KDMC Community Info Challenge Bootcamp(03/21/2010) 
1:54
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Welcome to the live blog coverage of the Knight Community Information Challenge bootcamp, held March 21-25 at the Knight Digital Media Center at USC Los Angeles. I'm Amy Gahran, and I'll be starting the liveblogging for this event.
Sunday March 21, 2010 1:54 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:57
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
This five-day boot camp is for 22 fellows from place-based organizations that won the 2010 Knight Community Information Challenge and received Knight Foundation funding to start or expand community news or information projects. The boot camp is intended to jumpstart their efforts with experts speaking on topics that include social media, Web metrics, project planning, and Web site development and evaluation.
Sunday March 21, 2010 1:57 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:00
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Resources for this event:
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:00 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:01
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
You can also follow the action via the Twitter hashtag: #infoneeds
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:01 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:02
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
If please feel free to contribute comments or questions via this liveblog. We'll publish them to the blog as approriate and convey them to the on-site event as possible.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:02 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:03
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
We'll also be monitoring the #infoneeds hashtag on Twitter and will selectively publish tweets from that here.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:03 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:04
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
You can also watch the live video stream of some sessions from this week's boot camp.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:04 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:11
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Shortly KDMC@USC director Vikki Porter will begin her opening remarks. I'll start the live coverage once that's underway.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:11 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:31
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Right now, community foundation reps are delivering short pitches about their Community Info Challenge projects. The point is to see how succinctly and clearly they can express the main point of their project. This is harder than it sounds! A couple of examples follow...
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:31 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:33
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Boulder County Community Foundation: ReadySetLearn project will address the county's "achievement" gap -- which is one of the highest in the state of Colorado. (Problem with pitch is that a lot of people don't know what an educational "achievement gap" is -- a bit of jargon. Need to hone that in pitch)
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:33 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:34
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Observation by Amy: Using Twitter a lot is probably good exercise for honing any pitch.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:34 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:35
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Village Square Tallahassee: "We the People" project will create a town hall model for 21st century, online and face-to-face.

(pretty good, succinct pitch)
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:35 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:37
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Gulf Coast Foundation wants to create Florida Independent, which will be a source of investigative journalism across the state.

Susan Mernit notes that the nice thing about this pitch is that you don't really need to explain *why* this is needed (because newspapers are dying/cutting back on investigative)
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:37 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:38
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Next pitch from the NJ Community Foundation will also foster investigative journalism in that state.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:38 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:39
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
AmazingCounty.com is an online treasure hunt to show the opportunities and resources of Chautauqua county NY.

Sunday March 21, 2010 2:39 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:40
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Write for Arkansas project
will help newspapers hire additional reporters to cover community-level news, and aggregate that so it's easily findable.

Sunday March 21, 2010 2:40 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:41
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Slade Sundar, Community Foundation of Palm Beach. Project: YourPBC.org, digital public square, focused on resources and action.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:41 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:44
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit keeps pointing out that a lot of these pitches aren't specific enough. She's having them do them over again on the spot, and that helps.

Sunday March 21, 2010 2:44 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:45
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
"A text messaging campaign aimed at encouraging young Latinos in LA to participate in the Census) -- good pitch from the CA community foundation.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:45 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:48
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Good trick to get people to hone pitches for projects -- asking other participants to pretend the project that was just pitched is their own and to do their own pitch. Gret trick to see how well you're communicating.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:48 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:55
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit on pitches: "You've already gotten your grant funding for your projects. You don't have to seel it on that level anymore. The point here is to convey people what you're actually ging to be doing."
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:55 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:56
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Central PA 211: Web site for southern central PA is resource for all kinds of non-emergency resources and info locally.

Pretty succinct pitch.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:56 Knight Digital Media Cent
2:57
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
RI partnership with NPR to create a series of community forums in that state -- to be archived online, with resources. Big topics: health, education, etc.
Sunday March 21, 2010 2:57 Knight Digital Media Cent
3:06
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit on user centered development: What can a person DO when they get to your site? Focus on the "do" part in a pitch.
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:06 Knight Digital Media Cent
3:08
[Standby]  Project pitches are over. Break now until about 3:30. Back soon.
3:12
[Standby]  The host is placing this Live Event into Standby Mode.
3:34
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Hey, everybody, this is Lisa Williams liveblogging for the KDMC bootcamp. You can learn more about me at http://www.bit.ly/lisawilliams .
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:34 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:36
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Right now, FSG/Social Impact Advisors is doing a "Lessons Learned" session that focuses on 2009 Information Challenge grantees. Here's a list: http://www.informationneeds.org/community-information-challenge/winners/first
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:36 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:38
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
FSG: Many grantees were trying to engage citizens both online and offline.
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:38 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:39
Twitter
paidcontent: 
This week’s Knight Info Challenge boot camp being covered live. (via @VikkiPorter) http://bit.ly/cnV3TB Folo #infoneeds #ascj #pcbuzz
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:39 paidcontent
3:41
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Each #infoneeds project must have a place-based foundation partner. FSG notes that 13 of the first - year projects were foundation-led, while 9 were "partner-led," that is, another organization approached the place based foundation as a partner but also did most of the lead/management on the project.
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:41 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:43
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Why focus on pitches? A few reasons: one, it's not enough to have a good idea; you have to be good at talking about it. Second, if you consistently fail in expressing your idea in a clear, concise, and compelling manner, it's very likely more than a cosmetic problem: your idea also needs work.
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:43 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:44
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
About 20% of Year 1 #infoneeds projects hired "content specialists" (read: reporters).
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:44 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:48
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
FSG shows a the "San Antonio Community Information Systems" map, related to Year 1 Project NowCastSA http://nowcastsa.wordpress.com/
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:48 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:49
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
FSG, quoting Year 1 grantee: There's a steeper learning curve in getting the technology to work because of the time it took to choose a content management platform.
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:49 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
3:57
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Next up: Roberta King, Grand Rapids Community foundation and The Rapidian : http://therapidian.org/
Slade Sundar, CF of Palm Beach & Martin Counties, http://yourpbc.org
Vivian Vahlberg, Chicago Community Trust, Community News Matters. They mapped the Chicago news ecosystem: http://www.cct.org/research/research/the-new-news
Sunday March 21, 2010 3:57 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:02
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Roberta King says that they don't allow anonymity at the Rapidian.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:02 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:08
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Q: What kind of relationship do you have with your local newspaper?
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:08 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:08
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: The local paper in Grand Rapids published an Op-Ed hailing the launch of the site...she attributes this in part to meeting with the paper pre-launch to explain how the site could help what the paper was doing.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:08 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:11
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Vahlberg: Our project was giving grants to local news organizations, and one grant was for an organization partnered with the Chicago Tribune -- and the Tribune then picked up headlines in the new blog aggregator the paper runs for the area.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:11 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:12
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: We had a tumultuous start to our relationship with the Palm Beach Post. What we didn't do when we first started is that we didn't quell any of those fears...since we weren't out to take over the Post.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:12 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:13
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: The Palm Beach Post was more afraid than they should have been of us, with our meager beginnings.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:13 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:14
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: The one thing that I wish people had told me is that I'm sleeping a lot less.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:14 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:16
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Vahlberg: Taking the time up front to do the research is something that really pays dividends...we thought we knew the Chicago area, and we found more than 200 local online entities doing news about Chicago...serious, interesting work.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:16 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:17
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: We did so much more listening than I realized that we would -- we had all these gatherings where we just listened to people, and this was SO useful. The other thing I wish I knew at the beginning is: it's going to take more time than you think to launch a site.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:17 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:18
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Other grantees also notice the phenomenon of the launch date that just gets further and further away.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:18 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:25
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: One great thing to do is to have a development blog -- talk about what you're doing, post wireframes, do social media with facebook and twitter, and you can get a lot of people to buy in long before you launch.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:25 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:29
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: People would ask us to have a presence for YourPBC.org at community events, so that's something that we didn't prepare for, but it was great.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:29 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:32
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: we have 20 to 25 really active reporters. We want 50, and we have 100 registered reporters (these are people who go through a basic application process).
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:32 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:33
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: You can't just let your (citizen reporters) exist on the web in a vacuum...you have to get them together.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:33 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:34
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: there's a monthly gathering of citizen reporters for the Rapidian along with people who are interested in becoming citizen reporters...existing reporters give a brief presentation on topics like "Writing Your First Story."
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:34 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:35
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: We're going to have a "reporter rally," get them together, give out t-shirts and make everyone who's doing a good job *feel good* about what they're doing.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:35 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:36
Twitter
michelemclellan: 
RT @kdmc: Vivan Vahlberg lesson from Google: "Everything we do is a beta." A flex mindset open to change is critical less for all #infoneeds
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:36 michelemclellan
4:37
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Q: Are you getting pushback from elected officials and public affairs specialists -- who may feel inundated with requests for interviews?
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:37 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:38
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Vahlberg: You have to be able to explain who you are and tell them why it's in their interest to talk to you.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:38 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:46
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Q: What metrics really help?
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:46 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:47
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: We've been using social media metrics -- you can share or retweet all our articles. Understanding how often a piece is shared or retweeted (helps us understand what articles are useful).

Sunday March 21, 2010 4:47 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:47
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: People are more likely to share something if it's short...if you have "5 reasons about X" then people read and share that.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:47 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:48
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
With Facebook, you can't see who's sharing, just the number; with Twitter, you can see who is sharing, which is great. When the local paper shares a link to your article you know you're doing good.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:48 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:48
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King recommends bit.ly for twitter so that you can track clicks and retweets.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:48 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:49
[Comment From Bob Bob : ] 
thinking about working with the local community college to develop neighborhood reporter/blogger/photogs for www.summitvoice.org - anyone done that?
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:49 Bob
4:51
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Vahlberg: 4 out of the 12 Chicago Community News Matters projects use students, And Citizen Access in Champaign/Urbana is also using students.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:51 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:52
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King: a third or fourth year communications class at a local college assigned students to write an article for the Rapidian.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:52 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:53
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
My personal experience is that student interns are great, but you have to be in touch with when students are seeking internships -- they're only looking at one point in the semester and if you miss it it's hard to find them.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:53 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:54
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
King suggests looking beyond journalism classes and looking at students in the school of social work.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:54 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:55
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Onelia Collazo, Coral Gables Homepage -- the first semester, a teacher assigned students to write a story for us, but not for a grade, so we only got one. The second term, it was for a grade but the quality was inconsistent.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:55 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:58
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: We used free online feedback forms...the more informal approach worked best...if we sent out a formal survey, we got far fewer responses.
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:58 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
4:58
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Sundar: Keep your poll short!
Sunday March 21, 2010 4:58 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
5:00
[Standby]  Thanks everyone! We'll resume at 9AM PST tomorrow.
7:22
Michele McLellan: 
Good evening. Michele McLellan, KDMC here. Next up. Mary Lou Fulton, formerly of Bakersfield Californian, now at the California Endownment. News, technology, citizen engagement. People!
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:22 Michele McLellan
7:24
Michele McLellan: 
Mary Lou has a great title for her talk: "Local Media That is Location-Aware, Plugged in and Vitamin-Free"
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:24 Michele McLellan
7:25
Michele McLellan: 
Mary Lou Fulton: What attracted her to digital world was not tech. It was what tech enabled people to do. Story telling. Voice to people who had not had a voice.
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:25 Michele McLellan
7:26
Michele McLellan: 
Wow. ML Fulton quotes her CEO at Calif Endowment: "Tell me your zip code and I'll tell you how long you're going to live."
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:26 Michele McLellan
7:28
Michele McLellan: 
Great slides ML Fulton. You think you're the sun. But you're not alone!
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:28 Michele McLellan
7:29
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton. You are joining a network. The show is under way. Plugging into a network is a really different idea than creating your site.
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:29 Michele McLellan
7:30
Michele McLellan: 
Information sharing is the driving force in media today and it is not going away. ML Fulton
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:30 Michele McLellan
7:31
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton: Watershed - Facebook drives more traffic than Google
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:31 Michele McLellan
7:36
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton: In proposals, read a lot about the what. Encourage you to think about the who. If you're not embraced by the people you want to serve, you're not getting the job done
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:36 Michele McLellan
7:40
Michele McLellan: 
MLFulton: Think about the "why." Why is it worth someone's time to change the info habits that they already have today? Emotional reasons: Makes me smarter at happy hour, more incontrol, more appreciated, brings me closer to my kids.
"We need less mind and more heart."
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:40 Michele McLellan
7:42
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton. Avoid vitamin-speak. "Good for YOU." "YOU SHOULD WANT.' It's like "eat your carrots." Much laughter
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:42 Michele McLellan
7:42
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton: Ask "What do I have to offer to someone who is busy, overwhelmed and critical?"
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:42 Michele McLellan
7:44
Michele McLellan: 
Ml Fulton: "Be specific. Be enthusiastic. Be visual. Show some personality. Be interesting!"
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:44 Michele McLellan
7:44
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton: People actually crave perspective. It's not the same as bias. It's saying where you're coming from...
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:44 Michele McLellan
7:52
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton gives props to Amy Gahran for her work on getting people info via "crappy cell phones." We're not all 3G nation, folks.
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:52 Michele McLellan
7:56
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton: Think of all the individuals who are nodes on the information network. That's where the intersting, most compelling content is.
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:56 Michele McLellan
7:59
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton. Don't know what will work. But I know what will happen if we don't try. We'll fall farther behind.
Sunday March 21, 2010 7:59 Michele McLellan
8:02
Michele McLellan: 
ML Fulton: For foundations media work is a lot more public than foundations are used to.
Sunday March 21, 2010 8:02 Michele McLellan
8:59
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Good morning! Resuming the liveblog for the Knight Digital Media Center's Community Info Challenge boot camp. I'm Amy Gahran, and I'll be liveblogging the first session.
Monday March 22, 2010 8:59 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:00
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Here's info about this bootcamp.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:00 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:02
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Up first: Susan Mernit of OaklandLocal.com is speaking on Your Project - From Idea to Implementation. (Download Susan's presentation)
Monday March 22, 2010 9:02 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:04
Roberta King: 
It can be tough to describe your project in a couple of sentences, bootcampers are doing round two of their pitches and refining their messages.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:04 Roberta King
9:05
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
The participants at this bootcamp represent community foundations from around the US that are starting local news and information projects, supported by the Knight Community Information Challenge program.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:05 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:10
Roberta King: 
Susan Mernit - activist, poet, former developer/executive with Yahoo and Netscape and now founder of Oakland Local and Knight Foundation consultant. She's here to help participants learn from her experiences and her mistakes.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:10 Roberta King
9:11
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit is explaining to project managers what a project requirements doc is: "Your opportunity to say to a developer: this is what I want you to build."

Better than saying to a developer "This is what I want you to accomplish."
Monday March 22, 2010 9:11 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:12
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Remember, you can submit questions or comments through this liveblog. We'll do our best to work them into the live conversation here.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:12 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:14
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Mernit on defining your audience: Questions to ask
- Is this site *really* for everybody? What's your target reading level, for instance?
- How are the getting the material? Can you assume everyone is on a computer, or might they be on their cell phone?
- What languages do they speak?
Monday March 22, 2010 9:14 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:15
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Mernit on defining audience:
- How often do you thing people will visit? What's your expectation? If you want them to visit every day, ask yourself "how many sites do *you* really visit every day?

It's very rare for someone to visit a site every day.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:15 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:15
Roberta King: 
Audience knowledge is key to the success of a project - who are they? How well do they read? Are they on a computer or a mobile device? How often will they visit?
Monday March 22, 2010 9:15 Roberta King
9:18
Roberta King: 
I always start any communication project at Grand Rapids Community Foundation with the audience in mind. Age, income, gender, race can also be considerations. There is no general public anymore.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:18 Roberta King
9:18
Roberta King: 
Benefit statement - what people will get from your project. Audiences can have different statements.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:18 Roberta King
9:20
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: Part of OaklandLocal's benefit statement is that we have a diverse team and a diverse audience. Positions us better to cover topics that are important but getting overlooked by mainstream media.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:20 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:20
Twitter
CharlotteAnne: 
BerkeleyTheDog is watching @susanmernit live on the Web - she became his newest best friend when she visited his peeps last week #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 9:20 CharlotteAnne
9:21
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit drawing on her product development & online marketing experience: "Designers have a technique called building personas. They create a hypothetical individual with characteristics of target audience and ask "Am I building a project that will work with this person?"
Monday March 22, 2010 9:21 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:23
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: OaklandLocal is not just racially diverse, representing diff. neighborhoods. It's also about subcultures like the Burning Man people, hipsters, artists -- and all the people involved in the local food movement, or various sexual/gender identity communities.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:23 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:23
Roberta King: 
Susan: When you build a persona you think about who you want to engage with your site BUT you have to provide the information they want to access.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:23 Roberta King
9:30
Roberta King: 
Discussing other audiences that might need addressing: left and right political views and income diversity, for instance. These all need to be included when you talk to your developer. Build your site for the audience, will help with site navigation and marketing.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:30 Roberta King
9:32
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Participant recommends a good resource from the Media Management Center. Research: Teens Know What They Want. Do You?
Monday March 22, 2010 9:32 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:34
Roberta King: 
Susan: Creating the Team - roles, skills, project lead, who do we have/who do we need and what are the roles and responsibilities.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:34 Roberta King
9:35
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit on defining your team: Assess what you actually have, vs. what you wish you have. Useful to consider both, so you know what you want to grow towards or acquire.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:35 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:36
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Besides the live webcast, will the video be made available later?
Monday March 22, 2010 9:36 Michael R. Bernstein
9:36
Roberta King: 
Susan: The people you have probably only have 50 percent of what you need. Can they learn the skills or do you need to hire in the talent.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:36 Roberta King
9:37
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Michael -- Yes, the video from this event will be archived later on the Knight Digital Media Center site.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:37 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:38
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: "I like to think not just in terms of "what can we afford" when building a team, but "what are the roles we need?"
Monday March 22, 2010 9:38 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:38
Roberta King: 
Susan: Sequencing of the talent - you don't need everyone all at once. Look at the team in terms of roles and timing.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:38 Roberta King
9:39
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: "What are the critical dependencies" = corporate speak for "How can we screw this up?"
Monday March 22, 2010 9:39 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:39
Roberta King: 
Susan: Look at the potential risks and address them before you begin (as best you are able).
Monday March 22, 2010 9:39 Roberta King
9:39
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan is asking community news/info project managers: What are asome of the risks you face?
Monday March 22, 2010 9:39 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:40
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
One participant cites risks: "Being overly ambitious, spreading ourselves too thin. Also replicating what's already out there, not offeirng original value."
Monday March 22, 2010 9:40 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:41
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
One participant on risks: "Our foundation's project is reaching out to youth. We've asked them what they want, and they said they don't want it to be like an institution. But we are by nature an institution."
Monday March 22, 2010 9:41 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:41
Roberta King: 
Participant risks: Being overly ambitious, spreading ourselves too thin. Not filling the gap we intended. Being unauthentic, when the audience has said be authentic.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:41 Roberta King
9:42
Roberta King: 
Participant risks: not getting sponsors, people not interested in what we are doing, people not taking time to do what we want them to do to make the project successful.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:42 Roberta King
9:44
Roberta King: 
Susan: Kickoff must have - ONE lead. Hard to have and commit to. Who is the go-to person.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:44 Roberta King
9:45
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: If you can get tema to agree on top goal and order of other priorities, that prevents a lot of fights. Also decide on what a "good job" means.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:45 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:45
Digidave: 
Agree with Susan here: Everyone needs to know their shared goals - otherwise people are pulling in different directions.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:45 Digidave
9:45
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
OaklandLocal leaders roles: Susan is the editor/publisher. Amy works on editorial strategy, tech, and operations. Kwan Booth works on community outreach, and on arts/culture beat.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:45 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:47
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: When you have defined roles, that makes it easier to know who handles which situation as they arise. "make sure each person on the team knows their job, their area of responsibility. And give them each ONE person to be accountable to. Hard to make 5 bosses happy."
Monday March 22, 2010 9:47 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:47
Roberta King: 
Susan: Org chart is important, people need to know who they are accountable to and for what.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:47 Roberta King
9:48
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Reminder: Live video of Susan Mernit's talk
Monday March 22, 2010 9:48 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:49
Roberta King: 
Susan: Documentation helps things run smoothy, reduces conflict. Recommends googledocs
Monday March 22, 2010 9:49 Roberta King
9:49
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Mernit: Very important to have documentation about roles, responsibilities, processes. Reduces fighting, fiefdoms. She loves collaborative tools like Google Docs, basecamp, etc.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:49 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:51
Roberta King: 
Use Googledocs to get people off e mail and to put documents in a central place.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:51 Roberta King
9:51
Roberta King: 
Participant recommends using Googlewave.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:51 Roberta King
9:52
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
My take: When you're forming a project team, break them of their habitual dependence on e-mail for communication ASAP. Use collaborative tools like Google Docs, Basecamp, Google Wave to create a repository. When e-mail is your primary communication/sharing tool, everybody gets really confused and overwhelmed.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:52 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:53
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit on dealing with team disagreements: Keep the focus on the group effort, we're all rowing in the same direction. It's great to have a culture where people can disagree and be listened to, but ultimately someone has to be able to make a decision. That final decision authority needs to be clear. Otherwise lingering tension, resentment.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:53 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:55
Roberta King: 
Susan: Measurement - impact, engagement and web impact. All can and should be measured. It will help set expectations and give you focus.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:55 Roberta King
9:57
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: "If you can't measure it, you didn't think it through." AMEN!!!!! Think benchmarks right from the start. Don't tack it on as an afterthought.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:57 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:57
Roberta King: 
Susan: Measurement on the web AND in the real world are both important to measuring success.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:57 Roberta King
9:59
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Jon Alpert recommends that if you have a bunch of videos to post, put them up just one or two at a time. People won't scroll through a long list, stuff at the bottom of the list never gets watched. That's the kind of lesson you can learn from watching site metrics.
Monday March 22, 2010 9:59 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:00
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
If your goal is to drive traffic to another site or a concrete action on another site, you *can* measure that.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:00 Michael R. Bernstein
10:00
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
CrazyEgg is a good tool for measuring in-page click patterns.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:00 Michael R. Bernstein
10:03
Knight Digital Media Cent: 

Susan Mernit: Think about the activities that you want people to do on your site. That affects what kind of site features you'll need your developers to build.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:03 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:04
Twitter
CharlotteAnne: 
.@susanmernit "I’m a big fan of using measurement to help set goals and also set priorities (and accountability)." #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 10:04 CharlotteAnne
10:07
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit on site testing: It can be expenseive, but it doesn't have to be.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:07 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:07
Roberta King: 
Susan: Make sure what you want - all the separate pieces-can and will work together. Not always possible.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:07 Roberta King
10:08
Roberta King: 
User testing: make sure people can find what you want before you make it. Prototype it before you make it. It can be done on paper.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:08 Roberta King
10:08
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: If people can't find the search button on your site, wouldn't you like to learn that BEFORE you actually build the site? Wireframes and prototyping can tell you that. Lisa Williams will be discussing that tomorrow. You can even do some of this on paper.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:08 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:08
[Comment From Steve Saldivar Steve Saldivar : ] 
How do you make choices about what you cover and not cover in Oakland? How does The Oakland Tribune play a role in that? (If any)
Monday March 22, 2010 10:08 Steve Saldivar
10:10
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Steve, Amy Gahran here. The Oakland Local team makes editorial decisions froma combination of our cardinal areas of focus (listed at the top of every page in the site, our main sections), then what we have resources to cover (staff, volunteers, etc.) plus what we think we can offer a lot of unique value on.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:10 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:10
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Hmm. Don't forget about tying the user actions TO the larger strategic goals. Also, don't add every possible user action, as they can cannibalize each other (ie. if your goal is to promote tweeting stories, maybe enabling comments isn't a good idea).
Monday March 22, 2010 10:10 Michael R. Bernstein
10:10
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Steve, I'll be covering that "what to cover" issue in the content strategy section next. (Amy Gahran)
Monday March 22, 2010 10:10 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:11
Roberta King: 
Susan: Clear, external plans and goals keep everyone focused. Project manager (not necessarily the leader) can help keep this organized on time.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:11 Roberta King
10:11
Twitter
CharlotteAnne: 
@lisawilliams Steve Krug’s new book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, made our UE testing rock at @NOWCastSA #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 10:11 CharlotteAnne
10:12
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Book Charlotte Anne Lucas just recommended: Rocket Surgery Made Easy, by Steve Krug.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:12 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:13
Roberta King: 
Susan: Oakland Local launched with 35 local npo partners. We asked them what the site could do for them - they helped design the site.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:13 Roberta King
10:15
Roberta King: 
Susan: Ask NPOs how can this site be useful for you? Listen and respond.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:15 Roberta King
10:16
Roberta King: 
Susan: Looks at GoogleAnalytics for Oakland Local every morning. She also uses Facebook Insight. Compare data. FB gives you more detailed data (gender and age).
Monday March 22, 2010 10:16 Roberta King
10:17
Twitter
CharlotteAnne: 
.@susanmernit "you need to go to people in the community and ask their advice (and mean it)" *before the site is built* #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 10:17 CharlotteAnne
10:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Tools susan recommends for day-to-day metrics: Google Analytics, Facebook Insight
Monday March 22, 2010 10:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:19
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: We learned at OaklandLocal.com that a lot of small, simple, inexpensive or free stories like covering neighborhood meetings got way more traffic than the meatier journalistic stories.

(AMY NOTES): Yes, journalists definitely are not your target audience for a community news/info site. Don't worry so much if journo's trivialize your efforts -- and they will.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:19 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:20
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan recommends Getting Things Done for figuring out your processes into tasks.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:20 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:21
Roberta King: 
Susan recommends: Basecamp for task management.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:21 Roberta King
10:22
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan mernit also recommends these books: The One-Page Project Manager and the Definitive guide to project management
Monday March 22, 2010 10:22 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:23
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Hey folks, got any question for Susan Mernit about project/team management for community news/info projects? Ask them here!
Monday March 22, 2010 10:23 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:24
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
As a part of the KDMC boot camp, tomorrow morning at 9A PST there will be a class on Web Dev 101 for anyone starting or running a community site. You can participate for free online: http://bit.ly/bEmwxn
Monday March 22, 2010 10:24 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:25
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan mernit: "Developers almost never say no. They just tell you how much time something will take. That's why it's important to have your project requirements document."
Monday March 22, 2010 10:25 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:25
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Robin, what's the name of your site?
Monday March 22, 2010 10:25 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:25
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: It's very important for developers to communicat on various options to achieve client goals/requirements/priorities, item by item.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:25 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:25
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Link to the Crazy Egg tool I mentione eralier: http://www.crazyegg.com/
Monday March 22, 2010 10:25 Michael R. Bernstein
10:25
[Comment From Robin Robin : ] 
Unless, of course, you community is made up of journalists. That's what I've got going.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:25 Robin
10:26
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
yes, if your community *is* journalists, that's another matter -- and often a difficult problem, they're impossible to please and endlessly cynical :-) (Amy Gahran)
Monday March 22, 2010 10:26 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:26
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Since a website is a software project, Does Susan recommend also using a software project management tool in tandem?
Monday March 22, 2010 10:26 Michael R. Bernstein
10:27
Digidave: 
I use Pivotal Tracker for that.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:27 Digidave
10:27
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Michael, do you mean version control etc?
Monday March 22, 2010 10:27 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:28
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan: If you're doing the development yourself, software mgmt tools like version trackers are fantastic. But for the projects in the Community Info Challenge, that's probably overkill.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:28 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:28
[Comment From Robin Robin : ] 
impossible to please, endlessly cynical.. but oh so talented and in need of the strength that comes from community .. thanks, Amy.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:28 Robin
10:28
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Yes, version control, bug tracking, etc.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:28 Michael R. Bernstein
10:29
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
That concludes Susan mernit's session. Up next (10:45am PT) Amy Gahran on content strategy.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:29 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:30
Roberta King: 
I'll be live blogging in a bit for Amy Gahran on content.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:30 Roberta King
10:30
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Next up: you've got a site...now how do you make sure you have fresh, compelling stuff every single day (without spending a million bucks you don't have or driving yourself nuts)? Amy Gahran (twitter.com/agahran) presents.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:30 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:45
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy's opener: DROP AND GIVE ME 20!!
Monday March 22, 2010 10:45 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:46
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Darn, I promised I'd give her $100 if she did that...now I'm out $100.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:46 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:46
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Live video of Amy's session: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G
Monday March 22, 2010 10:46 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:49
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Content Strategy for Online Communities, Amy Gahran -- live video, online participation, downloadable assignments and resources: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20100321_community_information_challenge_boot_camp_liveblog_video_stream/
Monday March 22, 2010 10:49 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:52
Roberta King: 
Amy Gahran: Goals of two sorts, lofty and pragmatic. As in, saving the world and pleasing donors. Be honest about your goals and why you have them.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:52 Roberta King
10:52
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: Be brutally honest about your goals and whether you can achieve them.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:52 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:52
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
You can follow Amy on @twitter (with about 5,000 other folk) at @agahran.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:52 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:53
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
For the folk participating online, how do you manage to keep the stuff on your site fresh every day? What issues/times are the most challenging? (When I did a local site, summer was **dead**).
Monday March 22, 2010 10:53 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:53
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Your content strategy should be driven by real-world outcomes. Simple "I want a lot of readers" is too passive and won't build a committed community of regulars around your site.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:53 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:54
Digidave: 
You don't fail to reach a benchmark (unless you aren't trying) you just fail to measure the right thing.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:54 Digidave
10:54
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: There's really no such thing as a mass audience.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:54 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:54
Twitter
underoak: 
Listening to @agahran: #infoneeds session on content strategy. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. Liveblog: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB
Monday March 22, 2010 10:54 underoak
10:55
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: Don't get overly involved in doing personas based on the particular "types" in your audience. It's not a scriptwriting project.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:55 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:56
Roberta King: 
No mass audiences. Even with a demographic, parents for instance have variations that demographic. Drill down.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:56 Roberta King
10:57
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: Understand your audience's perspective. Forget about what you're doing -- what do THEY care about? If you're talking to them about a land use issue, is that on the top of their list? Probably, the answer is no.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:57 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
10:57
[Comment From Kwan Booth Kwan Booth : ] 
what are 3 things you'd like to see in the world as a result of your site?
Monday March 22, 2010 10:57 Kwan Booth
10:57
[Comment From Kwan Booth Kwan Booth : ] 
After you set up goals benchmarks are essential for tracking and setting realistic expectations.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:57 Kwan Booth
10:57
[Comment From Kwan Booth Kwan Booth : ] 
Think about things from your audience's perspectives. Forget about you. It's all about them.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:57 Kwan Booth
10:57
Digidave: 
If you build it they will come - never works (Amy Gahran). I totally agree.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:57 Digidave
10:59
Roberta King: 
Amy: Look at what people complain about, they're looking for a solution. Easier for people to join a conversation than start one.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:59 Roberta King
10:59
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: It's always easier to join a conversation than it is to start one -- join *their* conversations rather than talking at them.
Monday March 22, 2010 10:59 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:00
Roberta King: 
Amy: What are the communication vehicles people use? Meet people where they are. Be on their terms, in their place.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:00 Roberta King
11:01
Roberta King: 
Amy: Be naturally social online, join the conversation with authenticity. If you don't know where people are online, ask them. They'll tell you.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:01 Roberta King
11:01
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy's talking about team planning now -- make a list of team members, and how many hours they will commit per week to work on the project.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:01 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:03
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Make the estimate of hours very conservative.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:03 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:03
[Comment From Kwan Booth Kwan Booth : ] 
Where do we need to get to and how can we get there with the resources you have at the moment?
Monday March 22, 2010 11:03 Kwan Booth
11:05
Roberta King: 
Amy: Presenting a formla (will be or is) posted to sort out how much time your project will take. Not only the tech side, but the community development side. Be prepared to be scared! Lots of time, more than you think will be needed.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:05 Roberta King
11:06
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Take inventory of the skills and resources that your team has.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:06 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:06
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: Nothing is a one-shot deal. You want to get multiple types of content out of everything you do.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:06 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:07
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: Don't do it as one big report or one big content drop -- do you know what that does in Google? THUD. If you do it in lots of small, iterative pieces, Google will keep looking at you, keep indexing you, keep thinking, "Oh, you're getting more interesting."
Monday March 22, 2010 11:07 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:08
Roberta King: 
Amy: Break up your content into bites - a piece of audio, a story, a photo or a video. This will get the attention of Google.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:08 Roberta King
11:10
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Plot out community and partner resources you might be able to tap. What about the local high school's newspaper -- a friend who's retired but who once sold ads can give great advice, a nonprofit might want a wider audience for event listings and things they post on their site. ACTUALLY WRITE IT DOWN.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:10 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:10
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: as an ABSOLUTE BARE MINIMUM, you must have fresh content, one piece, at least six times a week.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:10 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:11
Roberta King: 
Amy: Starter package, one new piece of content six times of week. Need this to get the attention of search engines.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:11 Roberta King
11:12
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy: Three general types of content -- one, really quick and easy to dash off -- 30 minutes or less. two, things that will take 90 minutes, and three, things that will take four hours.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:12 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:13
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy's handouts have a great list of quick, easy-to-post types of content: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20100321_community_information_challenge_boot_camp_liveblog_video_stream/
Monday March 22, 2010 11:13 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:13
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Don't anthropomorphize search engines. They hate that.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:13 Michael R. Bernstein
11:13
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
@Michael: I know, how grubby and insulting.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:13 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:14
Roberta King: 
Amy: Q and A is compelling content; people like to read it. Easy!
Monday March 22, 2010 11:14 Roberta King
11:15
Roberta King: 
A fun spin on the Q and A is to just write the A - Esquire magazine does this and it it highly readable.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:15 Roberta King
11:16
Kwan Booth: 
Ask open questions to your audience. prompts engagement.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:16 Kwan Booth
11:18
Digidave: 
Citizen Media Law project: http://www.citmedialaw.org/
Monday March 22, 2010 11:18 Digidave
11:18
Kwan Booth: 
Lisa Williams: The citizen media law project http://www.citmedialaw.org/
Monday March 22, 2010 11:18 Kwan Booth
11:19
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
The Citizen Media Law Project has excellent state-by-state guides to media law in plain language.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:19 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:19
Roberta King: 
Amy: Photos are easy and very popular. People like to contribute images.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:19 Roberta King
11:20
Roberta King: 
The Rapidian works with its local Flickr group for its image of the day. www.therapidian.org
Monday March 22, 2010 11:20 Roberta King
11:20
Kwan Booth: 
Biggest takeaway from Amy so far. All content doesn't have to be a news story. Use the social/multi media tools to create content and build community.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:20 Kwan Booth
11:20
Roberta King: 
Amy: Validate people's experiences with a community news site.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:20 Roberta King
11:20
Kwan Booth: 
part of your role doing a community news and info site is to validate your community's experiences
Monday March 22, 2010 11:20 Kwan Booth
11:22
Kwan Booth: 
Lisa Williams: people are interested in your "editorial taste" as much as your original content.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:22 Kwan Booth
11:23
Digidave: 
Lisa Williams on curation. My take: Curation is editorial jujitsu. A great tool to have. As Jeff Jarvis says "do what you do best and link to the rest."
Monday March 22, 2010 11:23 Digidave
11:23
Twitter
DW_Fletcher: 
RT @journtoolbox: RT @lisawilliams: Crash course for journalists to start an online community from scratch: Live blog, video: http://bit.ly/ah5nUm #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:23 DW_Fletcher
11:23
Roberta King: 
Amy: Short tip lists, ideas, ways to do things. Make it local.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:23 Roberta King
11:23
Twitter
sspenguin: 
Streaming video: Technology and web development overview, Tue at 9A PT/12P ET. http://bit.ly/d8VG9G (via @lisawilliams) #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:23 sspenguin
11:24
Roberta King: 
Amy: Tip lists are evergreen, you're building a resource for people to look at. Build your evergreen content.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:24 Roberta King
11:26
Roberta King: 
Amy: Community calendar listings are important for traffic. Incredibly popular on the Oakland Local site.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:26 Roberta King
11:27
[Comment From enhager enhager : ] 
search engines are just about new content. they care about links and readers
Monday March 22, 2010 11:27 enhager
11:27
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Is Amy's presentation available? Her slides can in the video.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:27 Michael R. Bernstein
11:27
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
@Michael: She's actually just showing sites on the screen and duh, I should be putting the links in here!
Monday March 22, 2010 11:27 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:28
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
That was the calendar from http://www.oaklandlocal.com
Monday March 22, 2010 11:28 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:28
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Onscreen: showing photos published on Oakland Local, gathered from Flickr, and made into a slideshow that's embedded on the site.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:28 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:30
Roberta King: 
Amy: Not everything is fast and easy; there is content that takes time; but you also need to get content out the door. Have a mix.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:30 Roberta King
11:31
Twitter
lisawilliams: 
RT @ianbetteridge: @naomialderman Hey! I wrote that! ("journalism is when you pick up the phone") not sure I agree, access journalism != all
Monday March 22, 2010 11:31 lisawilliams
11:34
Roberta King: 
Amy is providing tons of great ideas for content, moving beyond a written story. More engaging and interesting to the audience.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:34 Roberta King
11:35
Roberta King: 
Amy: Expect to spend 90 minutes to 2 hours writing a story with 3 sources.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:35 Roberta King
11:36
Twitter
kdmc: 
.@agrahan #infoneeds session on content strategy planning starts 10 min. Live video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. Liveblog: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 kdmc
11:36
Twitter
RobertaFKing: 
Next up #infoneeds Amy from Oakland Local will talk about keeping content fresh on a community news site. Still live blogging: bit.ly/9Guzty
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 RobertaFKing
11:36
Twitter
lisawilliams: 
RT @RobertaFKing: Next up #infoneeds Amy from Oakland Local will talk about keeping content fresh on a community news site. Still live blogging: bit.ly/9Guzty
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 lisawilliams
11:36
Twitter
lisawilliams: 
@agahran orders the #infoneeds students to "Drop and give me 20!!" LOL Now I owe her $100.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 lisawilliams
11:36
Twitter
underoak: 
Listening to @agahran: #infoneeds session on content strategy. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. Liveblog: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 underoak
11:36
Twitter
CharlotteAnne: 
.@agahran what is Jack's Twitter? #infoneeds (Hi Amy's Dad!)
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 CharlotteAnne
11:36
Twitter
coautonauta: 
RT @underoak: Listening to @agahran: #infoneeds session on content strategy. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. Liveblog: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 coautonauta
11:36
Twitter
mvazquezs: 
RT @underoak: Listening to @agahran: #infoneeds session on content strategy. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 mvazquezs
11:36
Twitter
FSGtweets: 
Community Info Boot Camp discussion - Amy Gahran, Content strategy for community info websites: if you build it, they won't come #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 FSGtweets
11:36
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
If you build it, they will come never works. Find what they are interested in & find a way to make it relevant to them #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 MiamiTheater
11:36
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
It’s easier to join a conversation, than start one. #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 MiamiTheater
11:36
Twitter
sspenguin: 
Streaming video: Technology and web development overview, Tue at 9A PT/12P ET. http://bit.ly/d8VG9G (via @lisawilliams) #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 sspenguin
11:36
Twitter
DW_Fletcher: 
RT @journtoolbox: RT @lisawilliams: Crash course for journalists to start an online community from scratch: Live blog, video: http://bit.ly/ah5nUm #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 DW_Fletcher
11:36
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
Part of doing a community site is to validate people’s experiences. Citizens can post pictures of shared experiences #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 MiamiTheater
11:36
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
See where things are happening and map it. Maps can tell a story #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 11:36 MiamiTheater
11:37
Roberta King: 
Amy: Anything that is legally or politically sensitive that requires fact checking will take about four hours. Even a small story - 200 words will need that much time.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:37 Roberta King
11:38
Roberta King: 
Amy: Audio and video takes time and has a learning curve, but it gets traffic and is good for audiences with literacy issues.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:38 Roberta King
11:40
Roberta King: 
Roberta: Every video I've done for www.therapidian.org (5 or more) have taken me at least two hours, maybe longer. I love them, but they are time intense.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:40 Roberta King
11:40
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy's showing IBM's Many Eyes tool, which allows you to upload anything from a piece of text to a spreadsheet and it will let you pick a type of visualization and then let you embed it as if it is a youtube video.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:40 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:40
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
Monday March 22, 2010 11:40 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:40
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Amy's showing the Edmonton Journal http://www.edmontonjournal.com
Monday March 22, 2010 11:40 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:41
Roberta King: 
Amy: Soundslides, puts audio and still photos together.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:41 Roberta King
11:42
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
The tool used to create narrated slideshows is Soundslide (I like SlideShare, too)
Monday March 22, 2010 11:42 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:42
Kwan Booth: 
amy rocks!!!
Monday March 22, 2010 11:42 Kwan Booth
11:43
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
She's now talking about CoverItLive.com (which we're using right now)
Monday March 22, 2010 11:43 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:45
Roberta King: 
Kwan Booth: Facebook and Twitter are rich with content for local news sites.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:45 Roberta King
11:46
Roberta King: 
Kwan Booth: SM is more informal and people are willing to share their passions with a local news site.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:46 Roberta King
11:48
Roberta King: 
Kwan Booth: Use of the @ symbol is now coming of use on Facebook. Will post to their wall. You need to be connected with them. Has to be their exact FB name.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:48 Roberta King
11:48
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Kwan talks about Facebook Insight, which gives you demographic information on visitors and clicks to your facebook fan page.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:48 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
11:50
Roberta King: 
Amy: Set goals, a plan that works toward your goals, know you have lots of kinds of content to reach those goals and use analytics to see check your progress.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:50 Roberta King
11:52
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
What does Amy think of Buzz vs. Twitter?
Monday March 22, 2010 11:52 Michael R. Bernstein
11:55
[Comment From Liz Joyner Liz Joyner : ] 
Village Square's twitter: VillageSquareFL for local Florida, VillageSquareUS for national (same formula for other states)
Monday March 22, 2010 11:55 Liz Joyner
11:55
Roberta King: 
Amy: Expect more conversation about your topic on Twitter and FB, than on your site. You can share between all sources.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:55 Roberta King
11:56
Digidave: 
Amy Gahran - not into Buzz. I actually like it - I agree the rollout was horrible. But I'm connecting with people there that aren't on Twitter.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:56 Digidave
11:57
Kwan Booth: 
Amy G not a Buzz fan. I'm still split. I like that it's a controlled (somewhat) private system with no character limits
Monday March 22, 2010 11:57 Kwan Booth
11:57
Roberta King: 
Amy: Commenting is a must have. Even if people don't comment, they need the option.
Monday March 22, 2010 11:57 Roberta King
11:59
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
One of Amy's handouts is a spreadsheet that will help you calculate your "content budget".
Monday March 22, 2010 11:59 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
12:01
Roberta King: 
Amy: Search Flickr by tag or key word and make sure there is a creative commons license before you post or use. Also, build your own Flickr set.
Monday March 22, 2010 12:01 Roberta King
12:14
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
This liveblog is on standby while we have lunch, will resume later this afternoon
Monday March 22, 2010 12:14 Knight Digital Media Cent
12:14
[Standby]  Breaking for lunch, back later
12:55
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Liveblog is resuming. David Cohn of Spot.us is talking about: "So you just got a bunch of money: now what?"
Monday March 22, 2010 12:55 Knight Digital Media Cent
12:59
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: When you weork with developers/designers, you need to know what every button really does. Don't just say "I want social media on my site"
Monday March 22, 2010 12:59 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:00
Michele McLellan: 
David Cohn says it's important to translate vision for your site into fine detail for developer.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:00 Michele McLellan
1:01
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Dave Cohn (@digidave on twitter): "There are no competitors, only collaborators in disguise."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:01 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
1:01
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn recommends Pivotal Tracker as a tool for working with developers and understanding/setting priorities.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:01 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:02
[Comment From Michael R. Bernstein Michael R. Bernstein : ] 
Kwan, the main reason I like Buzz is the same reason I like identica/StatusNet: It's a federated system, just like email. Twitter and Facebook seem like walled gardens, and possibly doomed to the same fate as AOL.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:02 Michael R. Bernstein
1:03
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: Experimentation is more efficient than too much deliberation or consensus. Just try stuff and see how it works.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:03 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:03
Twitter
knightfdn: 
RT @lisawilliams: @Digidave of @Spotus is talking at today’s #infoneeds gathering about starting from scratch. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:03 knightfdn
1:05
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: "It's OK to fail. You can't plan for every contingency. If it's a problem, you'll figure that out and iterate to fix it."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:05 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:05
Michele McLellan: 
Davie Cohn: "The faster you fail, the faster you'll learn"
Monday March 22, 2010 1:05 Michele McLellan
1:06
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: If you try to anticipate & discuss every problem in advance before you even try, you'll waste a lot of time and you'll still hit problems.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:06 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:06
Twitter
agahran: 
@Digidave’s #infoneeds presentation fallback: just ask @lisawilliams. http://moby.to/rn4d2f
Monday March 22, 2010 1:06 agahran
1:07
[Comment From Ted Mann Ted Mann : ] 
Do you think it's better to hire really talented freelance web developers or try to build up your own team to build your site in-house?
Monday March 22, 2010 1:07 Ted Mann
1:09
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Dave says: Spot.us first went with a boutique consultancy in FL to develop. Now he's evolved to having in-house development. In the long run he thinks that's better. Having a technical cofounder is striking gold.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:09 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:09
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Dave says: outsourcing can be less expensive, but there are tradeoffs.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:09 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:09
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
@Ted I think you hire outside people to bootstrap in the big intense start phase of the project, then have someone inside (or a close, ongoing relationship with someone) while it's running.

Monday March 22, 2010 1:09 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
1:10
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
Ask yourself, the day after launch, how much will it cost to add one feature/fix one bug; who will do it, what's the startup cost? An outside firm may not be able to afford small fixes and thus you're in for another bill.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:10 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
1:12
Michele McLellan: 
David Cohn: There's no such thing as too much e-mail. There's just too much annoying e-mail.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:12 Michele McLellan
1:13
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: "As you evolve, you're going to lose some people. For instance, there's no such thing as too much e-mail, but there is such a thing as too much annoying e-mail."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:13 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:13
Twitter
agahran: 
@SaheliDatta All video from #infoneeds bootcamp will be archived on http://knightdigitalmediacenter.org
Monday March 22, 2010 1:13 agahran
1:14
Roberta King: 
Dave Cohn: Created project buzz with openness and transparency. The "why" it is doing is as interesting as the "what." People like both narratives.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:14 Roberta King
1:14
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams says David Cohn takes a very personal approach to users. He takes the time to interact. "Why not take a few minotes to send personal e-mails to your users? If you get to the point that you have too many users for that, YOU WIN!"
Monday March 22, 2010 1:14 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:16
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn on his biggest Spot.us mistake: "In the last 6 months, we should have expanded into more regions, but we weren't doing that, we were holding back. We need to learn how to expand into other regions without partners. We can't let that hold us back."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:16 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit says: "David's approach is the opposite of what any former journo will tell you. Journos want to control everything."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: Don't take risks that you can't afford to take. This is why small iterative steps and experiments work better.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:19
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: "I come from a web-radical perspective. But I actually don't believe in old vs. new media."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:19 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:19
[Comment From Ted Mann Ted Mann : ] 
Do you think more hyperlocal and citj sites should embrace open-source software? Or, in the cases where the sites have developed their own custom CMS's or interfaces, should they make an effort to open-source that code, too, so other sites can benefit?
Monday March 22, 2010 1:19 Ted Mann
1:20
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
@Ted For me at least, adopting open source software was a no-brainer...it was like getting thousands of developers adding features...developers I did not have to pay.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:20 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
1:20
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Ted: In my experience, sites that depend on custom/proprietary code almost always end up spending too much money, losing flexibility, falling farther behind.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:20 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:21
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
The upside of proprietary is that if something breaks, you can pick up the phone & do the Angry Customer Dance. (At least for as long as the software company is in business). Planning for support/maintenance is an issue if you custom-build or use an open source package.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:21 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
1:22
Lisa Williams, Placeblogger: 
(BTW: tap shoes are required for the Angry Customer Dance. Just so you know.)
Monday March 22, 2010 1:22 Lisa Williams, Placeblogger
1:23
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Participant asks if community info challenge sites could use Spot.us. David Cohn says "steal this idea" -- His code is open source, other people can use it -- but that does take some development effort.

Or easier to partner with Spot.us. They're expanding to other areas. He wants to open it up to other regions.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:23 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:23
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: "The concept of community funded reporting is much bigger than just Spot.us, and that's what inspired me to do this site. Anybody can do this."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:23 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:24
Roberta King: 
The Spot.us concept is replicable.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:24 Roberta King
1:25
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
In about a week, Spot.us will launch a donate widget. David Cohn "That's what will inform us about an API development. It will show us what info we need to share."
Monday March 22, 2010 1:25 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:27
Roberta King: 
Dave: I'm a relentless self-marketing (in response to how did you find audience). Social media, blog, e news and other vehicles.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:27 Roberta King
1:30
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
The upcoming Spot.us widget sound cool. Anyone can create a widget to allow people to donate to a spot.us pitch they like. I'm gonna play with that!

Monday March 22, 2010 1:30 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:31
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
OK, lunch is over. We'll resume sporadic liveblog coverage of the Community Information Needs bootcamp this afternoon. Regular coverage starts 9am tomorrow morning.
Monday March 22, 2010 1:31 Knight Digital Media Cent
1:31
[Standby]  More sporadic coverage this afternoon. Regular coverage resumes 9am Tuesday
2:46
Twitter
RobertaFKing: 
We're talking all about social media at #infoneeds The folks from @oaklandlocal are leading the discussion.
Monday March 22, 2010 2:46 RobertaFKing
6:46
Michele McLellan: 
Next up, Geneva Overlhoser, director of journalism at USC.
Monday March 22, 2010 6:46 Michele McLellan
6:47
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Thrilled that communities are taking on news and information in the public interest
Monday March 22, 2010 6:47 Michele McLellan
6:49
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: We were trained to do grand work, not to worry about the audience.
Monday March 22, 2010 6:49 Michele McLellan
6:50
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Traditional journalism was far from perfect. One of the reasons was that we didn't worry about the audience, whether we were serving it, whether the audience could grasp the issues.
Monday March 22, 2010 6:50 Michele McLellan
6:51
Twitter
agahran: 
.@genevaoh "For a long time journos were TRAINED not to think abt the business side. That was a mistake." #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 6:51 agahran
6:51
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: We are now at a moment where citizens and communities are worried about news and information. An we should be worried. Welcome you as part of the collaboration around news as we go forward.
Monday March 22, 2010 6:51 Michele McLellan
6:52
Twitter
agahran: 
.@genevaoh "we've gotten to the point that communities are actively concerned abt the future of info. That's a good thing" #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 6:52 agahran
6:52
Twitter
mvazquezs: 
RT @agahran: .@genevaoh "For a long time journos were TRAINED not to think abt the business side. That was a mistake." #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 6:52 mvazquezs
6:53
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: We can do this better than it was done in the past. We have to be collaborative, we have to engage the people formerly known as the audience.
Monday March 22, 2010 6:53 Michele McLellan
6:55
Twitter
michelemclellan: 
RT @agahran: .@genevaoh "we've gotten to the point communities are actively concerned abt future of info. That's a good thing" #infoneeds
Monday March 22, 2010 6:55 michelemclellan
6:57
Twitter
agahran: 
.@genevaoh "My USC students want to do journalism bcz of passion, not $, like why artists do art." (me: cld be another problem" #infoneeds)
Monday March 22, 2010 6:57 agahran
6:57
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Journalists and community news providers need to be stewards of good conversations.
Monday March 22, 2010 6:57 Michele McLellan
7:01
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Journalism = tell difficult truths, enable communities to find solutions.
Monday March 22, 2010 7:01 Michele McLellan
7:02
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Too often, stories we've told in the past have kept people from building communities.
Monday March 22, 2010 7:02 Michele McLellan
7:26
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Journalism schools are going to increasingly be part of the answer. High school students covering their communities, collaborating with ethnic media, enabling people to tell their stories on our Web site.
Monday March 22, 2010 7:26 Michele McLellan
7:27
Michele McLellan: 
Overholser: Journalism of the future = collaborative, participatory, transparent.
Monday March 22, 2010 7:27 Michele McLellan
7:57
Twitter
KtheBear: 
RT @ojr: All video and presentation materials from @KDMC #infoneeds bootcamp will be archived on http://bit.ly/d1qYXt #journ #ascj
Monday March 22, 2010 7:57 KtheBear
8:31
Twitter
mvazquezs: 
RT @agahran: .@genevaoh "My USC students want to do journalism bcz of passion, not $, like why artists do art." (me: cld be another problem" #infoneeds)
Monday March 22, 2010 8:31 mvazquezs
7:33
Twitter
kdmc: 
Video stream of our #infoneeds bootcamp for community news/info sites resumes 9am PT: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. Liveblog: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:33 kdmc
9:08
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Community Info Needs bootcamp is resuming. Lisa Williams of Placeblogger is talking about Web Development 101.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:08 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:11
Roberta King: 
Lisa: Finding the right tech people to work with - other grantees are a resource for finding developers. Lisa will list some resources later for finding a developer.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:11 Roberta King
9:12
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: Don't underestimate the "cool factor" of community news/info projects as an appeal to get good techies/geeks to work with you. "Lemme tell you -- every one of your projects are WAY MORE INTERESTING than another insurance site!"
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:12 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:14
Roberta King: 
Lisa: What kind of a relationship do you want? If you like someone, see what you can do to make a financial commitment to having them come and stay awhile.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:14 Roberta King
9:14
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: Envision the kind of relationship you want to have with your developers. The flexibility/cost structure of working with contractors can be convenient -- but if at all possible, if you find a good developer who cares about your project, find a financial arrangement that incents them to stay with your project for the long haul. That's one thing I wish I'd done differently with Placeblogger.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:14 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:17
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
Having a startup is like having one long existential crisis @lisawilliams #infoneedsYou keep learning and changing your site
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:17 MiamiTheater
9:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Reminder: This event is being video streamed.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:18
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams is making point that community foundations involved in the Knight Community Info Challenge generally have pretty good starting budgets for their local news/info projects.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:18 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:18
Roberta King: 
Lisa: How much? Make sure when they tell you what it will cost and if it makes you gulp, go back at it. There are pros and cons to hourly vs. project work. AND yes, you do have enough money to do the project. Your mission and your budget are on your side.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:18 Roberta King
9:19
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa is asking bootcamp participants to do this quick online exercise
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:19 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:21
Roberta King: 
The exercise is very cool, check out the link if you're on line here.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:21 Roberta King
9:31
Roberta King: 
Lisa is asking people to read parts of the exercise. Projects were influenced by: GlobalGiving, Donors Choose, YourPBC.org, Facebook, ConnectRichmond, US.net, propublica and New York Times.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:31 Roberta King
9:33
Twitter
FSGtweets: 
Boot Camp with @lisawilliams: Knowing your strategy is important, even when developing the specs for your website #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:33 FSGtweets
9:35
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Interesting questions from Lisa Williams' assignment for Knight Community Info Challenge bootcamp attendees, which are doing community news/info projects:
  • Describe your project in one sentence as you would to a friendly stranger you met at a bus stop.
  • Name seven sites, projects, or mobile applications that you would list as influences for this project:
-
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:35 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:37
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
One participant lists NPR Storycorps as an influence for their project. Good choice!

Lisa says about this site that it's easy for people to figure out what to do on that site.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:37 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:38
Roberta King: 
Hallie from FSG has used a story model for evaluation of a project.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:38 Roberta King
9:38
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
If you're doing a community news/info project: What sites/projects do you consider to be your "influences"? Please respond via this blog
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:38 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:39
Roberta King: 
FSG is Foundation Strategy Group. They design and conduct evaluation.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:39 Roberta King
9:43
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Another site cited as an influence by a bootcamp participant: NY Times Timeswire.

Lisa notes that this and Times Reader are basically just alternative lenses on the NYTimes content.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:43 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:43
Roberta King: 
Other influences for particpants: TeachforAmerica.org
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:43 Roberta King
9:44
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Another influence cited: Politifact -- which is factual and formulaic, but still really fun, engaging, and navigable/shareable.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:44 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:45
Roberta King: 
Lisa: Knowing what you like will help you show a developer what you want. Also hire someone who loves your project.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:45 Roberta King
9:45
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams on how to understand the responses you'll get from coders about your proposed project:
  • packaged v custom software
  • open source v. commercial software
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:45 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:46
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: When developers say they're going to build your site in PHP or Rails, that means they're going to build you a custom site.

It makes sense to go custom is you want features that aren't availabled in prepackaged software. Takes longer to develop.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:46 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:47
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: Cons of custom software: You need to create your own documentation for how to use your site. Makes training harder & more laborious.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:47 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:48
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: It's surprisingly difficult for one coder to read the code another coder wrote. That can make it difficult to change developers on a custom software project.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:48 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:49
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: Placeblogger.com is a Drupal-based site. That's a prepackaged open-source CMS. "When I hired new employees recently, the first thing I did was give them a drupal book."
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:49 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:49
Roberta King: 
Lisa: With Drupal you can get up and running pretty quick and is pretty universal; it ahs limits though. Custom sites can be difficult to teach to others; but are flexible and highly customized.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:49 Roberta King
9:50
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
David Cohn: Spot.us started as a drupal site, but quickly progressed to custom coded. The drupal site had limited functionality, basically an online brochure and collected e-mail applications.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:50 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:51
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit points out that Spot.us is really a transactional application, not just a news/info/community site. Drupal and most content management systems don't handle transactional stuff really well, so if your project is really more of an application than a site, custom coding might be a better approach.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:51 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:55
Roberta King: 
Lisa: Drupal was created and a multi-user and WordPress was created as a single user; but WP is evolving into multi user.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:55 Roberta King
9:56
Roberta King: 
Lisa is asking people what platforms they are using.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:56 Roberta King
9:58
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
What CIC bootcamp participants are using as back-end on their community news/info sites:
- Wordpress (2)
- Still deciding (8)
- Custom (2)
- Joomla (2)
- piggybacking on newspaper site
- Drupal (2)
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:58 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:59
Roberta King: 
Lisa: Write a spec. Wireframes, one page about the users, one page of user stories, one page of content types and list of features.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:59 Roberta King
10:00
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams on writing a developer spec for your site:

  • Wireframes: Just shows where you think the page elements are
  • One-page description of user role
  • One page description of user stories (kind of a short character sketch)
  • One-page list of content types
  • List of features
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:00 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:01
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa notes: "All of those parts of the spec, except user roles, are actually starting points. Start with whatever works for you.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:01 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:01
Twitter
FSGtweets: 
#kdmc Boot Camp w/@lisawilliams: Hallie Preskill: Use stories as evaluation data, like StoryCorps and Ball Foundation. #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:01 FSGtweets
10:01
Roberta King: 
Lisa: Wireframes - make drawings (wireframes) of what you want to see from our your site.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:01 Roberta King
10:03
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams is leading people through another exercise on user roles: Groups of potential user actions (what different types of users can DO on the site)

Examples: unregistered visitor, registered visitor, contributor, editor, etc.

Don't forget that site manager (you) is a key role that must be on the list.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:03 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:04
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Try it yourself! See Exercise 2, User Roles
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:04 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:11
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Flicker slideshow: Examples of paper wireframe diagrams for web sites from a variety of projects.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:11 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:16
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: When you create these 5 things to share with a coder, the development process ALWAYS goes better. Because coders are always looking for the client that's going to drive them crazy because they don't know what they want.

  • Wireframes: Just shows where you think the page elements are
  • One-page description of user role
  • One page description of user stories (kind of a short character sketch)
  • One-page list of content types
  • List of features
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:16 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:16
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa Williams: Content types can be photos, blog entries, calendar posts, directory listings, etc.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:16 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa: Features are the interactions between user roles and content types.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:20
Roberta King: 
Lisa is asking participants to sketch three pages of their potential website.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:20 Roberta King
10:20
Roberta King: 
Lisa: Commit to learn a few basic skills so you can do quick fixes.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:20 Roberta King
10:22
Roberta King: 
Amy: Meetup.com tool for meeting with like minded people.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:22 Roberta King
10:22
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Lisa also recommends getting together with groups of other people who make stuff:
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:22 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:25
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
This concludes Lisa Williams' talk on WebDev 101.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:25 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:26
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Next up (starting 10:45): MinnPost CEO and editor Joel Kramer.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:26 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:26
[Standby]  Liveblog will resume 10:45am PT with talk by MinnPost CEO and editor Joel Kramer.
10:33
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Correction: Liveblog will resume 10:45am PT with talk by Susan Mernit of OaklandLocal.com on project launch strategy
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:33 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:33
[Standby]  Liveblog will resume 10:45am PT with talk by Susan Mernit of OaklandLocal.com on project launch strategy
10:45
Twitter
danielabarbosa: 
RT @agahran: Next 10:45am PT #infoneeds bootcamp: @susanmernit on proj. launch. Liveblog: http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb, video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:45 danielabarbosa
10:46
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Resuming with a talk by Susan Mernit of OaklandLocal.com on Launching you Project: Using Social Media to Create a conversation. Slides.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:46 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:47
Roberta King: 
Susan: Tapping into the social media "ecosystem"
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:47 Roberta King
10:49
Roberta King: 
Susan: Lots of resources and many media are available. FB, Twitter, Flicker, Meetup, YouTube, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and e mail.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:49 Roberta King
10:50
Roberta King: 
Susan: Develop a promotion plan and set goals. Create assets - Tweets, bitly, posts, messages. Time box it: work on people getting things up at the same time. create buzz.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:50 Roberta King
10:51
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit recommends to plan to "timebox" social media activity to promote a project launch. Decide on a window of a few hours to create buzz with posts to various social media services. That compresses the time that people talk about your project, and creates more of a buzz effect.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:51 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:52
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: having you posse is important -- people who follow you on social media, but also any friends/influencers who want to support your project. Can include community leaders, specific journalists, etc. "You can only ask for them to mention/support your launch, but then you get what you get from them."
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:52 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:52
Roberta King: 
Susan: Try to keep it going as long as possible. Don't let it go away in a day, try for 2 -3 days.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:52 Roberta King
10:52
Twitter
VikkiPorter: 
#infoneeds Project launch=kit of social media assets + timebox launch + align posse + keep it going as long as you can http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:52 VikkiPorter
10:52
Twitter
kdmc: 
#infoneeds Project launch=kit of social media assets + timebox launch + align posse + keep it going as long as you can http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:52 kdmc
10:52
Twitter
ojr: 
#infoneeds Project launch=kit of social media assets + timebox launch + align posse + keep it going as long as you can http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:52 ojr
10:53
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: Timeboxing social media activity is not a one-shot deal. Don't pack up and go home after first few hours of activity. keep monitoring to address & encourage 2nd & third waves of attention and more.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:53 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:53
Roberta King: 
Susan: Comment back to comments and spend some time on the conversation. Helps spread the word.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:53 Roberta King
10:56
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan mernit is outlining the timing, tactics of social media outreach for recent launch of California Watch.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:56 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:58
Roberta King: 
Susan: For California Watch project, PR firm worked with traditional media. Susan her team worked on social media. Used e mail as a light and respectful way on the same day. Asked friends and staff to work on this.
Set up a Facebook page and Twitter feeds with #californiawatch tag to see who was talking.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:58 Roberta King
10:58
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: We put together a team of about 4 people who did these kinds of outreach around the launch time window:
  • E-mail: Individual and to lists, both before and during the launch timebox
  • Facebook fan page
  • Twitter feeds
  • Multiple updates
  • Multiple retweets (not automated -- each one was uniquely worded/focused)
  • Calls to register/join FB fan page
  • Callouts & acknowledgements to bloggers and tweeters
  • Callouts and pointer to blog posts and news stories
  • PR: blogger outreach
  • PR: Interviews and media stories
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:58 Knight Digital Media Cent
10:59
Roberta King: 
Susan: Kept Tweets different, not a robotic function.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:59 Roberta King
10:59
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Slides from Susan's presentation.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 10:59 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:00
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: Important to link multiple links highlighting various parts of your site or content items for launch.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:00 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:00
Roberta King: 
Susan: We Re-tweeted a lot and we also replied to Tweets. Used Twitter and Facebook to promote one another.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:00 Roberta King
11:01
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: The day after the CA Watch launch, we did a roundup of the buzz to give the project team a sense of how people were reacting, general awareness.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:01 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:01
Roberta King: 
Susan: Highlighted the news coverage of CaliforniaWatch the next day in Tweets.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:01 Roberta King
11:02
Roberta King: 
Susan: Showing a day by day (essentially) hour by hour time line of social media.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:02 Roberta King
11:04
Roberta King: 
Susan: CA Watch SM went from zero to 1,000 followers in about a week.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:04 Roberta King
11:06
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit point out that since CA Watch there hasn't really been anyone there in the community manager role, so even though they're still getting social media traction, it's not what it could be.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:06 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:07
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan mernit: When planning a social media strategy for a project launch, tools like spreadsheets and project management software can help a lot for team coordination.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:07 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:08
Roberta King: 
Susan: Assigned people to specific newspapers (10 in all) to make comments and clarify information for readers/commenters.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:08 Roberta King
11:08
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: When planning social media strategy for project launch, keep track of relevant twitter handles, URLs, facebook pages, comment threads, etc. So you know what to watch and what effect is.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:08 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:09
Roberta King: 
Susan: Practice until you are comfortable with the tools. Plan for your launch by becoming fluent yourself.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:09 Roberta King
11:09
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan mernit: Get familiar with social media tools WELL BEFORE you have to use it in a project launch. If you're not comfortable with social media yet, get a buddy for each tool and learn what you can by doing.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:09 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:11
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Tools susan recommends: hashtags, bit.ly, blip.tv, google analytics, tweetdeck
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:11 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:13
Twitter
agahran: 
Slides for @susanmernit's #infoneeds presentation on social media strategy for web project launch: http://bit.ly/9cmU8C
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:13 agahran
11:15
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit. What to look at in analytics to measure launch impact:
  • Referral traffic
  • Twitter & FB growth
  • Influence: Were you retweeted?
  • Google Juice: Count inbound links & mentions
  • Engagement: signups, registrations, comments, posts, downloads, etc.
Write and share a summary and evaluate what worked and what could have worked better.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:15 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:16
Roberta King: 
Susan: Look at the qualitative data, too. What people are saying, not just how many.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:16 Roberta King
11:16
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Participant asks re engagement: Example of what metric is most meaningful for engagement on OaklandLocal.com
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:16 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit: When we launched Oaklandlocal.com in Oct, we thought most important metric would be #people who registered to comment, and actual comments.

5 months later, Facebook is the most vital place for comments about OaklandLocal.

So you need to be willing to shift your metrics based on what your community actually does.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:17
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan mernit: For OaklandLocal, number of retweets may be more important than number of Twitter follwers.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:17 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:22
Roberta King: 
Susan: Make SM part of your daily workflow; keep the conversation going with your community; go where people are; have live events and share URLs and be a curate for your followers.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:22 Roberta King
11:23
Roberta King: 
Susan: Curator - passing along information that your readers will be interested in and care about.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:23 Roberta King
11:24
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
OaklandLocal on meetup.com.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:24 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:25
Roberta King: 
Susan: Add your @twitter name to your e mail signature. Cross-pollinate your SM outlets one to another.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:25 Roberta King
11:26
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Oakland Local facebook fan page. Note that we have a vanity URL: http://www.facebook.com/oaklocal
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:26 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:26
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Oakland Local on Twitter: @oaklandlocal
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:26 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:26
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Susan Mernit is moving on to Q&A now....
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:26 Knight Digital Media Cent
11:29
Roberta King: 
Susan: We took great care to not agree or disagree with comments to CaliforniaWatch, we kept a neutral and factual voice.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:29 Roberta King
11:30
Digidave: 
Susan Mernit: Do less before you do more. Start with the baby steps that work.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:30 Digidave
11:32
Roberta King: 
Susan: Friendship for real and friendship in social media are different and need to be defined in your own mind. Some social media "friendships' are more casual connections, despite the word.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:32 Roberta King
11:34
Digidave: 
Susan Mernit: You do not need to write a tweet or facebook note at the level of a polished document. It can be colloquial. Different levels of discourse is something to think about.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:34 Digidave
11:34
Roberta King: 
Angela Connor: Content that goes viral needs/usually needs to be re-defined by the user to push it to an interesting level. Your personal opinion or spin on it pushes it out.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:34 Roberta King
11:36
Digidave: 
Susan: If you are launching in the next quarter - three months ahead is not too early to start thinking about it. If you are days/weeks away - you should get on it now. Think about who can help you.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:36 Digidave
11:37
Roberta King: 
Susan: Find some college students to help you with your SM launch for your project. SM is a part of their lives.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:37 Roberta King
11:38
Digidave: 
Susan: A lot of things that are useful are the new free press release sites. They are free (but not necc. of high value). An example: PitchEngine.com
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:38 Digidave
11:39
Roberta King: 
Susan: Oakland Local SM pages went up a few days before the launch.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:39 Roberta King
11:40
Roberta King: 
Joel from MinnPost: Started the PR campaign for MinnPost before the launch with a temporary site and so labeled and people blogged about how bad it was.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:40 Roberta King
11:42
Digidave: 
Covo about how to handle the launch right: A landing page that people know isn't the FULL website. Create excitement - but make sure people know it isn't the finished site.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:42 Digidave
11:43
Roberta King: 
Participiant: What if you've already launched? Susan: You can do a re-launch of a specific aspect of the site.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:43 Roberta King
11:43
Twitter
davidmcraney: 
RT @lisawilliams: WebDev for journalists 101 class is done, but available for free here: http://bit.ly/webdevforjournalists #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:43 davidmcraney
11:43
Digidave: 
Angela Connor: You can be in "beta" make that word your best friend.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:43 Digidave
11:44
Digidave: 
Question: Are there things that are more important to do than others: Susan - my own personal belief - this is the best source of free traffic. It's cost-effective and authentic. But everyone must set their own priorities.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:44 Digidave
11:46
Digidave: 
RT @davidmcraney RT @lisawilliams: WebDev for journalists 101 class is done, but available for free here: http://bit.ly/webdevforjournalists #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:46 Digidave
11:46
Roberta King: 
Susan: You can find people who are talented and social media savvy who will help you out if you are uncomfortable.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:46 Roberta King
11:51
Digidave: 
Everyone is going to work on their homework now - so they can get ready for their presentaitons on Thursday. So it's break time - after that is lunch. Not sure if that'll be livecasted or not (12:30) where we will hear from Joel Kramer from MinnPost.com
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:51 Digidave
11:51
[Standby]  We will return soon! It's time for lunch. We are hungry. Back around 12:30 or 1pm.
12:06
Twitter
PBSIdeaLab: 
agahran: Slides for @susanmernit's #infoneeds presentation on social media strategy for web project launch: http://bit.ly/9cmU8C: agah...
Tuesday March 23, 2010 12:06 PBSIdeaLab
12:06
Twitter
PBSIdeaLab: 
agahran: Now speaking at #infoneeds bootcamp: @susanmernit on proj launch & social media. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G Liveblog: http:/...
Tuesday March 23, 2010 12:06 PBSIdeaLab
12:56
Digidave: 
And we are back. Now with Joel Kramer from MinnPost.com
Tuesday March 23, 2010 12:56 Digidave
12:59
Digidave: 
Started with a mission statement of providing high quality reporting and analysis for the people in Minnisota.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 12:59 Digidave
1:00
Digidave: 
Joel: The old way of financing is deteriorating .... so I focus a lot on this question of sustainability.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:00 Digidave
1:01
Digidave: 
Joel: It's important not to be rigid - you have to be willing to be flexible.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:01 Digidave
1:02
Digidave: 
Joel: The only thing you can be sure of about a plan that goes beyond 6 months in the future - is that it's wrong.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:02 Digidave
1:04
Digidave: 
Joel: We do a lot of serious work and some of our stories are really long. All these things take professional journalists (not as well paid as they used to be).
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:04 Digidave
1:05
Digidave: 
Joel: If you want to break even on the web - you have to keep your cost of content creation low. It's a sad statement to have to make. "Break even" to me means without foundation support. I love foundations .... but our goal is to break even without them.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:05 Digidave
1:06
Digidave: 
Joe: Membership and earned income (advertisments).
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:06 Digidave
1:07
Digidave: 
Joel: Membership, advertising, events, and more - but foundations are seed money. But as far as I can tell many sites are planning on foundation support. The number of nonprofit startups is going faster than the foundations right now.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:07 Digidave
1:07
Digidave: 
Joel: Another thing: Experimentation - you can get real data and feedback on the web. We change the site all the time because of this.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:07 Digidave
1:09
Digidave: 
Joel: It's also critical to decide strategically what measures matter to you. We are not focused on unique monthly visitors. If you are a news site - that is a misleading number - it fills up with passersby who come once and stay 10 seconds.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:09 Digidave
1:10
Digidave: 
Joel: You get what you measure. As a result - we don't pay attention to jumps in our traffic from national stories. But our mission is to serve Minnisota - so that's the wrong thing. We care about repeat visitors.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:10 Digidave
1:11
Digidave: 
Joel: We are a destination site and we have a destination strategy.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:11 Digidave
1:14
Digidave: 
Joel: You will gain a lot through the experience of just trying things on your site and seeing what works and what doesn't. But it's also critical to engage with the networking here and picking up the best practices of others.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:14 Digidave
1:19
Digidave: 
Joel: Our ads are mostly related to ideas - they are more transactional that sponsorships.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:19 Digidave
1:21
Digidave: 
Joel: In 2009 we had expenses of 1.2 million and revenue in 1.1 million. That is much better than the year before. This year our goal is to have a small surplus. In the 1.1 of revenu - about 40% were members and our yearly event - about 35% from foundations and 25% from advertising sponsorship (trying to raise that number in 2010).
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:21 Digidave
1:22
Digidave: 
Joel: Huge traffic alone is not a sustainable strategy. YouTube - as the example lost a LOT of money with all their traffic in 08'.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:22 Digidave
1:23
Digidave: 
Joel: You need a plan on how to turn the traffic into money. It doesn't look promising to be able to change a lot. I hope that serious content providers figure out a way to charge - our model is the voluntary model. Everyone can see it - and then we ask you to contribute.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:23 Digidave
1:25
Digidave: 
Joel: Dissinterested numbers - the government could match donations to sites. That's the kind of support that we would need from the government. They have to stay un-involved in the type of content (liberal, convservative, etc).
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:25 Digidave
1:25
Digidave: 
Question to Joel: What are common mistakes you see?

Joel: I wouldn't presume to know what somebody else is doing wrong - we do so many things ourselves. But never blame the customers or the eco-system. You'll know if you are doing something wrong.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:25 Digidave
1:29
Digidave: 
Joel: What I fear most is the very large number of players in this eco-system to have a clear strategy about what they are going to do when the foundations stop giving them money. The number of players is going to start growing rapidly - since the barrier to entry is much smaller.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:29 Digidave
1:30
Digidave: 
Amy Gahran asks about MinnPosts real time ads: Something they designed to allow advertisers to change their message on MinnPost.com through an RSS feed (twitter or their blog). - He says - this has not been working very well. It is a widget - and there is no cohesion so people haven't responded well. But recently they are using the technology in a format that works much better: See the "Book Club Club" page on MinnPost.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:30 Digidave
1:33
Digidave: 
Joel: One piece of feedback - the advertisers are nervous about being able to keep up with the pace and keeping up their own real time adverts. We got a grant to train them - so in one way we are training them on how to use social media.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:33 Digidave
1:35
Digidave: 
Joel: We have not been a paradigm of collaboration. We hope to do better.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:35 Digidave
1:37
Digidave: 
Joel: On MinnRoast - last year 430 people last year 600+ people. Hoping for 800+ this year. It's $100 or $150. This year experimenting by letting 35 years or younger come in for $50. It's a hip event - mingling, cocktails, etc. Then we have a show. Skits and songs making fun of media people and politicians. It's a fun event.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:37 Digidave
1:37
Digidave: 
Joel: Other events that could bring in money: Texas Tribune - they have a major strategy of making money from events. They are going to let in folks for free - and have sponsors pay for the event.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:37 Digidave
1:39
Digidave: 
Lisa Williams asks what they think of Global Post: Joel - it's a for profit which is tough. There is a real gap there in global reporting. Global Post is using an innovative novel to give freelancers just enough money to keep reporters there - but it's not enough to live on. It's a freelance model. It's a cushion that allows them to go out and get more gigs.
Tuesday March 23, 2010 1:39 Digidave
2:31
[Standby]  Liveblog will resume later today.
2:50
Twitter
mvazquezs: 
RT @agahran: Slides for @susanmernit's #infoneeds presentation on social media strategy for web project launch: http://bit.ly/9cmU8C
Tuesday March 23, 2010 2:50 mvazquezs
3:54
Twitter
TheRapidian: 
Meetiing with people at #infoneeds talking about #rapidian launch & reporter recruiting. Any reporters out there? Why are you involved?
Tuesday March 23, 2010 3:54 TheRapidian
3:58
Twitter
michelemclellan: 
Tmrrow, livestreaming @kdmc #infoneeds boot camp. @danachinn - Web metrics 10:45 am PT http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. Live blog http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb
Tuesday March 23, 2010 3:58 michelemclellan
4:03
Twitter
mvazquezs: 
RT @michelemclellan: Mañana, sesión web metrics con @danachinn en #infoneeds boot camp. - Live blog http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb #periodista
Tuesday March 23, 2010 4:03 mvazquezs
4:05
Twitter
knowacki: 
I love that @pollygon (up in Oakland) introduced me, via Twitter, to @susanmernit, who I just shook hands with in person at #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 4:05 knowacki
4:44
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
The one-on-one sessions with speakers & Knight Circuit Riders have been so enlightening. So much knowledge here in one room #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 4:44 MiamiTheater
4:44
Twitter
p2173: 
RT @kdmc: Livestream10:45 a.m. PT of @kdmc #infoneeds boot camp: @danachinn on Web metrics http://bit.ly/d8VG9G. blog http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb
Tuesday March 23, 2010 4:44 p2173
5:48
Twitter
mvazquezs: 
Para seguir la sesión de web metrics de @danachinn en #infoneeds: http://bit.ly/aQ99Jb o bajar todas sus presentaciones http://bit.ly/bisdBZ
Tuesday March 23, 2010 5:48 mvazquezs
7:19
Twitter
kdmc: 
.@communitygirl talks Rules of Engagement @kdmc #infoneeds boot camp dinner. Video will be archived at knightdigitalmediacenter.org
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:19 kdmc
7:34
Twitter
agahran: 
.@lisawilliams: "I think if people in your community want to talk abt something, it's not 'off-topic'." @communitygirl agrees. #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:34 agahran
7:34
Twitter
agahran: 
.@communitygirl: "I really believe if you're going to lead an online community you must be willing to be top contributor." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:34 agahran
7:34
Twitter
agahran: 
.@communitygirl: "if you're not clear on your niche, goals, value prop, no reason for people to connect to you." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:34 agahran
7:34
Twitter
agahran: 
.@communitygirl: "you can build beat online community in the world & no one will come. People have established habits." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:34 agahran
7:34
Twitter
agahran: 
.@communitygirl "don't compare your online community to others too much. Every community is different." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:34 agahran
7:37
Twitter
agahran: 
. @communitygirl "People say 'The community will police itself.' What if everyone LIKES the hate? Who'll report that as abuse?" #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:37 agahran
7:37
Twitter
thatwoman: 
RT @agahran: .@communitygirl: "I really believe if you're going to lead an online community you must be willing to be top contributor." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:37 thatwoman
7:47
Twitter
agahran: 
.@communitygirl "Rudeness kills communities. I'm so nice now, I can tell you off & you won't even know it." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 7:47 agahran
8:24
Twitter
PBSIdeaLab: 
agahran: .@communitygirl "Rudeness kills communities. I'm so nice now, I can tell you off & you won't even know it." #infoneeds: agah...
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:24 PBSIdeaLab
8:24
Twitter
PBSIdeaLab: 
agahran: .@communitygirl "don't compare your online community to others too much. Every community is different." #infoneeds: agahran:...
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:24 PBSIdeaLab
8:50
Twitter
saduros: 
RT @agahran: . @communitygirl "People say 'The community will police itself.' What if everyone LIKES the hate....?" #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:50 saduros
8:51
Twitter
saduros: 
sounds eight. RT @agahran: .@communitygirl: "if you're not clear on niche, goals, value prop, no reason for people to connect." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:51 saduros
8:51
Twitter
saduros: 
RT @agahran: .@communitygirl: "I believe if you're going to lead an online community you must be willing to be top contributor." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:51 saduros
8:52
Twitter
saduros: 
RT @agahran:@lisawilliams: "If people in your community want to talk abt something, it's not 'off-topic'." @communitygirl agrees. #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:52 saduros
8:53
Twitter
pretailers: 
RT @saduros sounds eight. RT @agahran: .@communitygirl: "if UR not clear on niche, goals, value prop, no reason 4 ppl 2 connect." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 8:53 pretailers
9:02
Twitter
saduros: 
Gratitude for the tweeting. RT @agahran: Now at #infoneeds: @susanmernit. Video: http://bit.ly/d8VG9G Liveblog: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:02 saduros
9:09
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
Got practical advice on building communities from @communitygirl at #infoneeds dinner. Her book has concrete examples http://bit.ly/dztvlu
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:09 MiamiTheater
9:40
Twitter
susanmernit: 
RT knowacki @pollygon (up in Oakland) introduced me, via Twitter, to @susanmernit, who I just shook hands with in person at #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 9:40 susanmernit
11:17
Twitter
d_lander: 
RT @agahran: .@communitygirl: "if you're not clear on your niche, goals, value prop, no reason for people to connect to you." #infoneeds
Tuesday March 23, 2010 11:17 d_lander
4:22
Twitter
lisawilliams: 
Video: "Startups for Journalists." http://bit.ly/4ujcNC #journalism #infoneeds @genevaoh
Wednesday March 24, 2010 4:22 lisawilliams
4:23
Twitter
JournalismBuzz: 
Retweet: Video: "Startups for Journalists." http://bit.ly/4ujcNC #journalism #infoneeds @genevaoh: Video: "... http://bit.ly/aYUdPj
Wednesday March 24, 2010 4:23 JournalismBuzz
4:23
Twitter
RTjournalism: 
RT @lisawilliams video: "startups for journalists." http://bit.ly/4ujcnc #journalism #infoneeds @genevaoh
Wednesday March 24, 2010 4:23 RTjournalism
5:06
Twitter
dtanton: 
RT @agahran: .@communitygirl: "I really believe if you're going to lead an online community you must be willing to be top contributor." #infoneeds
Wednesday March 24, 2010 5:06 dtanton
8:20
Twitter
RobertaFKing: 
Done imparting my deep wise-ness on #infoneeds. It was a great experience and I learned as much (or more) than I offered students.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 RobertaFKing
8:20
Twitter
TimaMedia: 
I need to watch this! RT @lisawilliams: Video: "Startups for Journalists." http://bit.ly/4ujcNC #journalism #infoneeds @genevaoh
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 TimaMedia
8:20
Twitter
genevaoh: 
RT @lisawilliams: Video: "Startups for Journalists." http://bit.ly/4ujcNC #journalism #infoneeds @genevaoh
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 genevaoh
8:20
Twitter
MiamiTheater: 
Going back to the nurturing cocoon of the Knight Foundation boot camp for community sites #infoneeds http://bit.ly/aGMBfU
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 MiamiTheater
8:20
Twitter
kdmc: 
#infoneeds liveblog resumes 9am PT: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB. Presentation on evaluating community news/info projects.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 kdmc
8:20
Twitter
agahran: 
RT @kdmc #infoneeds liveblog resumes 9am PT: http://bit.ly/cnV3TB. Presentation on evaluating community news/info projects.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 agahran
8:20
Twitter
saduros: 
YES! Lisa Williams: "They will deny everything until you go away, but with the internet you can do better. " #infoneeds
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 saduros
8:20
Twitter
saduros: 
Lisa Willams: "What can you do without anyone else's assistance?' #infoneeds
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 saduros
8:20
Twitter
saduros: 
Wish I were at #infoneeds! sigh. Check out this SlideShare presentation : Startups For Journalists http://slidesha.re/dDMoH
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 saduros
8:20
Twitter
knightfdn: 
RT @saduros: Check out this #infoneeds SlideShare presentation by @lisawilliams: Startups For Journalists http://slidesha.re/dDMoH
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:20 knightfdn
8:58
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Good morning! Shortly we'll be resuming live coverage of the Knight Digital Media Center's Community Information Challenge Bootcamp.

The first session will be Hallie Preskill and Ellen Martin from FSG Social Impact Advisors. They'll be explaining how community foundations can evaluate their local news/info projects.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:58 Knight Digital Media Cent
8:59
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
FSG's presentation.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 8:59 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:05
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
Hallie Preskill: Most people at community foundations don't have positive connotations for the project evaluation process. Her goal in this talk: To help them understand how to make evaluation easier, more useful, less stressful.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 9:05 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:06
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
FSG designed Knight's evaluation process for the Knight Community Information Challenge.
Wednesday March 24, 2010 9:06 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:07
Knight Digital Media Cent: 
(NOTE: We're only liveblogging this session. Video webcast from the bootcamp will resume 10:45 am, with Dana Chinn's talk on metrics/analytics for community news/info projects.)
Wednesday March 24, 2010 9:07 Knight Digital Media Cent
9:08