and allowed time for a field trip and dinner with the Google.org team at the Googleplex in Mountain View. That type of access can be invaluable to companies navigating the path from inspiration to product launch.

There were remarkable conversations led by John Lilly of Greylock Partners; Rick Klau, a partner at Google Ventures; Chris Marra, a product manager at Facebook; data scientist DJ Patil; Google Vice President Megan Smith; Mark Trammell, who brought his experiences with Twitter, Sonos and the Obama campaign to the conversation; and self-described “Chief of Confusion” John Seely Brown.

They shared advice from their experiences with the gathering at-large, including:

• Pursue ambitious goals and don’t settle for incremental progress: “If you shoot for the moon but get into orbit, you’re still in orbit,” Klau said. Smith offered this take on that: “What’s your [x]?” She was referencing Google [x], its division responsible for “moonshot thinking” that has produced ideas like Google Glass.
• Move fast and don’t be afraid to break things: “If you’re not the person trying to kill and reinvent your company, someone else will,” Marra said.
• “Get your [butt] kicked:” Put yourself in places with smart people all the time, Lilly said.
• Listen to what’s not being said as well as what’s being said: “Today, questions may matter more than answers,” Brown said.
• Use data to drive decisions: Klau said that takes emotion out of the process.
• Do things that you care about, or, as Lilly put it: “Do things that make your soul sing.”

But they also answered specific questions from the project leaders, who had a safe space for seeking counsel.

Those sessions were useful, but some of the most interesting discussions also happened among the participants while they were on the buses traveling to and from the hotel, standing around food trucks while grabbing lunch and in “unconferences” on topics people thought of on the spot.  Unconference sessions included issues such as motivating volunteers; choosing the “right” path when there seem to be so many right paths; working with municipal governments; structuring organizations for sustainable funding; evangelizing; and building partnerships with cultural institutions.

We’ve Storified some of the images and content from the gathering. We also took reams of notes. We’ll be analyzing what we’ve learned, and it’s sure to improve the work we do. But the attendees also left Silicon Valley with some great connections and valuable advice. They took ideas back to Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, Philadelphia and Detroit. We’re optimistic that it’s going to improve their projects, and the work they do, too.

By Michael D. Bolden, editorial director at Knight Foundation

Stay tuned to Knight Blog for updates from our grantees about what they’re learning, project launches and more.