#MillennialsMemilih: From Being a Prototype to Winning Asian Digital Media Awards 2019 — Part 2 (Final)

(Read the first part here).

So we headed home the next day and life went on as normal again afterward. We were back to the routines. I already joined as a writer to cover the 2018 World Cup from June to July. Paulo and Iqbal got on with their respective duties on the third floor of our Surabaya office.

Then, the presidential election. Uni informed me that she wanted for the prototype to be implemented. In other words, it had to function as a real product with a real purpose to serve a real audience. The ideas and imagination were there. The next thing to do was for Paulo to make it happen.

At the same time, Uni assigned me as the lead project manager in Surabaya. For Jakarta office (because we split the main offices between the two cities), she appointed Rochmanuddin, or as we called him Romen, as the coordinator. We only had two to three months to prepare the whole thing because we wanted to launch it in October.

So, What is #MillennialsMemilih?

Paulo, Iqbal and I were officially launching the #MillennialsMemilih on October 30, 2018. The event was held at IDN Times Creative Lab, Surabaya, Indonesia. Photo: provided by IDN Times.

We did not go with Z-Lection this time, but #MillennialsMemilih. I planned and ran the launching event, but honestly, I couldn’t have done it all without everybody’s help. Shout out to every single one of you who lent me a hand, offered me advice and gave me support from the beginning to the end.

So what is #MillennialsMemilih? I’ll explain the background here briefly. But for more information on the how-to of it all, kindly visit the IDN Times website.

It was a platform for our readers to get involved and engaged in the political process by asking any questions on the presidential election to our newsroom. It acted as a bridge that connected them with IDN Times journalists and the candidates. Here is why #MillennialsMemilih mattered:

It wasn’t until 2004 that Indonesians were allowed to democratically participate in a presidential election. At the time, most of us were just entering the teenage years. Growing up, we felt like we didn’t have a say in terms of information distribution.

Perhaps, it was because young people were not considered as prospective voters. Or maybe it was due to lack of a long-standing tradition in election coverage that resulted in news organizations just reported the “he says, she says” without knowing what younger voters might have wanted to know.

Younger individuals want to contribute to the political process just like older people. But when we are treated as merely passive news consumers, the whole nation undermines our potential in determining the political outcomes.

Now, when we possess the ability to inform the masses as journalists, we tried to avoid being in the same groups with people who put us to the sidelines during the political campaign. This is important especially when we look at how misinformation and disinformation spread like a virus that threatens our very young democracy.

Together with the engineers, our newsroom envisioned a more balanced flow of information where we got to hear what audience, mostly millennials and Gen Z, wanted to know about candidates’ proposals or day-to-day events throughout the election. About 17 millions out of more than 190 million people were the first-time voters in the 2019 election.

Our small room at IDN Times Creative Lab, Surabaya, was almost packed with students, representations of youth organizations, IDN Times Community Writers and young people who were curious about #MillennialsMemilih. Photo: provided by IDN Times.

Therefore, we believed that this big number played a significant role in shaping the conversation around which candidate was worth their vote; which party supported nations’ unity and diversity; and what issues that were most valuable to them.

We wanted to encourage them to submit questions about whatever they wanted to know that would eventually lead to being full-fledged voters. And by this, we also tried to understand what our audience needed.

The Ups and Downs of Actually Running #MillennialsMemilih

One of the students was asking questions to the panelists at #MillennialsMemilih launching event at IDN Times Creative Lab, Surabaya. Photo: provided by IDN Times.

#MillennialsMemilih, for me, was an ambitious project. I wasn’t only talking about the goals, but also how to manage the platform since we were a startup media with a small size of newsroom. Mas Romen, who played an undeniably important part in moving #MillennialsMemilih to the finish line, thought about it too.

“We were short in human resources”, he told me. I explained to WAN-IFRA that we should have had a special team, consist of at least 10 people (editors, journalists, and social media managers), dedicated only to run the project. There were times when we received many good questions, but we simply did not have adequate personnel to work on them.

But, even with such a fundamental challenge, we still managed to answer thousands of questions that came into our newsroom through the platform. On the sidelines, our Audience Development team deployed their personnel to help with promotion, including a series of Instagram Live with political figures, activists and key government officials.

As I wrote to WAN-IFRA, social media were essential to determine the success of #MillennialsMemilih. This was especially because our targeted audience were heavy social media users. In Jakarta, IDN Times staff took turns to host the Instagram Live, including Mbak Deweq (IDN Times Editor), Santi Dwi (IDN Times Junior Editor), Shemi (IDN Times Reporter), Vanny (IDN Times Reporter) and Teatrika (IDN Times Reporter).

In Surabaya, I had a chance to do several Instagram Live with my good friends Ernia Karina (IDN Times Community Manager) and Venita Beauty (former IDN Times Audience Development). We discussed Jokowi’s plan for cash handouts to the unemployed, Prabowo’s ownership of lands in Sumatra and Kalimantan, etc.

Also thanks to Danti (IDN Times Senior Writer), Indra (IDN Times Community Editor) and Rahmat (IDN Times Bussines Analyst) who were willing to go extra miles to help me with the Instagram Live. Wow. It took a whole village.

Then, Paulo Left

Paulo, the one with the glasses, resigned by the end of 2018. Photo: provided by IDN Times.

I was emotionally not ready to lose the key person who knew the how-to of #MillennialsMemilih. Paulo was a third of us who built the prototype and materialized it into a real product. So, of course, it was sad. But hey, he’s happy now, especially with the award.

Yes. We Won Our Very First International Recognition

#MillennialsMemilih by IDN Times won the Best Digital Project to Engage Younger and/or Millennial Audiences at Asian Digital Media Awards 2019 in Hong Kong on October 30, 2019. Photo: provided by IDN Times.

We won the Best Digital Project to Engage Younger and/or Millennial Audiences at Asian Digital Media Awards 2019 in Hong Kong on the same date and month as when #MillennialsMemilih had been launched exactly a year ago. Was it a coincidence? I don’t know.

But, I’m very proud of the result. We, the #MillennialsMemilih team, worked very hard for about seven months during the presidential campaign and election day. We should be proud of ourselves. We deserve it.

I hope this is the first of many to come.