Science Friday’s Ira Flatow on Second Life
Location. Location. Location. The Science Friday Island situated near NASA and other scientific facilities.
Thinking that the Ira Flatley avatar looks like an Ira Flatow action figure. Could you imagine that – a collection of public broadcasting dolls for kids?
Second Life People are private people. They literally have to run after these people to get their comments on the air.
Second Life only has 40,000 inhabitants right now – as compared to their hundred of thousands of people who listen to the show via the broadcast.
Other initiatives:
The folks at Science Friday are thinking about how they want to best allocate resources to their various Science Friday assets. They’re also shooting video… And taking the time to edit them. They’re also working to create a Spanish speaking ScienceFriday site.
The Brian Lehrer Show from WNYC
Jim Colgon – Now with BBC / PRI’s show the Takeaway. Used to be with the Brian Lehrer show. Experimented over his time at WNYC with Social Media.
They had great listeners – Experts! Wanted to tap into that.
Thought of a simple assignment… Ask people to count the number of cars on their block and report back on their comments page with how many of those cars where SUVs. Gave them a week to do this. Wound up with 4000 cars and mapped them on google maps. Wound up with the percentage and the total. Called it a “listener reported project” Invited an expert onto the show to talk about the results and about the use of SUVs for people in lower New York.
It got people looking around their surroundings in new ways. A way to get their listeners involved in an act of journalism, in an act of reporting. Because it was a listener reported activity, they looked at it with a different kind of attention – not just a bland report from a survey.
A great example of “crowdsourcing” – an act of journalism that one person, or one newsroom, could do.
This led to additional projects:
Asked people to find out if there was price disparity in stores. Picked a few standard items. One quart of non-organic whole milk. One head of iceberg lettuce. And a six pack of budweiser beer.
They compiled the totals. Generated a map for milk, for lettuce, then beer. They called the resulting show “Are You Being Gouged?”
This was reported about in the New York Times.
This increased peoples awareness. People were doing reporting. They felt like reporters.
The repurposed their existing tools. They used comments tool at wnyc.org, they used google maps.
They found that the simpler it was the more response they received. The level of complexity of the task was prohibitive.
These kinds of acts help to involve listeners in a way that they had never been before.
They had no idea what the results were going to be. They found, for example, that the price of milk is regulated by the state of new york, and they found a few listeners were going to challenge stores whose prices were above this level.
This only came about out of the willingness to experiment.
Epic FU
Zadi Diaz – Co-founder of Epic FU discusses how she covers online culture.
Her show recognizes artists and people doings online who normally would not get recognition.
Epic FU poses question to audience, for instance, about woman who wanted to commit suicide in 90 days. Participants in show responded as part of a “campfire discussions”
Zadi uses Mix discussion boards – allows listeners to create their own groups – allows the producers of the show to find out what the audience are interested in.
She also has show on YouTube. Great to have discovery… Great to get video out, but at a point you want people to come back to you.
She advises us not to depend on one social networking sites. She uses Ning.com . She uses Upcoming. And she keeps up with everyone via Twitter.
Blogging with KJZZ’s Locally Produced Here and Now
While work on the web site and think that I’m in a position to advise on what happens on the web at KJZZ. In this case, Paul Atkinson producer for KJZZs weekly hour of the locally produced segmet of Here and Now, took advantage of the tools and – on his own – did a great job conceiving of the idea for calling bloggers… As experts! They’re not just people with opinions writing on their private islands online, but they’re experts in their own right.
As a producers, Atkinson was surprised that they were as informed as they were. Additionally, Bloggers promoted their appearance on the show, so people were attracted to join in on the discussion who normally may not have listened or visited the site.
In an effort to recruit bloggers, Paul looked to calling people he knew and trusted in the field of politics. These trusted peple suggested a few sources. They also suggested that Paul join a listserv. Paul commented that he received so many responses that he had to turn people away. That he only had room for one democratic blogger, one republic and one independent.
Questions
In the questions section. Ira says, you have to tell people you are there. That’s why Science Friday is offering videos for people to put their sites, to direct traffic back to sciencefriday.org and back to the show.
Someone in the audience asks if Paul had difficulty getting bloggers to blog at KJZZ.org and not on their own blogs. This presents an interesting thought which I will post a follow up in just a minute.Similarly, Paul admits that, coming from a traditional broadcast background, to recruit bloggers he relied on contacting people he knew by phone or email, then getting referrals for the names of bloggers whom they trusted.To address both of these points, I pose a question to Andy Carvin with Paul present… I ask Andy what he thinks about news rooms using a Technorati keyword search to find out what bloggers are saying about a subject… As a way of enlisting trusted and active bloggers about a topic for a particular show. Andy replies that, “if you aren’t doing that, you are in the dark.” Andy poses too that just as technorati is an indispensable tool for finding out what people are saying online about a topic, this tool is also indispensable for finding out the impact OF THE TALK SHOW ITSELF online. Andy recommends that talk shows set up a “watchlist” in technorati or their show (or station), to find out what people are saying about the station NOW, across the entire web.
“Radio Engage” Collaboration Enlists Participation, Leverages Open Source ...
Bill Haenel, Dale Hobson and Jack Brighton at Public Media 2008 (Photo Credit: John Tynan)
I’ve worked as a webmaster in public broadcasting for almost a decade. And over the last several years, I’ve seen a slow, pragmatic shift towards increased collaboration in online ventures between local public broadcasting stations and national organizations and producers as evidenced (in NPR’s Podcasting initiative, their relaunch of NPR Music and) in the ongoing Election Collaboration. At the recent Public Media Conference in Los Angeles, Bruce Theriault recalled how he motivated national organizations to collaborate around the 2008 Election by saying, “we will only fund this project if there is collaboration across silos – and if its shared with stations.”
And, while this initiative has exercised great strides towards increased cooperation across numerous organizations, it is my opinion that we still have yet to come into our own as a network. As Bruce Theriault says again “we need to get out of the walled garden of public media and allow the public and other institutions a chance to play.” To a greater or lesser degree, these initiatives are still fairly centrally controlled and (aside from the NPR podcasting initiative) have yet to truly leverage the unique characteristic of public broadcasting as a distributed, network in general, and more specifically the potential of an open source model of collaboration.
Imagine what we could accomplish if we leveraged the combined efforts of the fifty or so interested and capable web professionals all working at public broadcasting stations (not to mention the larger community of programmers and the general public, many of whom happen to love public media… a lot) who would welcome the opportunity to work together towards a number of shared solutions (many of which would have clear benefits to our audience directly).
With that in mind, two weeks ago, I sent out an email to a half-dozen of my colleagues citing my reasons for why it would be useful to begin collaborating around open standards, common practices, and a common software and scripting platform distributed through an open source license. My email went something like this. I proposed that we form:
1) A co-op for public broadcasters to share code – and costs – where we agree on a similar solar system of scripting resources and practices – where we leverage upon an existing codebase and (ideally) share our efforts among stations and among the open source community as well. When needed, we can collectively raise money to pay outside developers to tailor code to our needs and – where we are literally invested in the success of this venture and of each others sites.
2) Rather than relying on our own expertise alone to steer this ship, I propose we talk with a hosting provider or a organization like NPower or NTen or grassroots.org (which specializes in supporting non-profits with their technology needs) about providing hosting and (some of) the ongoing support. This way, we could focus on initiatives which we could band together and leverage shared code and programming costs and not have to be reliant on each other for the maintenance of the system.
Anyone who has gotten to know me over the years knows that this is my baileywick (As evidenced from This post from last year’s conference. However it turns out now this idea is not just important to me… or to a few of my friends… just recently…
The Knight Foundation awarded a $327,000.00 grant to Quiddities to develop an open source website and content management tool for KUSP as a model for public radio stations nationwide.
I’m sure the bright folks at the Knight Foundation and KUSP had given this idea a great deal of thought… and I know there are a ton of other excellent ideas percolating within public broadcasting right now as well… but I can’t help feeling like the guy who happened to step in front of the right parade at the right time. What I’m trying to say is this, I can’t take any credit for this grant, but I can say that I’ve seen it coming, and I could not be more delighted for us all!
With that in mind, as a first step in enlisting input from other stations on this project, Steve Laufer from KUSP got on the phone with Bill Haenel from the Integrated Media Association, Dale Hobson from North Country Public Radio, Jack Brighton from WILL, John Tynan (me) from KJZZ, and Matthew Tift from Wisconsin Public Radio to begin to discuss how we might work together on such a project and what first steps we would begin to take.
Some of the tasks that came out of today’s call were to:
Please know that these initial impressions of the project are more personal than they are official. Aside from our conference call, I had only talked with Steve Laufer a few times between sessions at Public Media 2008. I have not been privy to the discussions between KUSP, Quiddities and the Knight Foundation. However, I know I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I am sure that there is more than a handful of people (like me) to whom the principal parties can turn to for assistance and who will be be happy to devote their energies to the project’s success.
Cross posted at pubforge.org.