Thirty People Attend “Guerilla Unconference” -
Finishing as a runner-up in the official voting didn’t deter Heather Billings and Michelle Minkoff: They held their session on Django regardless.
Did you take notes at the unconference session(s) you attended? Please add them to the mix with this form and we will post a compilation on this site.
Jim used stickers and matchboxes to drum up votes for his session on “smart ways to use dumb phones.” It worked!
You have decided!
We received more than 170 votes and now the winners have been crowned. Here are the three sessions who will be hosted tomorrow:
10:15 Embedded Content is the new Distribution Model with Art Gibson of Embed.ly
11:30 Smart ways to use dumb phones with Jim Colgan
3:30 We have a Tumblr! Now what? With Mark of Tumblr and Phoebe of Yahoo
Runners-up:
How to tango with Django
The New Newsroom: The news in real time
Thanks to all the voters and the awesome folks who submitted smart, inventive pitches. Give yourselves a hand!
Sessions will be held Saturday in the Vineyard Room on the third floor. See you there!
The uncon team was busy plastering the ONA11 conference space with post-its promoting the voting.
Opening a News Cafe
The quickest way to a fickle audience is through their stomach.
The Winnipeg Free Press opened Canada’s first News Cafe, offering gourmet lunches, interactive town halls, and 15 kinds of beer.
It’s hard to get a table most noon hours, and the free public events have drawn large crowds, to what is being described as the new social hub of the Exchange District.
John White is Deputy Editor, Online at Winnipeg Free Press, a Winnipeg Jets live-blogger and a curler in Manitoba.
Photo by Daquella Manera on Flickr
The polls are closed! Thanks for your participation in this year’s ONA UNconference selections. We are tabulating the results and will announce winners here at appx. 5 p.m.!
-The UNcon Team
We used to tell them that it was ok, we weren’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater when we were going online. We’d keep holding the principles and ethics near and dear. But, if we look at ourselves honestly, was it the Internet that killed our business, or was it the people using the Internet to send the news industry a message about they way things have been done for the past half century? When trust is our business and trust in our products is stuck in the low twentieth percentile, are we ready to look at ourselves in the mirror and say honestly and loud enough for everyone else to hear, “We’ve got a problem, our products are crappy and we are hurting the people we’re supposed to help. And it doesn’t matter if it is on paper, tv, a computer, phone or tablet — our content isn’t king, it’s a pack of jokers.” If we want to reverse the trend, we have to change our ways, not just change our medium.
David Johnson is a professor of multimedia journalism and film and media arts at American University’s School of Communication.
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The Nieman Foundation is best known as home to the Nieman Fellows, a group of journalists from around the world who come to Harvard for a year of study. It is considered the most prestigious fellowship program for journalists; Nieman Fellows have collectively won 99 Pulitzer Prizes.
How can services like Gowalla and Foursquare help media companies connect with their audience? Can already strapped-for-time newsrooms benefit from these services? Last year, I learned about location-based services from the gurus at the National Post. A year later, I can share how our mid-sized newsroom is exploring these services’ potential and offer tips on how you can get started. I hope this session can be a forum for others to share what’s worked at their companies and discuss roadblocks and opportunities.
Jeff Hidek is the the Community Engagement Editor at the StarNews in Wilmington, NC, where he oversees the company’s social media and community content. He’s also a frequent #wjchat lurker and TV fanatic whose DVR is working overtime while he’s at ONA.