Audio from the opening remarks of We Media 2008, the Print is Dead, Print Reincarnated and The Power to Change the World sessions are now available for streaming through this post or individual download through the player embedded here. Please check back for more updates.

(Photography by Tom Stepp)

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How they do what they do? In 2004 Harvard fellows realized that several people in the world were blogging but people in US could not get the content, because of the language barrier, there were no content of some regions of the World, there were several issues not covered by mainstream media in many countries of the world.

At the beginning it was just a summary of what people was talking about. Then it evolve to a system with nine editors of the regions of the World were they compile what people are saying around the World. If some news are not in the blogs then the editor cannot publish it. There are also a section of Global Voices, Lingua, a team of people translating as volunteers many of the contents available on the site. Because of complexity of languages around the world is far better to have a human- distributed translation system.

In addition to Lingua, the translation sections, there are other sections: Global Voices Advocacy, Rising Voices, and Voices without Votes.

Advocacy Project´s is seeking to build an anticensorship network.

Lingua Project´s purpose is to translate the different conversations to many languages, not only English.

Rising Voices´s purpose is to provide tools and resources for those whose voice is not on line.

Voices without votes has several interesting perspectives of non – US blogs and post on the presidential elections.

Global voices is a community owned website, taking decisions by consensus after discussions.  The project is as objective as possible, and having an author in each country is like having an Ambassador of the project. The principle is to cover the places of areas of the world where it is most needed.
It is important to notice that when some local crisis arises, bloggers are an important source to report the real situations, for example in Kenya, in Beirut, in Myanmar… there you can see a different perspective of a situation, not the same image and story all the newspapers printed or broadcasted.

An Editor is not only a translator, have to understand the context, the essence of the cultures, the understanding of the message beyond language. That is the comparative difference with all other media, is the voice of the people talking to you on your own language, sharing a part of their lives and their culture.

It is the best place where you can see what is going on in the World, to learn more about the people living in places not covered by the media, to be close to their traditions, thoughts, experiences or daily life.

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Here’s some key quotes that Craig Smith noted:
jen: connects moms together
randy: care2
“[care2 is all about] Helping people feel empowered”

thomas: myspace
“[the future of myspace is] relevant programming delivered to niche audiences”

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Question: What is the dialogue like in business today? Is it fear/excitement?

Lawrence:
The dialogue in business is a spectrum from anxious to terrified!
The logic from one to many may no longer apply, or may need to make room for this new model.
Organizational form (manufacturing economics) that tend to oligopoly may not apply today.
Challenges to all dimensions in corporate life. If this shift is indeed this big, then the implications are big and will be difficult to deal with.

Randy: How people’s lives in the field change because of civic engagement? – Most people feel dis-empowered, and this was surprising. Problem is that people feel that can’t effect change. Our goal is to bring sustainability ideas to the masses, and we want to let them know they can make a difference in their day to day life. This empowerment may lead to people being more engaged, in politics and voting, for example.  We are trying to make change from the bottom up.

Suha: Real Girls has integrated a range of voices, from seasoned writers to people just telling their stories.

Tom: Commercial business have changed. Everyone is speaking to each other in a non-linear conversation. Complete breakdown of what it takes to create scalable programming.
The implications for people making programming is great; people can make their voice heard. MySpace, for example, is great for this. People have the means to make their voices heard. They are outlets to get your voice heard. The marketplace enables people to find information in economic ways.

Market value has deteriorated for Gannett, vs. MySpace whose values has substantially increased.
Jennifer: MySpace and social network spaces are reaching communities that perhaps newspapers are not. So they are rolling out social networking sites to reach more of the community, from moms and dads to soccer coaches. At a very local level, they seek to connect people with similar interests through social sites.

This panel has a good mix of incumbents and new players.
We have discussed barriers to entry. We have not talked about barriers to exit, which apply to companies that must adapt to new environment. How to put a traditional business in momentum?

Tom: Look at companies MySpace and Gannet. They may seem different, but we are dependent on each other. We need an authoritative voice. It’s not old media, but it’s an expert voice.

Chris:
There is an expectation of interactivity, and you can’t stand in its way. 85% use of our site is on the commentary.Five years ago, try to sell ads on user generated content, ad agencies would never consider this, but there is a huge change today.

Jennifer:
Its not just about connecting, but we can provide new sources of information. People can search databases. By layering ability to search documents, we find people are solving problems in their community through us. It’s not just between new/old media, but it is both. We see that we have an exponential area of growth.

Merrill: We have not yet discussed “disruption”. How does Craigs List change business model of newspapers?

Tom: It’s a return on investment, not disruption. It’s disruptive that the consumer impacts the return on investment. Social networking leads to return on investment: 70% of purchase intent was from momentum effect. MySpace and commercial market place is not at expense of anyone, Tom says.

It comes down to trust. The “common” man is providing value. We all must become our own experts. So the experts are disrupted.

Lawrence:  There is more marketing money around. If this urge to co-create is genuine, then 15 years from now, it will all be about aggregating. Marketing money will recede in the mix of business expense. You won’t tell people what they want and where to find it; they will tell you what they want.
It’s the extension of the logic of the media to commerce at large.

Audience member from Consumer Report: We have tension between expertise and desire of customers to do their own product reviews. How do you integrate these 2 things? Should we pull them apart on the site or let viewers see both side by side?

Finance – they will not stop buying information from Reuters. They can’t just rely on the information from crowd sourcing. It depends on the size of the transaction! To buy a blender, on the other hand, the consumer wants to see expert and all individual’s opinions. People want to see what the expert thinks AND what lots of others think. But advertisers are scared of loss of control.

The consumer isn’t willing to pay what we thought. Model must be more efficient. So cost being driven out of the system. This is disruptive.

—

Solana from Global Voices. Are you changing user behavior? Or are you just trying to make money on something people are doing anyway?

Tom: People have always wanted to make their voice heard. We are just giving them a voice. Consumers are getting smart.

Suha. We are hosting a party. People are going to do what they want to do. We can guide them. We lead by example. The consumer is telling us what they want.

—

Merrill asks a wrap up question. If you asked the WeMedia folks how many were on Facebook a few years ago, it would not be too many. Today, everyone is on Facebook.  What does this mean for the world we live in and the world of wemedia? How does the scale of social networking impact us? What will it look like in 2 years?

Tom:  On MySpace, there is relevant programming to niche audiences, but this is scalable.

Nick: The whole thing has not evolved yet. Some social networks will be: I’m a human being, I’m in business. MySpace has been turned in to a platform, and this can be copied.

Suha: The increase of social networking platforms means transparency. Being on networks, someone can take my photo, and there it is online. So you have to act like you are always on air. The social platform is the cost of entry.

Chris: If you have the ability to network everyone, it’s the next layer of connectivity.   This is an amazing possibilty in productivity. This willlead to 10% jump in world productivity.

Randy: There is a revolution already occurring. The social network is only part of the solution. There is less value in individual applications, as they all can get you information. So it has to come back down to our personal values. There will be places on web that is home that corresponds to your values.

Jennifer: It’s going to continue to exponentially grow, but it will also get smaller. Twitter is good way to stay connected in a few characters.

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Networked Economics | Leveraging connections
Everything is networked: friendship, professional life, customers, knowledge, causes and commerce. These networks represent new opportunities to invent, innovate and disrupt. What do philanthropists, advocates, social entrepreneurs, tech startups, journalists, venture capitals and everyday users now have in common? Have networks changed the nature of business?Session Chair: Merrill Brown, Chairman, NowPublic

• Lawrence Wilkinson, Founder, Global Business Network
• Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix
• Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist, Reuters Media
• Tom Bosco, VP, Video Sales, Fox Interactive Media
• Suha Araj, Founder and VP of Strategy, Real Girls Media
• Jennifer Carroll, VP, New Media Content, Gannett
• Randy Paynter, Founder and CEO, Care2

This panel addresses how many of the elements which we have been discussing at We Media ties together. What does this networked world mean? This panel addresses many of the networked dimensions of our lives and brings together a range of perspectives.

Merrill beings by asking the panel to address the big question of: How is the networked economy changing how you do business?

Lawrence: We overestimate impact of technology in short term and underestimate in long term. Social networks are changing (almost) every sphere of business, but we haven’t realized full extent of change.
Marketing, development, engagement, but gives us a taste of the full scale re-invention that we have to audience in our business models

Jennifer: Potential to reconnect communities. Her focus is how to capture soul of a community and help them to live their lives. Launched site connecting moms together, and notes connection between mothers and have its facilitating connection and ability to share their lives.

Randy: Online community / social news site to empower individuals. , members are “conscious consumers” because we live in a connected world. We must care about the environment around us.
Two sides to affecting change: the me, and the we. Tell people to live a healthy lifestyle; help people to impact their community.  Change seen in the moving money from direct mail to online. 20 billion market, opportunity to help non profit be more effective. Al Gore – sea change with a much larger audience.

Chris: Impact of Internet is not just like TV, radio etc. The interactivity changes everything. We’ve underestimated impact of this; it changes how you do business and make money.
Must maximize engagement.

Suha: what we see in marketplace is underestimated. If big players don’t listen to consumer, they fail. So, they integrate consumer. Plus, there is a market that is empowered and expects to have their voice heard. How do you bridge these two in the market? Real Girls – built to integrate the two. The brand validates these voices and bloggers. So Real Girls is a place for writers to be part of a community. We’re seeing an integrated model, and we need new ways to curate these voices.

Nick: (Reuters).  The core bodies of Reuters remain the same, apply new technology. But the Internet since its not one way, does make differences. But the core value (first, accurate etc) remains the same. There are more voices out there, so it makes our job harder, but technology makes our job easier. Our business is not that affected.

Tom: (MySpace TV)
There is a non-linear discussion. Conversations before were linear. Now, there is complete breakdown. From a business capacity, the programming comes from everyone now. There is a circular conversation, which is a total change even from 5-6 years ago.

…..

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The idea, for developers, is to produce the tools that allow us to share the content that is important to us and our world. This can even extend to the most emotional and historically important of arenas, including memorials of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Chris Willis of Footnote.com is enabling living soldiers of the Vietnam War to write memorials of soldiers that were killed in combat or who have died since. The key is that Footnote enables living soldiers to uncover information about soldiers in their platoon so that they can write these memorials. And, what of the Vietnam Memorial? What an interesting database of information that is important for us to re-hash, re-organize, and uncover things like buddies who died in combat together, revealing the highly emotionally and memorially important relational networks that make up the tragic history of the Vietnam War. These memories can be revealed and re-organized and exposed to better reveal the depths of the human experience in war. A face and narrative needs to be put on the names of the dead, and technology can help enable this.

Michael Smolens says that video is very important to mutual understanding between people. It is powerful enough to even change the minds of people that strap bombs to their chest and kill other people. Smolens’ Dotsub enables people to share and find videos in their own languages, which is very difficult to do in existing search functions in YouTube and other video sources. It also allows users to translate and write subtitles to videos, enhancing, again, understanding across language barriers. And, of course, individuals can personalize their account so that subtitles that fit their particular language needs appear with all of the videos that they are watching automatically. This has the potential to eliminate the language barrier that accompanies video streaming, thus giving videos their important visceral power in improving understanding. This can change hatreds and biases. This can bridge divides. This can save lives.

Adam Huey spoke about Proteus’s mobile content services. Why not access basic web via your phone? This is what Proteus does. But, we need to understand that the user experience over the interface of a phone and its small screen is very different than over our computers. But, that’s ok. We still want it. And, it’s very important at certain times, particularly at times of the day when we are active, on our feet, and yet want to uncover and act on information. For example, what if we are downtown and want to go to a movie. Proteus allows you to browse for tickets and, equally importantly, act to buy your tickets right there and then, while your on your feet, when the demand arises in your head. It also allows you to share information while you’re on your feet and inspiration strikes. Hungry to write? Why wait? Put it down right now standing on the corner of 9th and Madison when your inspirational subject matter is in front of you.

Great quotes:

Chris Willis of Foonote.com – “If you can’t find it, it doesn’t exist”.

Adam Hoey of Proteus – “Democratize the mobile web…Bridge the digital divide in the third world…the channel of the future” “Put the tool in the users hand [physically, of course, but also conceptually, letting the user take it in any direction that they want]”

Chris Willis of Footnote.com – “The anthropology of it all [cell phones]…cultural anthropology”

What are some core principles of fostering that 1% of dedicated content-creators?:

*Reputation
*Meaning
*Dialogue
*Communities
*Risk-takers are the ones
*Spheres of trust

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The relationship between professional and amateur journalists is starting to emerge. Explore how non-professionals connected by social networks and tools influence new models of storytelling and workflow involving eyewitnesses, amateurs and professionals.

Session Chair: Louis Ferrara, Managing Editor Sports, Entertainment & Multimedia, The Associated Press

With:

Michael Tippett, Co-Founder, NowPublic

Kate Marymont, Executive Editor, The News-Press, Ft. Myers, FL

Lauren McCullough, Online Editor, The Associated Press

David Cohn, Editor, NewAssignment and NewTrust

Discussion:

Ferrara: AP is working with NowPublic to figure out how to harness citizen journalism.

Marymont: We have been working very hard to create a newsroom without walls. We try to think of no walls between audience and us. We completely agree with wemedia that the web has changed how the public consumes media. They want to be involved. Why shouldn’t we be the hub of all that. We are always looking for ways to tear down walls and partner with our public. We try to involve the public in investigative and first amendment work. Examples: we fought to get records of FEMA after the hurricane and we had a long battle but we won. We got 2.2 million files and created a database, turned it loose to the public. We wanted to analyze how neighbors were treated. We had to tell them you tell us. The database to date has had more than 60,000 searches. This is powerful information. Also in 07, we had three children die at hands of stepfathers while under care of the Children and Families Department in Florida. It was a two-year project. We turned to the public and built a site within a site – a children’s resource center. When children are dying I think it’s OK to take a position on this. We are now a one-stop shop for people who need info on that subject. One more thing: Recently, we launched a redesign that includes social networking tools for anyone who wants to communicate. We want to be the hub. One important way is to let our disenfranchised community get their stories out.

Tippett: We have about 100,000 people in 4000 cities sending us material. We’ve been working with AP for a while. This is the early stage in evolution of citizen journalism. We want to be able to dispatch people to locations of news.

Cohn: We’ve done a few experiments. One is assignment Zero, which explores the relationship between journalists and citizens. The point of the project is to spur innovation in journalism, and try to figure out the role of journalists when people live lives online. There are three steps in journalism – collecting, filtering information, and presenting information, which can be multimedia now. To the extent technology changes these steps, we are trying to see how technology can be a boon to help journalists do their jobs.

McCullough: Our challenge is to find ways to collect what people have to say and still make the material worthy of having the AP name on it.

Ferrara: Kate (Marymont), in examples talked about, how did you get newsroom buy in on what you did? Was it universal? How did you measure success with those efforts?

Marymont: The obstacles were internal at first – the public was ready to go. Journalists inside were apprehensive. They thought this was a plot to reduce the workforce. But they had to learn that this supplements our journalism, that our partners in the community are strengthening our journalism. We had good early successes with some projects. Now 95 percent of our staff believes, because our journalism is better. We can tap into knowledge in our community we might not have otherwise. We get stories we wouldn’t know otherwise, get documetns we wouldn’t have, it makes what we do better.

Ferrara: What has changed in the AP newsroom?

McCullough: We had the exact same experience; everyone was very skeptical and paranoid that we’d be stripping journalism bylines off stories. But early on we had a success when there was a cyclone and the public hooked us up with one of our citizen members who provided two photos and also provided information because he was an eyewitness. The reporters interviewed him and treated him as a source. Over last year, that’s been the biggest change. There is more acceptance of citizen journalism. Virginia Tech forced people to go to Face Book and see there was information there that was not on TV or that we were not hearing from people on the street. Then a bridge collapsed, we immediately went to Face book. We ran 89 citizen journalism photos. In the NIU shooting, a reporter with a Face Book account pulled names from the TV, looked on Face Book, messaged them and, as a result, one of lead quotes was a girl who had been in the auditorium. She was found through Face book. I think it’s been a big year for people to put aside their fear of youth and embrace it as another place to go and use the information.

Ferrara: When you hear all this, how does skill set change for journalists?

Cohn: I always say job description for journalists is changing for skills and the mindset. With skill set it’s the need to be a web native and knowing what tools are out there and you can harness. Need to know what tools are out there to communicate with people. For the mind sent, it’s doing source organizing and managing and I didn’t learn in Journalism school. Now we need to mange relationships with people through give and take online. This may irk you. But if you look at the way politicians and online organizers do it, they know how to send out queries, asks, because they want money. Journalists need to figure out how to manage relationships on line.

Tippett: I think the point about social networks is key. We are going to a more active role in helping to shape the agenda of what is news, so plugging into mainstream news and sending people to cover and integrate into social networks is effective. We are working with the AP because of recognition that the network of trust is moving toward social networks… the same is true for news.

For us the tool sets we are building is integrating social networks and the face book experience so it can be used by news organizations. We are about extracting a range of meaning across the landscape. How do you get information out of private systems and include that in a system for the news consuming public.

Audience: What I am now hearing is a next step where you let your public boss you around. Will the assignment desk become the place where people will vote for what they want to read, where we no longer do things for them, but they do things for us.

Tippett: The dispatch tool we build to plug into we will make available to people.

Cohn: Newsrooms now are where an editor assigns a story. The editor says what’s the photo? But where is the public feedback here? Conversation happens through the public. Editors are there to make sure the conversation is constructive, etc. I might go to newsroom in 20 years and they might send me to the best bloggers out there.

Marymont: There is no formal feedback loop, but our attempt to partner (with the public) has had that effect. The effect is starting to be there.

Tippett: You maybe are talking about a branding issue. There is now less resistance to having the agenda set from outside the organization.

Marymont: But if a community says this is happening you have to look into it – and we will.

Ferrara: I am still skeptical about this. We get a hard time getting people to vote, and to get people to provide credible information (to news outlets) takes more time.

Marymont: We are not at the point where citizens are doing fully informed journalism. But that doesn’t have to be the goal. They can ask them a question, post a video, etc.

Tippett: There are two camps: Traditional news organizations who want to get a Walter Cronkite (citizen journalist) for free. Then the citizens who are taking snapshots and they don’t understand the mechanism the snapshots go through to become news. These two have to come together, integrate.

Marymont: We have more citizen witnesses than citizen journalists.

Audience: Journalism is not a product but process. Can we have different parts of process distributed among groups of people so the product does not have to look like what you would see in traditional journalism?

Cohn: There are active forms of citizen journalism where I go out and report on something. There are also acts of citizen journalism. At the filter level, it’s easy for citizens to be engaged in news. Fast Company re did its website and included fast talk, where they are creating a database of users. People who respond to that don’t know they are doing journalism. The problem with citizen journalism is that it feels like they are doing a college midterm paper again. So the question for newsroom is now to make it easier to be engaged.

Tippett: We don’t call them citizen journalists on our site. But people are accidentally doing journalism.

Audience: There are not a lot of citizen journalism efforts out there so we have to get members to overcome that. Mainstream is still along way away from getting citizens to engage in a meaningful way.

Ferrara: At the AP we have success in the market place because when it comes from the AP there is no question about it – it’s accurate. It will come down to the market differentiating for itself where it will get its information.

Audience: How is (citizen journalism) affecting your business model?

Tippett: People consume information for different reasons. They read AP because it’s more likely to be factually true. They go to citizen stuff because they want the wild west of what they want to talk about, and be connected to like-minded people. It’s more about a relationship of like-minded people.

Audience: I disagree. People are reacting to the arrogance of mainstream media and they are going to non-traditional sources of information.

Ferrara: I am skeptical that people will do it in a way that has high value to people out there. We get a lot of citizen photos of bending palm trees in storms. We want material that we would not have otherwise had and exclusive and it’s actual content. I am skeptical that people are producing that. We found that in a bridge collapse, at Virginia Tech, content comes from these events but does it distinguish itself on the landscape? In the NIU shooting we got 1000 pictures but 900 were relatively the same. What learned out of Virginia Tech and NIU is that, guess what, you don’t stop to take pix. So how do you get that content? I want everyone to capture a Zagruder film.

Audience: How do you ensure accuracy in public content?

McCullough: “The vetting process is the same as if a crazy person calls us.” She speaks to the NowPublic manager, gathers information, sends it to the AP photo editors, the photo editors evaluate the photo and vet the photo. “Because it’s AP it’s a longer process. We get the OK on something then it goes out on the wire.”

Audience: Citizen journalism is in its infancy and it’s too early to cast judgment on its viability but there is enormous promise.

Cohn: We are talking about citizen journalism as it bubbles up. Minnesota Public radio now has a database of listeners and if they want to know something they ask them. For example, they wanted to know how dangerous is route 23. They looked at database of who lives there and asked them for responses. You can get a better sense of who readers are and that will inform reporting in the future. We can ask and accept feedback. It works both ways.

Tippett: We are in the second inning here and one of issues that causes friction is that where there is a vetting process and it can be onerous. But that friction will be reduced over time. And as we establish a cadre of reporters who have a history, we will have mechanisms for determining credibility. If you have a person who has had 15 photos published, the friction level goes down.

McCullough: Citizen journalism isn’t new to the public. In the case of Colombia shuttle a doctor took the first pix. Now we know we have a great doctor who takes photos and we can go back to him. He’s proven his worth.

Audience: What actions of citizen journalism will be useful and what proportion will be those you produce? What about covering corruption, which will have different incentives?

Tippett: I think it will be an evolutionary process. In terms of motivation of our users don’t want to get paid. A lot of citizen journalism is therapeutic. If you look at the London bombings, there was no financial incentive (for citizen journalists) but they couldn’t believe that happened. It’s a natural impulse to want to tell people things. But over time we’ll see citizen journalism about cultural events people engaged are with. People are doing wacky and unusual things, that kind of underground will be talked about by people. Will we ever have a citizen Journalist deepthorat? And will we believe him or her? I don’t know. But will see lighter stuff becoming part of mix.

Audience: A lot of reporting at Reuters is financial. And a story that makes the wire moves markets. There are many ethical issues that can arise.

Cohn: CJ does lend itself to eyewitness accounts more than others. And no matter what the topic query there are experts out there. The threshold to write a story about the environment is higher.

Marymont: We have had success in recruiting CJ volunteers with expertise in certain areas. We solicited people who believed government should be held accountable and they are smart retirees we call on. A retired school superintendent helps us go through the school budget. We check them out; make sure they don’t have agendas. They believe in what we do.

Audience: Crowd sourcing intrigues me. You did an experiment with sewer bills. Please talk about that.

Marymont: In one of the suburbs there was a utility expansion and the rates shot up. We sent out solicitations to the public on do you know what’s going on – 6000 people submitted pieces of information. They told us about back room meetings, they submitted audits, all because of crowd sourcing. We broke stories because of the knowledge and wisdom of the community. Some officials were fired… The story developed over many weeks with pieces of information; it unfolded online.

Cohn: It’s easy to do. If you have a blog you can write a survey and publish it.

Audience: What are the demographics of the people who contribute?

Tippett: We break it down to two groups – Wikipedia types who are nerds about a topic and passionate about their area and subject – and eyewitnesses who are at the right place or the wrong place. Wikipedia folks are older. And the ones who send in photos are younger than I am.

Audience: Do you think people will want to participate as C J?

Tippett: I think there is information overload. But this will define the value of news. The vast majority of people are not citizen journalists – it’s a small, passionate group, who are atypical for the most part.

Cohn: people are living more and more of life on line. I go to the web to solve problems… As long as people are living life online then CJ hasn’t reached its tipping point. CJ is still a little secret.

Ferrara: Also what is value of content that’s there? A lot of CJ that’s out there has been pure luck. The video of 911 or the Tsunami is that people happened to be there and we acquired it from them. Will they go out and shoot news? I don’t know.

Audience: Is it appropriate to provide incentives to citizen journalists? Giving them payback.

Ferrara; It’s only a mater of time before people ask for a lot of money. Eventually, people will pick up on why they are not getting paid.

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“Any community that is large and diverse, will have sub-communities” says Elisa, but these sub-communities need rules that apply to everyone to lead to express disagreement without flaming. Blogher did not “silo” women’s interests. Members hop around from topics. Knitting and mommy blogs were here examples of different communities and you should be social online just like in life, with people you want to hang with, and sore to match with the community.This was said in response to one fellow who was kind of put out by the sub-group of twitterers. Dean Isaac puts bridging and bonding out there as important differences. Communities of exclusion need to balance bonding and bridging so they don’t become communities of hate like the Nazis.Todor brings up Meetup.com as a method for facilitating bridging and bonding.Now Elisa brings up the diversity issue — how come there was only black guy on a panel? In Blogher, of course all the speakers are women, but she needs to reach out to gays, women of color, and women of a different political view.Susan is wrapping up now — “it does take work, even if the tools are easy to use.”  Bringing it back to business, how can you bring this back to clients and selling and business. She tells an anecdote about Hallmark cards and now Hallmark has built relationships with bloggers. Now Dean Isaac says a community without values, without a sense of community, says that marketing can be antithetical to true community — if you have to make someone think there is something wrong with their body to sell as product, what kind of community will be built around that? Yet, communities share values. Mernits notes the “inherent tension” that arises when community, products, and commercialization meet. Off to Mojitos, I think… 

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What will be the result if you put together millenary cultures that preserved their memory and traditions in spite of repression and poverty, enthusiastic youth and volunteers discovering new media? You might be surprised of the amazing contents produced by Voces Bolivianas and Rising Voices (a project by Global Voices). In the year of the preservation of Endangered Languages by UNESCO, it brings results as you can see now online indigenous languages as Aymara then translated into spanish, french, english or even japanese.

Silenced, ignored or trivialized, communities around the world have preserved their identities. But expressions of  folklore evolved in an amazing way. Indeed a language reflects a view of the world, but in some places it has been totally ignored. Often mainstream media do not offer a real space or real tools for indigenous or “different” people, they are “the others”. Ignorance of the voice of the others is the worst enemy of peace.

The Director of Rising Voices, David Sasaki, and Voces Bolivianas´s Project Director Eddie Avila (who is also the Editor of Global Voices for Latin America), did an amazing work on it, sharing their time and skills, with a small grant and a a lot of enthusiastic people willing to learn and contribute, you can show the world real stories, real insights of peoples daily life but also can empower people´s creativity, like Cristina Quisbert who had done an amazing job on her blog Bolivia Indigena. There you can see how bolivian people lives, their clothes, you can see a bolivian wedding, listen to traditional music that musicians are happy to share with the world, and also you can see how a blog can give a positive, different image of indigenous world reality.

Forget about the image of indigenous people you have in mind, in Cristina´s blog you can find a whole different reality full of energy, colors, magic, stories, faces and views alive and sharing their daily life with the world in the Aymara region of El Alto.

As a final remarks Cristina said: aymara peoples have a lot to share with the world? And I say to We Media why don´t you take a look on Voces Bolivianas and the other amazing projects of Rising Voices?

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Todor continues with anecdote about Fiat getting community built around adding features to the car. Car owners post about vacations in their cars, their cars as steppingstones to social engagement.

The moderator of this session is Susan Mernit and she is keeping the session moving so that all speakers get time to talk and the audience gets to interact. Now Jeff Nolan, NewsGator, notes that today we don’t have to work within an established paradigm or “precedent” for how work with or on the web. “We have lowered the barriers to creating them (communities)” notes Jeff. Notes inviting bloggers to Sapphire conference was an example where there was no precedent, but no reason not to do this. Asked that bloggers allow response, but didn’t ask for edits. He has perhaps replaced his marketing team with the bloggers, who collectively have millions of page views. This is how he says you build communities of interest. You read endgaget, but you believe the comments, he says. NewsGator’s widgets for big media is about driving content out so that community can grow around it.

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Pitch It #3 – A website that brings important information and sparks conversation around local schools.

Robert Park

Bringing laws to parents and providing a space to react to issues.

User case: A teacher was illegally posting grades publicly at the school. This issue was known by the parents and a problem in their minds. It wasn’t until the issue was brought up by a journalist that the parents had the legal ammo to go to the school administration and fix the problem.

Key questions from panel:

A great thing for a community to have. Why haven’t you considered the non-profit route?

Started as one, but not sure yet.

I like the use case scenario in your pitch. Those are important. Map out the experience with the use case.

What is the reason to use it everyday? Will it be one of my 10 bookmarks?

Pitch #4 – Debatepedia – Providing the Pros and Cons in a wiki

Brooks Lindsay started Debatepedia in 2006 while at Georgetown.

“Every great non-profit or business must solve a problem”

Problem: It takes way to long for citizens to discover/weigh the pros and cons on a given debate issue.

It takes 20 hours to compile an article due to mini-debates within a larger debate. How can we expect citizens to invest this much time.

There are currently 600 different debate topics on Debatepedia.

The business model is to sell this technology companies that will use it to internally reach conclusions in a well-organized and documented manner.

Key questions from panel:

This requires heavy weight participation. Have you considered light weight participation actions?

Discussion page offer light weight participation.

What does your solution add that’s better than what exists?

This is customizable and the point is to cut down on time wasted recycling arguments.

Pitch It #5 – Imagine Miami – Civic Networking

Corinna J. Moebius was inspired by the goal site 43 Things.

Connects people to purpose and place in Miami. Other sites focus on global change; Imagine Miami focuses on local change. Findability, accessibility and shareability or key to success.

Key questions from panel:

How do you plan on getting this out to the people?

Use Facebook to pull younger people into this site. Grass roots connectors will pull in other users.

Pitch It #6 – Publictivity

Jason Baptiste, CEO and founder

Problem: The current “Organize + Share”methods have problems. Publictivity allows users to do all their online actions with other users in one place.

Publictivity is not…

a collaboration suite

a Roll Your Own Database

an Online Office suite

Revenue:

Premium Hosted Licenses

Premium Support

Developer opportunities

Key questions for panel:

How do people know to use this? How does it spread?

Starts with a few people and spreads through contact lists.

*****

Out of the six pitches, the LaunchBox Digital award went to Corinna J. Moebius of Imagine Miami.

She made a comment on how collaboration is key and thanked her cousin (and fellow pitcher) Jonathan Hendler for his help and support.

Final thought: Although the ideas and concepts tossed out during the intense two hour session were brilliant, it was the passion and enthusiasm of the presenters that made the room exciting.

Note: Due to the 15 minute time limit for each pitch and the lack of materials available, there may be certain points and aspects of the pitches that were inevitability omitted from this post. I welcome and encourage all the presenters to post comments in order to fill in or explain where necessary.

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The past several decades have been marked by two trends in journalism, neither of them conducive to an informed public or the furtherance of democracy. On the one hand there is the growing consolidation of media ownership and a precipitous drop in national and global reporting. On the other there is a fragmentation of the media creating a hyper-competitive landscape that drives the news market to deliver infotainment, soft news, and more ideologically defined, or ‘opinion’ media. Notions of ‘public trust,’ responsibility and the ‘fourth estate’ seem to increasingly fall to the realm of citizen journalists, bloggers and advocacy organizations. And yet, despite a few exceptions, many still depend on traditional news outlets as points of departure for their information. And in a world of algorithm determined headlines, popularity usually beats public interest and the information the public needs to make informed decisions too often gets lost. The bottom line: If commercial incentives are the driving force of information gathering and dissemination — be it traditional or new media — what’s in the public interest (and not just what the public is interested in) will likely be ignored and the American public will pay the price.

In this shifting landscape of today’s news media, nonprofit journalism has been gaining significant attention as a potential solution. In the past few months the Columbia Journalism Review and the American Journalism Review have each featured stories about the growing importance of foundation sponsored journalism. And it should come as no surprise. As Charles Lewis suggests in CJR’s “The Nonprofit Road,” nonprofits have long played a critical role in providing quality journalism to the American public. But as Carol Guensburg points out, foundation-sponsored journalism has both inherent benefits and risks: “Done right, the journalism-funder relationship benefits both parties as well as the public they aim to serve. It supplies important news resources, and it satisfies a grantmaker’s mission — maybe even bringing a touch of prestige. Done wrong, the association raises concerns about editorial objectivity and whether it has been compromised by a funder’s agenda.”

So what does getting it “right” look like?

One nonprofit that has asked this question is the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which seeks not to replace traditional or new media, but to build on the existing strengths of both and fill in the gaps where needed. It’s not the only answer, but it’s a model that is already delivering a promising ‘Return on Investment.’ Founded just two years ago, the Center is forging a model of journalism dedicated to raising the standard of international reporting in the United States. The Center’s model combines quality reporting, comprehensive media dissemination and educational initiatives to raise awareness of critical global issues that have been largely ignored in the American media. We work across media platforms and embrace the promise of pro-am collaborations as reflected in our recent partnership with helium.com. By reaching out into schools we hope to inspire the next generation of news consumers to ask for better information and engage in the news gathering process more directly.

As a nonprofit, our goal is to strengthen the media system as a whole, not to create more competition. We bridge traditional and new media, working with organizations as established as The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR and as current as YouTube, One World and Witness.

As a small, nimble organization built on principles of collaboration over competition and on long-term change over short-term fixes, we’re able to achieve significant impact without looking to monetary profit to measure our success. Pulitzer Center-supported reporting spanned more than 20 countries in 2007, including a 14-month investigation of factory working conditions in China, pioneering work on human rights abuses in Ethiopia, environmental challenges across the globe including Peru, Rwanda and Alaska, the HIV/AIDS crisis in the Caribbean, rehabilitation efforts with former child soldiers in Liberia and the U.S., and in-depth reporting that challenged official U.S. optimism on the “surge” in Iraq.

Jon Sawyer, the Pulitzer Center’s executive director, is at WeMedia this week actively seeking new partners who, like us, believe the benefit of quality information can not be measured in dollar signs.

For more about the Pulitzer Center see: “Funding for Foreign Forays,” by Carol Guensburg. AJR, February/March 2008

Or visit our website: www.pulitzercenter.org

Nathalie Applewhite, Associate Director

Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

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Sponsored by Washington Post – newsweek Interactive

Location: Storer Auditorium at 4:15 pm

Session Chair: Hal Straus, Interactivity and Communities Editor, Washingtonpost.com

Robin Miller, Editor, Slashdot/SourceForge

Slashdot has a multilayered moderation system for ranking comments. “If you ever get into a content rating system, do *not* call it ‘karma’.” Slashdot moderators are selected at random, and these moderators can rank comments up or down. If you’ve posted a comment, you can’t moderate. To control for group-think, Slash-Dot has “meta-moderators” a small, selected, voluntary group of “super moderators.”

Must haves:

1. Users must be able to rate things up and down.

2. Should, below a certain threshold, should comments be visible?

3. Many users doing few moderations–spread the love.

Steve Arend, Vice President Digital media Services, CMP Technology

I saw opportunities to take “noise” away from what other people want. We are producing a virtual trade show, 2nd life, where you can go in and interact with those who create the products you’re interested in. We have had cases in 2nd life, where we’ve had semi-unanimous interruptions, where we allow interactions to happen, but with the knowledge I can literally throw them off the (2nd Life) island.

There’s noise from the sales side, the engineering side, and from consumers. In the virtual world, that’s the closest I’d seen to real life. Because you can interrupt the audio portion, just like in real life. (View video clip 1.)

Links:

http://life20.net http://howmachineswork.com

Mark Jones, Global Community Editor for Reuters

Question: What’s the worst that can happen?

We try and pull in the best of the rest of the web, what other sites are saying on various topics. Global Voices-Voices without Votes. We cover what major nations around the world are doing around elections, bringing in bloggers from around the world. For instance, you can see what global bloggers are saying about US elections. However, this skews content if the blogosphere is skewed all on its own.

How do you make it clear to users that there is a difference between blogger comments and stories, and Reuters itself? Our single biggest compliant from the public is on neutrality. We get these from users, and also our network of journalists. They feel a little hurt that we’re putting resources towards other’s work. But the last thing we want is for our journalists to feel “dissed.”

Handling comments….For an organization like Reuters, which is keen on neutrality, we have all sorts of problems with comments on blogs. We haven’t cracked the burden of moderation back to the audience. I naively thought, when I started editor’s started blogs, that when we were attacked, that our supporters would ride in and save us–and they did the first few times. But then, there turned to be some mob-rule and our cheerleaders sort of got scared away.

Finally, I really want to get the two sides–journalists and commenters–to enrich the discussion. But until we have a civil discourse, the journalists just aren’t going to engage.

www.blogs.reuters.com

Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix

The real promise of the internet is interactivity. A system that gets more people engaged (even if there are inappropriate comments), is better than a system than doesn’t get people engaged. We’re trying to get the highest number of people engaged. We have over 400,000 topics, all across the globe.

When the cartoons about the Prophet Mohamed appeared on the net, we got over 2,000 comments, when we geo-located where these comments were coming from, we found most of the comments were coming from Scandinavia and the Middle East. Over time, middle ground developed. “We look at it as, are we getting an increasing amount of people, and it’s a Darwinian product, and the one that has the most people wins”.

http://blog.topix.com

General Conversation

About journalists interacting with and within the comments:

“They’re highly skeptical about this. Getting bothered with questions from users, but they’re kinda intrigued by it. They see their job as to talk to policy makers and heads of companies.” -Mark Jones

“The San Francisco Chronicle, uses the public as a club to make a point and support what they’re saying–to use it against the people who are against them. …I think a year or two from now, I will bet you a lot of money, that journalists will take comments and publish them in their stories. ” -Chris Tolles

“At the Post, we have the need to be objective, and we’ve had a lot of our opinion writers who have gotten into the ring with our commenters. For one thing, they worry about this because they’re ‘working without a net.’ -Where they’re not editorialized.” -Hal Straus

Interaction from the audience (not all who participated, but the closest person to me that I could get info from):

Jean-Baptiste, with Le Liberation.fr, where there is a web-comment page within the hardcopy newspaper. These comments are edited and selected before being printed. http://liberation.fr/actualite/media/2293555.fr.php

Other sites mentioned as having interesting interactivity features:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/

PS Video of this event will be posted to this blog today, it was not available immediately.

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An audience member noted that the online back channels are valuable. The big-screen has the Weme twitter posts, that is one kind of back-channel. Someone noted that back channels can become snarky and degenerate.

Someone else noted that the unconference needs direction that is subtle or at least different than we are often used to. The background for interaction is novel to some people, and seems to be popular. John Bell tells an anecdote about advertisers who said they go to awards events, not conferences.

Tomorrow will be an example of unconference and Kaliya claims “the agenda will be set by lunch.” So if you are here be sure to check it out.

John Todor from The Whetstone Edge says biz has moved from focus on the “selling process” to our new world where the customers are forcing a focus on the “buying process.” He talks about the B2B and B2C worlds and that the shift is taking place there. This is true in the hiring market today. Recruiters have the resumé, but they check out the value that the job applicant adds to his or her resume through online interactions and postings.

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This is a good panel but it has been a long day. After this panel, the Mojito in the Grove session.

Dean Isaac Prilleltensky, Dean UM School of Education starts with an anecdote about women in Kerala, India, and a sense of well-being that began long ago, and resulted literacy as high as a developed nation, 100 years after women organized for children’s well-being.

Elisa Camahort Page, co-founder of Blogher begins with the dearth of women in blogging which turned out to a misapprehension by a (male) blogger about women in the blogosphere. This spurred the first blogher conference. Blogher has expanded to adnetworks, more conferences and a social network. “To me, community is a circle” you must respond to community, according to Elisa. Community is “constantly a circle.”

Kaliya Hamlin, Founder of Unconference.net says “no one on a mailing list dictates what anyone else says.” So there is a challenge to keep that live and relevant discussion when you bring people together live and in person. Topic people are passionate about it, getting live people talking and then focus on documentation of what discourse went on in-person. When you look at the sites after the conferences, you read the documentation differently than you did before. Face-to-face presents wider bandwidth than listservs or even face-to-face conferences where committees decide the agenda in advance.

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