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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Activist world forum:

Innovative applications of media emerge in every sector of life. It’s not just about blogs,Facebook and You Tube.

Session Chair:

Suzanne Turner, CEO of Turner Strategies was the session chairand she summarized the forum as a way of making changes using innovative tools that we have.

The forum was composed of four people who presented their projects.

Joan Peckolick, founder and executive director of Selfchec.org disclosed that she just turned 60 and is in a constant war against chronic diseases and cancer as the real enemies nowadays instead of Iraq. She explains that she gave up her career to continue fighting as she does not want to pass it to next generation. She thought that the new generation with new media is capable of changing things and she asked help for introducing Selfchec as a way of communication for the public on healthcare.

Deron Triff, CEO of Changents.com

Triff explained the concept of www.changents.com. as a reflection of the young people’s trends. “We want to be a storytelling platform for younger people who take challenges of social issues around world,” said Triff. He continued by saying that it was a way for people to tell their stories with edge and attitude.

The idea of the site is about the individual. Members tell stories and create network of fans called “superfans.’ People join virtual team and become backers. Triff gave the example of Brad Corrigan, a member who fights to “trash poverty in Nicaraguan landfill.” People who wanted to help him did so by such actions as sending medications, or offering translation services.

The website offers tools to build backers and connect people personally. Each individual produce stories and the backers follow them. Riff explained the development of the ripple concept: The chain reaction started after a story. Everyone in the ripple can see who responded to actions taken.

The website is an alternative for people who want direct relationships, as they feel cynical and doubtful about non profits organization and don’t want to write up a check and just donate without having deeper knowledge and connection to the issue.

Civic Space: James Carlson Executive Director of Bucketworks

The website Bucketworks is based on the concept of solidarity and the sense of community in a village. For example when a fire hits a village, people used to pass buckets of water between the well and the fire. Carlson explains that nowadays that chain is broken as people cannot find their place in it.

Bucketworks was described by Carlson as a “health club for the green and a local place with global strategies that connect people to make the whole world grow.”

Carlson explains that some people are afraid to share their values. Bucketworks’s facility is located in Milwaukee between the wealthy communities and the poor ones. It is a diverse community of members.

Bucketworks created ways of trading with each other. It has been opened for five years, has 700 members, organized film festival, art exhibits , performances, and galleries.

Carlson encouraged people to do the same in their community by offering tools on the website about the project that are meant to be “copied and pasted in your own community.’

The atmosphere at Bucketworks was described as fun and as a place of shared knowledge where everyone learned from another. Younger generation will teach older one how to use technology for example. “It has to be fun otherwise people won’t join it,” said Carlson.

Matisse Bustos Hawkes, Communication and Outreach. Witness

www.witness.org on human rights was well known among the people in the audience. Hawkes chose to concentrate on the new technology available to the public. The HUB has been launched in December and is still in the beta stage. It is a platform for everyone anywhere to upload videos, still messages and audios about human rights.

Hawkes described the Hub’s mission as “trying to build community globally.” The site is in three languages although it is not fully an open space. Once a member, you can upload as much videos as possible. The idea is less about being a You Tube for human right but to bring actions by using media as a catalyst. Hawkes hopes to bring people online first and feel compelled to take action afterwards.

The site also provides training resources on how to create media for advocacy.

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Here we are, about to start “News World | Traditions and Transformation” — what fun!

Description: “Traditional (legacy) news organizations have no choice but to continue to change in order to respond to the growth of aggregators and other WeMedia players. Learn how leaders in the field are tackling editorial, business and management challenges in the culture of empowered content creatives.”

Carin Dessauer (senior fellow, iFOCOS) is leading this group, right to left:

• Jennifer Sizemore, Executive Editor, MSNBC.com
• Neil Budde, former VP and Editor-in-Chief, Yahoo! News
• Kinsey Wilson, Executive Editor, USAToday and USAToday.com
• Maria Thomas, SVP, National Public Radio

5:18 Kick off question: What’s each panelists’ definition of success? What’s the model for success?

Carin: 66% of Americans think journalists are out of touch, but 70% say journalism is important to their lives (stat from an earlier session today). How does that shade your yet-to-be-given answer?

Jennifer: There are many different models, not just one. We need to learn to include our readers, to learn from them, to get them talking to each other and to us (the media). Tear down the walled garden. We’re taking baby steps.

Jennifer: At the risk of sounding shrill, I think we need to continue to focus on quality excellent journalism. We can allow the community to talk to itself and yet we need to invest in journalism. Also, we need to figure out the model for advertising after display advertising: partnership, search ads, etc. Google does search ads; can we get a piece of that pie?

Jennifer: We need to focus on emerging platforms other than the Web site. If we focus only on the Web site, we lose opportunities that are coming up quickly.

Neil: The measure of success in the next few years will be continuing to innovate, producing much more interesting products.

Kinsey: We can’t escape the economic results of the digital revolution. At the same time that the newspapers are shrinking, we’re being asked to grow and produce the future successes. You can succeed inside the organization, or outside. He stresses three things:
* Creation of original (great) content
* Social media (that bullet point flew by quick)
* Attracting and holding audience (aggregating audience)

Google seems to be attracting people, but isn’t doing the content. We need to learn from them.

Maria: Going last means you get to agree with everyone, but she’s going to try a different tack given that she works for a non-profit (NPR). She says they need to change from being a B2B (they serve their member stations) radio model, to being a multi-platform publisher. And they need to do even more: help radio itself in America evolve.

Carin: Kinsey, Can you give us an example of how adding citizen journalism advanced a story?

Kinsey: We’ve often been at the forefront of multimedia storytelling, but there’s an endless amount of time you can put into any given story. He looked at stats at the month of January, and found this: 2 things produced 66% of all the traffic on the site. One was November’s Candidate Match Game, and the other was the poll tracker, tracking all the polls of the presidential campaign to date. So you can work all you want on things, and some will catch on and some won’t.

Carin: What about the pharmaceutical company story about error rates on being given incorrect prescriptions?

Kinsey: On a story like that, we found that the comments are often very rich and detailed. Even though they are pseudo-named, they still have a strong ring of veracity, and adds something to the story you can’t get form traditional reporting means.

Carin: That really added editorially?

Kinsey: Yes, pharmacists who wouldn’t speak on the record about the story would post anonymously in the comments and though that has less of an authority, they added value.

5:30: Neil: We did some research in the last year about the behavior of users when they come to the site and land first of all on a story page. Many people now get to a site that way. We looked at what people did on that page. When they come into the front page first, they are news junkies. When they come directly from the front page of Yahoo, they are less committed. Entertainment stories you click on photos, political stories you click on related stories. So if you feature things in different ways on different pages, you get a chance to modify behavior. John Battelle’s site actually recognizes if you come from Google, and places a big box on that page to help you find what you want.

Jennifer: You can tell a story in all sorts of ways but just because you can be all creative, doesn’t mean you should. Example: We have a year-long series called “Gut-check America” — they tell us story ideas, and vote them up and down, and then we dispatch a reporter to cover that. Sometimes we do live Q&As, sometimes we do just video, or just text. One of her biggest peeves: video for the sake of video, which just wastes time.

Carin: Moving onto workflow issues: NPR is a hybrid model — what works there, what doesn’t? What about the Knight Foundation partnership?

Maria: The challenge of becoming a multimedia company is tough — we’re not a single publication, we’re a collection of programs: news, music, entertainment (Car Talk, etc.) So what position are we trying to occupy in the much more competitive online space. What purpose are we trying to serve in audience’s lives? Mission: “educate inform entertain” — carefully chosen.

Maria: There was a mentality in her particular role that her group exists to serve the rest of the company, and that’s changing now that they’re also trying to serve the audience directly, not just the shows themselves. The first place this change is occuring is in the news arena. There’s a lot of training going on, thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the Knight Foundation. USC and UC Berkeley are working on that. They’re bringing trainers into NPR to train groups of 12. It’s an enormous undertaking.

Carin: Kinsey, how is the convergence of YOUR operation going?

Kinsey: I gotta be a little envious of the $1.5 million training grant. There’s also some hiring that goes on back and forth in the Washington DC area. The way USAToday has approached it, is they’ve formally merged the newsroom 2 years ago, and are continuing to merge them together in the way they’d be if it was built that way from scratch.

There are two principal ways: 1) separate content and production into different groups. Devote some to breaking and some to enterprise. Devote some to print and some to Web.
2) The other way is to assign small teams: a journalist, a copy editor, a blogger, a producer (sometimes not all those people).

The other thing they’ve done is take the design group which was vertical and removed, and flatten that and “embed” them into various sections so they can be part of the process from an earlier stage.

Question from the audience? Nope, gotta hold that until later.

5:45: Jennifer: They have no choice to be separate from the channel: they’re a totally separate in space (Seattle vs NJ), and in corporate structure. The new boss of NBC news (name escaped me) has really tried to make that relationship get closer. For Virginia Tech, for instance, they sent a blog reporter, as well as a cameraman and reporter. And that worked really well.

It doesn’t always work: for instance, today, MSNBC the site used a CNN photo to illustrate a story of the MSNBC channel Democratic debate.

Neil: To replace the revenue that comes in from newspapers, with the revenue from banner ads, it isn’t there yet. How do you get it there? Second, how do you get the value of each page view to be higher? There was a project at Yahoo to offer higher value targeted ads on pages with contextual, focused ads. Get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. This helps explain Microsoft’s interest in Yahoo — they want the ad platform.

Neil has been working to get local news sites to adopt Yahoo technology, and in exchange drive traffic to them, in an attempt to create a higher value ad network.

Neil: Do high value watch sellers really want to be at the front of the paper in the International News section? Probably not — they just want to prestige and eyeballs. That model is completely blown up online.

Maria: 26 million weekly listening audience, but we’ve underestimated how hard it is to convert a listener to an online visitor:
Listening: intimate, passive, geographically based, time-based
Online: opposite of those things
How does brand NPR live in a visual, active, directed environment? Good question.
The web site draws a lot of “earballs” — they track stats called “media requests” and “podcast downloads” and use that to see how they’re succeeding.

Carin: Does MSNBC have the stickiness of other sites?

Jennifer: You’re right, page views don’t seem to make us sticky. 50% of our users come through MSNBC.com, and come and then leave right away. We know that, and we can cater to that audience who aren’t expecting a lingering browsing experience.

We all want page views, as the stat that matters, to go away. But it won’t — that’s what advertisers want. Most metrics are marketing metrics so you can say you’re #1 in this or that. The REAL measure will be Time on Site. We aren’t there yet, but we like the idea of tracking just how much people hang around.

6:00: Question: 4 Kinsey from Education week. Does your newsroom folks occupy the same space or different?

Kinsey: Used to be Web was separate from print. Now, web editorial is disbursed into the newsroom, and is separate from the rest of the Web team [advertising and tech, perhaps?]

Question: 4 Kinsey from guy who didn’t identify himself: Two features on your site attracted the most traffic, and those features were both “evergreen” — is there a danger that you’d focus on evergreen features over breaking news now?

Kinsey: They’re not exactly evergreen — one doesn’t change much, but is relevant now, not forever. The other actually does update over time, so is featuring the freshest data.

Question: McArthur Foundation: Do any of you have a secret plan for rescuing user comments. Large sites have lower quality comments, don’t you think?

Neil: We took comments off because they weren’t generating a lot of traffic, nor a lot of revenue. One person said she was so mad she was gong to cancel all 8 of her Yahoo accounts. We haven’t yet gone back to adding them, but at some point the plan is to. Rating comments (up or down) is one way to handle it. Fixing your identity to one person, with a reputation, is another way. When people came in from the front page from yahoo, comment quality went down. People who came in through new section pages made better comments.

Kinsey: It’s not about giving people a place to sound off. It’s about building a network. And you can wait for the tools to be perfect, or you can step in now, at some risk, and learn. Remember that only 10% will actually participate, and they need to produce value for the other 90%.

Jennifer: We recently bought Newsvine.com and their smart technology should help.

Question: Real Girls Media (Divine Caroline): What are your syndication plans for small publishers’ content?

Maria: We don’t see ourselves in the same league as MSNBC and Yahoo. Our content lends itself very well to syndication. We have a saying: “The story is the atom” as opposed to the program. Programs might have beginnings, middles and ends and their producers like that. But from the digital media perspective, it’s about the story, and they might re-present a set of stories for other media and other products. Like movie reviews. Or books. There’s no one programs. But there are a lot of stories.

Question: Creditcards.com: How do you deal with the size and dynamics shift to a digital newsroom?

Kinsey: We had 75 people in the digital space, now we have 465 (the whole newsroom) (the numbers might not be exactly what Kinsey said). Increasingly, all reporters will be digital. Will that number 465 hold? We’ll see if the model will support that.

Jennifer: To the extent that we’ll (the industry) continue to be doing journalism, we’ll be doing it in the online space.
6:15: That’s all, let’s go for drinks in the courtyard.

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$25 million (Knight News Challenge) invested in innovative approaches to journalism – the result: strengthened local communities.  This is the goal of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.This is Innovation world. Eric Newton starts of the conversation. He begins with how the Knight Foundation got started, in newspapers and now how the foundation giving back to the community.For the challenge the foundation was looking for digital innovation (cell phone, computer…), news and information (non-fiction), a way to inform geographic community, and open source (shared with people). Some of the big winners last year were MIT, EveryBlock, MTV and Open-Source Community News. For a complete list of the winners visit: http://www.newschallenge.org/winners.html

Winner: Nora Paul, Playing the News – (Director, Institute for New Media Studies, University of Minnesota) “Playing the News is a news simulation environment which lets citizens play through a complex, evolving news story through interaction with the newsmakers.”

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Yes, The person we trust most is still our physician — but he/she becomes more elusive every day. No time to really speak to them. True patient/doctor communication is difficult to achieve in our fast-moving, technologically sophisticated world.

How can we use the web to improve patient/doctor communication?

Power of storytelling? Me-tube?

Health is about storytelling — they spend most of their time talking about their experience. A long journey of having an illness, there are many stories to tell.

These are storytelling nodes. That’s where you need the experts.

Trust issue? When we put mockups in front of people and ask them if they trust this site. they say yet. You now have to look lke you are trustworthy and they think you are. Examine yourself, then, examine your content, go get opposite view. IF you look good, you are probably OK.

Audience is asked to weigh in. One participant says why not more focus on wellness?

Mowbray: People are interested in learning about their illness or family member’s illness. It will take a while for wellness to catch on and make a difference in the health of U.S. population.

Goldschmidt: People want more guidance on died, a propensity to seek guidance, but when so little credible information on diet and impact on health… difficult to tell people something definitive, other than watch calories and eat a balanced diet.

Panel:

Hoof: Microsoft. Focused on health. Global Health solutions. Consumer focused efforts, we launched a platform. Empowerment is about information. One thing that is clear is fragmentation of information. We turn universe around with consumer at center. We are trying to define this new role. There is concensus that empowering the consumers is the way to go. If you map illness to wellness — asthma and diabetes, acute illness, fitness fanatics.. No single company can provide the solutions for that whole spectrums. IF look at family perspective your 10 or 16 year old kids will have different needs than elderly parents. There is an eco system screaming for a platform. Device connectivity is something we also work on. And in health and fitness when look at devices to empower consumers all of them have the same problem as old devices, we are trying to solve that at platform level.

Jones: Qualcomm: used to make phones and manufacture chip sets for mobile phones. Combining cell phones with medical devices, like to check for diabetis. To bring relevant info to people when they need it.
Pardo: AARP some tends as we navigate healthcare and the issue of intergenerational conversation. HOw do we help these members navigage the morrass of information, and that is an intergenerational conversation. Boomers are confronting life events and this is causing us to go to sites for information, and as we navigate the system for information. Storytelling is more about collective voice. A new campaign, Divided We Fail. It’s role is gathering the stories to change society. How do we use media to have a social impact? Our idea is to come together. In history the one issue that can’t be solved by one party, but has to be a unified force. Gathered 47,000 personal stories through site. That conversation is now in the business sector.

Harrison: Humana. People don’t like or trust us very much. On innovation, we focus on empowering consumers. Making it better for them. We have your money and we negotiate on your behalf. Health entertainment. What we sent media is boring and not about what people want. What does health mean? We say it’s about how to do what you want to do in your life. So we are thinking about what people want to do and look at products we can provide. Bikes. We are adding an online community to biking. Games for Health, mobile and video games about exercise.

Wiesenthal: Kaiser Permanente. Physican. I’m the only one here you can trust. I do take care of patients. Also in charge of health information technology. Electronic records for all physicans. We have empowered our members. 2 million of members have logons to our website. I can make appointment and see lab results and communicate directly with our doctors. Our personal health record is not like others you’ve read about. Our members don’t have to provide claims. A view into their medical record and they have the power. Our vision is that our members are the locus of control. They are in charge of their health care. We are at leading edge of a great health care revolution.

Discussion:

Lockhard: eco system exists, it’s represented by a lot of people here. What will be successful in 12 18 months will make my life significantly different. Swinging elephants — privacy issue.

W: patients probably coem to doctor’s office 30 times a year, for 15 minutes. IT’s an illusion I’m taking care of someone when they are taking care of themselves. Our obligation is to provide them with tools that feels right to them and meet their goals. Not true doctor’s and nurses take care of patients, they take care of themselves.

Mowbray: I’m sceptical change will happen, outside of a closed system like Kaiser.

JonesL text based messaging with health IT sytems. to take advantage of events, an apopintment with doctor, and getting reminder or that lab results are in. This should suck out ineffeciciences of communication. We’ll see marriage of collecting cell phone numbers and using that as primary point of communication. Create smart systems and push it out to you in a timely manner, around weight management. Simple uses of technology that can be put to use. But folks who make the decisions are not the most IT savvy.

Jones: It’s sickness management side of thing and I wonder if we media side of things will be important. To start with health and target this to people is a way to start.

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Speaker: Jeff Nolan, VP Business Development, NewsGator

Jeff Nolan from NewsGator opens with a discussion on what NewsGator does, which is to create the flow and routing of content to build communities and an audience. They started off with basic RSS feeds and are now involved with creating widgets. Now what exactly is a Widget? In short a widget is a self contained content container that is portable. The content is more than just text, it can contain videos and images.

-what is a widget: self contained content container, mobile, place on any page etc..myspace, facebook, social networking igoogle

-not just text, video and images

-complete control over the self contained container

-want to take content with them, surround with content that interests them,

-simplicity and speed

-facebook-social networking mainstream now no more early adopter

-newsgator widgets.com

-images video, time content programs

-widgets drive huge clickthroughs, more than banner ads

-driving the time spent

-turning audience into readvertisers for your company or brand

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Founders and would-be entrepreneurs pitch their big ideas to a panel of business-launching experts. Even if you’re not pitching an idea, come watch the competition to start the next big thing.

Chair: Rick Ducey, EVP, BIA Financial Network

• Suha Araj, Founder and VP of Strategy, Real Girls Media
• John McKinley, Founder, LaunchBox Digital
• Joe Natoli, SVP, Business & Finance, University of Miami

John: Worked as CTO and in new projects at AOL before LaunchBox Digital. Goal is simple invest in and support early stage companies. Bring in world-class advisors to bridge “capital gap”.

Rick: BIA works with later stage companies.

Suha: Started Real Girls Media with three others. Marketing and film background.

Joe: 30 years in the newspaper business before working at University of Miami.

Pitch It #1 -Newscup – A Social Bookmarking Company

Jonathan Hendler brings 11 years of experience in Internet industries including multiple NGOs and massive multi player gaming.

Newscup passively organizes bookmarks and searches (enables “search ownership”). It’s not for just web 2.0 enthusiasts.

A unique features allows user to highlight an entire text box and right click to “Newscup It” and save a list of searches based on that text.

Technology: Self Organizing Categories, SQLite, natural language processing (automates tasks), embeddable, multilingual

Key questions from panel:

How is it new?

What is your target demographic? Who do you reach out to initially and how will they multiply?

News lovers and their friends.

What is the “secret sauce”?

The core are the algorithms used.

Pitch It #2 – CivisOnline – Sparking a Global Conversation

Phil Noble is the founder of the longstanding PoliticsOnline.

CivisOnline uses widgets and social networking tools for the US elections to launch a “global conversation”.

Tell CivisOnline how you think and it’ll show you how it compares to others. Rate, vote, comment, or quiz then compare results by other users with variable filters (language, region, sex, age, etc.)

Plan is to continue working with major media companies who have an audience and then provide them with the technology to get them involved in the “global conversation”.

CivisOnline answers the question: “How do we stack up with the rest of the world?” or “How do I stack up with the rest of the world?”

Key questions from panel:

You have an impressive list of partners already. Why haven’t they given you financial support or bought you yet?

We haven’t dealt with the people upstairs yet. We dealt with the geek in the basement.

I think it’s great. Where are you in the process? Where do I come in on your timeline? Where would I be now on your timeline?

I’m happy to talk about that.

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Can we trust media? Is the real substance, the real news? Which are the filters of information media has? Why is important to consider media literacy for the future as a tool? When and how to teach media literacy? In Kindergarden? Is it only for college students or is important for grown ups just starting to learn how to use a computer? Is it a task to be done by the government? By academia? By individuals?

We live in a world where the whole concept of news has changed. People is not only using new media to spread ideas but also they are inventing new languages, that is why during the session there where a lot of questions without a final answer, there is still a lot of uncertainty around subjects like trust and how to educate people to be critic with contents.

And what about people with no voice, with no space in the system? According to Prof. Srivastava of Ryerson University, to have media literacy as a sine qua non requirement for media literacy success, you need to empower people. Then, you need:

- To have access to a variety of sources.

- To assess how messages are constructed.

- To analyze the info.

- To produce content, express or create our own messages.

But the world has changed, young people has shifted their attitude on privacy issues, they are not that concerned with data and the use of their personal data, is usual for those “digital natives” the transaction of personal info in exchange of something, so other aspect of media literacy is to teach people to be aware of their data and the impact personal data can have in their future, such as a bad profile on Facebook or worst, profiling that might be used to exclude people, for example, in health insurance or access to loans.

Young people also has a whole different attitude on Intellectual Property issues, the trends are to share their works within a community, and to be informed by their communities on specific subjects.

However it is an important task for educators to teach kids to be critical on the media, to build an informed opinion, a balanced, non biased opinion, not influenced by the impact of the image or the mixed messages of the wrong source. Jean Baudrillard said that “In making reality, even the most violent, emerge to the visible, it makes the real substance disappear. It is like the Myth of Eurydice: when Orpheus turns around to look at her, she vanishes and returns to hell. That is why, the more exponential the marketing of images is growing, the more fantastically grows the indifference towards the real world. Finally, the real world becomes a useless function, a collection of phantom shapes and ghost events. We are not far from the silhouettes on the walls of the cave of Plato.”

With the impact of New Media and all the images and mixed messages, all the content and lack of trust in printed press media literacy is a “must” for educators because children are facing a complex world in the future.

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“As journalism declines, the influence and impact of nonprofit media will expand.”

Session Chair: John Bracken, Program Officer, MacArthur Foundation

With:

Jon Sawyer, Executive Director, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Ellen Miller, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Sunlight Foundation

Intro: John Bracken. The term nonprofit is similar to blogs in that it encompasses so much and so many different things. How useful is it as a term? Three types of nonprofits that do journalism come to mind: one that is committed to journalism per se; NPR etc. Advocacy organizations– orgs. where journalism is not part of their mission statement, but increasingly it might become the case. NY Times article that used Human Rights Watch Report. Expand the definition of what we’re talking about with journalism. Helen talked about Brave New Film– brief, affective, opinionated films and turning them around very quickly. Third time that comes to mind is US. Citizen media, participatory media… we’re all involved. All an overlapping part of this We Media eco-system.

Ellen: The Sunlight Foundatio n. The purpose is to use the internet and new technologies to bring transparency to the work of government and congress.How many people in the room are involved in nonprofit media? [A majority raise their hand]. Sunlight is involved in a number of kinds of media information. Where are members of Congress now? Almost everyone on staff blogs. Congresspedia is a wiki on Congress. Remarkable success and diversity of nonprofit journalism. Center for Public Integrity is at the top of Helen’s list. Another is Minn Post.com.

John: [Intro] John’s background is in Capital J journalism. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is a “journalist-thick” organization.

Works with traditional media because those stories are still important. Place story in the Washington Post last week– a story that has not been getting coverage. Taking advantage of a large important platform. Small amount of money to get journalists out to a region, help place the article, large amount of impact. Goal is to reach a large audience. Quickly discovered that we had to have video as well. went to sudan thinking to do a print piece. people said you’d be crazy not to bring a camera. We then framed discussion around the vido that we had made of the darfur conversation. We broadcast it on internet2- free to use it once you get permission through sites. live broadcast of discussion at the holocaust Memorial at3 0 different sites. i t created a discussion - a powerful demonstration of what you can do with active marketing and outreach. We also started a partnership with You Tube. Last summer reporter and videographer to Iraq and they did wonderful reporting. in five days 250,000 hits. Started working to get reporters and videographers at highschools.

[I had technical problems and had to switch laptops-- missed about ten minutes of the conversation. sorry.]

Opened up to questions.

John: One of the things that struck me, Ellen, is that you mentioned when you conceived of the Sunlight foundation you wanted to appeal to the ordinary citizen, but then you realized you wanted to apeal to the engaged citizen. who are these engaged citizens and how do they acct differently?

Helen: we don’t know too much about what they look or act like. we realize we all are very intereste din engaging citizens but we need to be realistic about how many people are going to go to a site how many people are going to go to this site called opencongress.org? we’re creating tools in there that allows people to socialize withother peple who are interested in these fairly wonky issues. we’re very much experimenting in this arena. we can see how many people particpate. set up an interface like a game– how many members of congress employed members of their family. Chronicle of Philanthropy just went out an dinterviewd and took pictures of someone who participated in the project — i had never seen them. he said ” i always wanted to be an investigative journalist, but life took me in another direction.” he’s now going to school to do so. i love reaching out to people like that. those are the people we think are the greatest leverage for us. We also realized that journalists and bloggers are huge points of leverage, we designed a numer of projects that will appeal to the more sophisticated user.

Question: Youre discovering who your audience is. The concern for engaging citizens is great, but it’s great for advocates as well. Creating more infrastructure.

Question: Dan with Marketplace. where do you see in ten years the role of nonprofits and public media?

Jon: I was in a situation in 2001-03 in Iraq and in the region interviewing people about the impact of the war, and there were no american journalists because they were all in Kuwait. NY Times and Post set the news agenda and it turned out to be wrong– there weren’t enough journalists’ voices. That was an impetus for me. I’d like to have 100 NPR’s. I think it’s very important that all of us establish our own niches. The Center has evolved way beyond anything i could have imagined two years ago. It’s the projects and reporting that took us there.

Ellen: The answer is we don’t have a clue. The rapidity of the change and tech innovation is moving so literally that we can hardly look 6 months down the road. I come in the morning with my technologists saying “is it possible to do x?” and to my joy they say “Yeah…” or they know someone who can do it. That’s what makes it exciting and i’m sure that makes mainstream media nervous.

Question: Is there an association of people doing this kind of work who are sharing best practices to amplify the good work?

Ellen: Such a group does not exist. there is a group around called FOYA. how do you use technology to create greater transparency? Part of our goal is to share our knowledge and information with other groups.

Questions: Is this done just for domestic US issues or global?

Jon: We work around global issues. The target audience is an American audience.

There is a nimbleness that you get from nonprofit startups. we’re reaching out to everyone and trying to get best practices. when i compare that with beureacratic places i worked at before, having to get approval. The cost of the Center is not as great as bureaus i worked at before of seven people.

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Panel -

Session chair: Susan Mernit, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, iFOCOS, and blogger

Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble

Judith Meskill, COO, Crowd Fusion

Carolyn Washburn, VP & Executive Editor, The Des Moines Register

Barbara Kahn, Dean, University of Miami School of Business Administration

Jan Schaffer, Executive Director, J-Lab

Everyone in the room is an “expert” and the forum will be very interactive.

Jan Schaffer - Research done at women leaders in the news room. Take aways from the study showed women were going to leave the business entirely. Two subsets of women, career confident and career conflicted. Most were career conflicted and didn’t see a role for their skills.

Newmediawomen.org launched today. Women comprise 67% of journalism students, but only 1/3 of working journalists. It has been this way for decades.

Many women go into public relations or other areas. Women don’t stay in news rooms, they enter into the work force this way, but move on to different positions.

Audience comments - Women in the work place automatically includes children. Is that an issue?

Schaffer - The research shows that men and women are the same in terms of their views on childcare. So it is not “mommy tracking.” More women felt they just didn’t fit into the news room landscape.

Barbara Kahn - Consumer expertise for women. Previously at Wharton for 17 years and they did spend a lot of time researching women in business and women in education. Trend is at least 50/50 for women and men in enrollment for medecine, law. But it is about 40/60 for business education. Women in an MBA program, only about 35 percent. Women aren’t getting the same skill sets in business as in other areas. Even at the Ivy League level, women get out and are offered the best jobs with the best salaries, but they still leave the field anyway.

Audience - We need to look at the environment that women are working in?

Women and children in the workplace - it can come down to a competition. Who gets heard, who gets promotions.

In start-up businesses, men tend to categorize women into a “marketing chic” or “PR chick” role.

In a start-up from a woman, there is a lack of stressful competition, the environment is more collaborative. Men tend to be geared toward competition. Battles over status may be pushing women out of the workforce.

Carolyn Washburn - Has not had a negative experience in the newsroom. Has felt very supported in her career to move into leaderhip positions.

The environment of family needs touches men and women. It can be harder for men because they aren’t expected to stay home and it looks like they are unsuccessful.

Audience - Do women notice the gender gap and does it effect readership?

Readership for newspapers seems to be higher among men. There could be a lot of opportunity there for publishers to attract more female readers.

The Des Moines Register has a very strong female audience. They offer a variety of resources to women.

Kahn - Women make a lot of the household and family decisions. Women go to the doctor more than their husbands. Healthcare media is geared towards women.

There is a huge rush to tap into younger female audiences for marketers.

Job descriptions can skew who applies for certain jobs. An example is in the engineering field. Hiring can be difficult if women are turned off by the job description.

Men tend to be very linear thinkers. Men can give more A or B answers. Women are more contextual thinkers. This can be off putting to bosses because it may seem that women are more scattered.

Audience - How can women create their own social networks? What other networks can be created? A challenge to women to think outside the box!

Female social networks shouldn’t just be about “mommy” issues. Many address other issues, help with problem solving, etc.

Kahn - New media is one way to go, but old-fashioned networking is still very valuable. Wharton Women is very successful. Personal connection is critical in the business world.

Mernit - Take the time to create a new environment, even if its just hosting a dinner. Get out there. It doesn’t have to exclude men, its good to hear opposing viewpoints.

Audience - Had the experience at a marketing firm where a female health account was run by mostly men. It was difficult to stop the planning and conversations and interject what real women think and want.

Sometimes it is a woman’s responsibility to take the role of the “educator” to an all male audience.

Parting Summary

Washburn - Cultural change takes many generations. If this generation sets the example, our sons and daughters will follow suit.

Schaffer - Don’t focus on numbers, focus on opportunities! News rooms need to rethink how they use women and there will be a more creative workforce.

Kahn - When women come into a business environment, the dynamic changes. It can be illuminating and it can be a bigger influence than we originally thought.

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After the announcement of the launching of Newmediawomen.org the speakers from their backgrounds and perspectives shared their views on how a woman can improve their chances on an environment where often is a whole table of men with dark suits with one woman. They highlighted the importance of women as decision makers on important issues from the food to the education of the kids or the cars the family has. But also they discussed that sometimes the environment is not the best to allow them develop their careers, often they are far from the center of power.

I think that Web 2.0 is giving women amazing opportunities to develop their skills and re invent the media scenario from their needs. There are a lot of young women entrepreneurs, they often promote balance, diverse work teams. You have places like Realgirlsmedia.com, women2.org, Blogher… where not only creativity but the inner skills of women of building communities is showing the world that a better world is possible, and that women will play an important role on it.

I think that the real change can be made not only in the professional field, girls are doing well on it in general. I am thinking about millions of undereducated women from several countries, where they are facing discrimination and poverty, there new media and technology can make a real change and radically change their lives.

They can learn more about their rights, they will be less marginalized, less misinformed.With the skills and the tools to produce content and to express their ideas, they can start projects or show their entrepreneur projects ideas technology and media. Or just learn more about basic health stuff, find more resources for the education of their kids, and at some point they can really improve their quality of life.

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Who will do best for the average consumer?Andy: YOU. the consumer. We do not have a system of care in the US. Money flows in health care focuses on themselves and not YOU, the consumer. Saying this, people go into healthcare to help. The reason to give people power….IS TO EMPOWER YOU TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. YOU MUST LOOK OUT FOR YOURSELF….BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO.We all about this ….human nature is not always motivated to help you more than you  can help yourself.How many of you have children? How many have kept a daily baby book? Oh, you were distracted…by all of the daily living. If you don’t keep the baby book up-to-date,it tells me that you need to be responsible to keep your own records OR ELSE the doctor or medical system will have to make decisions without all of the info on your health.But since you may not keep all records….there needs to be a system to help you do this.Queston: Several of you represent large organizations? will you let people tell you how to run your company? Will you become a democracy?Grant: YES. It is happening right now. We need consumers to build the systems for health care.Don: We know consumers will be in charge of the changes.Question: We have a severly broken health care system. If the political debate will not cure the system, what are you doing to provide a forum to help consumers become involved to solve the health care crisis?Grant: We have a web site asking folks to get engaged in the problem solving.  there is no perfect health care system. Every system has problems…..because people are becoming more unhealthy themselves. IN the end, if we as a people don’t change…..Bert: there needs to be awareness surrounding the problem. who is paying for the solutions? Microsoft does not want to dictate….and we are aware of the broken health care systemScott: Canada is socialized. It developed by local hospitals, coupled with a political movement that influenced the entire country.Andy: I worry that we have broken a social contract. It used to be felt that we were all engaged to provide basic health care services for EVERYONE. This is not true anymore…what is talked about personal responsibility… is for the individual.  We are losing sight of helping society….as a whole. We give away free care for dealing with lack of health care coverage for those uninsured. Emilio: We are actually pushing for change. AARP feels that everyone must be involved to make the necessary health care changes. We are currently in an unsustainable system. Audience: We do have a lack of health care system and I don’t feel the government can provide us with a workable system.Andy: Put together your own health care system. How would you pick it?audience: based on performance of physician; part on service; I would look for folks available on weekends and evenings.Andy: You really don’t have enough data to make the best health care system.Audience: Media has a tremendous opportunity. when it comes to health….it is hard to make the leap whether the individual how to decipher the online info. You may find a trusted source….As a physician, I would give consumers a list of RIGHT questions to ask…have enough info on your topic  to know which questions to ask that will help yourself.  We should use today’s technology to gather the basic information about people and give them “guidance”.  We may not fill out the baby book, but if someone asks us specific questions, we would access it. Today’s media technology can help us today.Kendall: As this session closes….the individual’s best future lies in the best interest of companies and working together.IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGY IN THE AREA OF HEALTH CARE, PLEASE SEND IN YOUR SUGGESTION.THE END….. 

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Question: what will make me healthy? How will we manage the information? How many minutes do patients see doctors?Andy: The most intense users of the health care system is about 30% of the health care users. We then need to provide them with the tools that will help “people take care of themselves”. DOCTORS DO NOT TAKE CARE OF PATIENTS. PATIENTS TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES. We must give them the tools to do so.Don Jones:  Take advantage of the appt with your doctor….collecting cell phone numbers and using all info connected to this device. In other words, use today’s technology to transfer the information to the ‘patient’ ‘consumer’.Simple uses of technology to help consumers deal with their health care.However, does health IT know how to use  creative technologies for patient care?Grant: the health care system deals with sickness management. Does the technology help with wellness more effectively? I can use this info without the health care system….start with health and use technology to help folks be healthy.Bert: There are devices that can , in fact, help the diseased population.  Specialized info the the ill patient is available and can be used. take weight loss programs. There are many solutions for weight loss….it is not for us to decide which is the best; it will be up to the individual to choose. these applications can only share the info….but the decision in under the consumer control. Microsoft does help folks control the data of their health.Kendall: How do we control the privacy of the health care info?Bert: We spend time on privacy and security of medical records…gatekeeping and promises. No data can come into or out of the system without your permission. When new applications are launched….you get feedback and asks your permission. You get alot of information before you give trust to send your private info over the line.Andy: There is distrust within corportion within the population. I am not just referring to Microsoft, but there is general distrust among the population. Kaiser has been working with health care records for over 60 years. We have gained the public’s trust.Bert: Microsoft is creating trust. We are a data-base computer. Microsoft is regulated and is working to gain the trust of the audience.QUESTION from Audience: I had cancer when I was 25. Nurses got me through my illness. Doctors cycle through the system….nurses helped me the most. No one referred to open systems.when people google….the data is open for all.Andy: there are technology standards. Kaiser will follow standards. There are standards on how to catorgize info. This is important….one person’s health is different from another’s even if they both have (eg) congestive heart failure.  There are language based problems, so even if you use tools like storage systems for health care data….it will be interpreted differently by many.Don Jones: Healthcare info will be available via new tools…like health care cards. I believe that the health care system will follow the financial system that has access to transferring info and storage.Bert: We accept open-standards.  We have become an open source. We offer a free platform …through applications….through search activity….our system will be open for the greater good.Emilio: AARP- our own organizatin wants to use technology in an ageless manner, not just for 55+ years. AARP has found the knowledge heavily used by younger folks. You may have a need for caregiving…this is a major focus for AARP.Dan: (asks the audience to question)…. 

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UPDATED: 02.27.08 @ 3:39 p.m.

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