Owlspotting

Note: The comments below are for the most part paraphrases.

Andy Carvin from the Center for Media & Community is blogging from the front row at the table that I’m sitting. He is taking pictures and video with an A40 and uploading from an IMac. You can read his stuff at www.andycarvin.com.

>> Opening discussion

Chris Willis / We Media: People turned from being browsers to being creators — and participating in all types of communities. Not everyone wants to be a citizen journalist but they are looking for ways to participate in the stories. There is no one-size fits all solution. Building the blog, the wiki etc. might work for one community but not might work the next.

Andrew Natchinson / The Media Center: We watched a gradual transition — we see the Internet playing a larger role. After London and Katrina we are not thinking of the Internet itself but the variety of pespectives we’re exposed to which transcends media. In Katrina, a tapestry of voice — from our standpoint that hints at where we’re heading It’ nt the rise and dominanance of blogs or RSS or podcast — it’s the diversity of options and voices which are going to become the norm.

Andy Carvin: As Katrina made landfall I wanted to set up a blog for everyone, even those without experience. Involved with tsunami, but that was a lot of work. Set up a blogger.com blog, but posted login privileges to the site and the e-mail so it could be used by anyone. We also set on accounts on Flickr — and RSSed back on the blog. We did what bloggers do, but let everyone have access and we got amazing content in a short amount of time.

Willis: That’s what we need to build for. Not everyone wants to be the journalist but you need to create the architecture of participationg (Tim O’ Reilly). Wiki News — anonymous people from all over the world create stories. The Wiki allows people to be fact-checkers, copy-writers etc. They keep open an IRC — so when a story breaks it’s their virtual newsroom. When a breaking-news story happens, the chatroom is almost like a newsroom. We’ve asked readers to trust us,
now they are asking us to trust them.

Tag: wemedia