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Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Discussion: 2 Comments

‘You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!’ says famed entrepreneurial scoundrel Charlie Croker played by Michael Caine in the 1969 British gold-heist classic, The Italian Job.

The film and that infamous line – which still ranks among Britain’s most quoted – are where my thoughts turn when I think about media140’s two upcoming events at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy from April 21 to 25.

Our version may not involve gold bullion, mini-skirts or breaking into jail, but we may be just ostentatious enough to imagine it has the potential to match the movie for energy, thrills and creativity.

*****

For those who have not had the pleasure of seeing The Italian Job, it opens with a Lamborghini winding through the alps – just as the Media140 team shall too be heading into the beautiful Italian countryside – albeit in a marginally less glamorous minivan.

Perhaps this point of difference is a good thing, as that Lamborghini meets a spectacularly explosive fate at the hands of the mafia scarce minutes into the film.

The IJF (as it is affectionately known by those wishing to save characters) brings together an eclectic throng of journalists from Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. This year’s keynote speaker is Al Gore – yes, the environmental activist who served as vice president of the United States under Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001 and is oft credited with being instrumental in the rise of the Internet.

If Mr Gore is not enough reason to book your flight now, it is well worth a click-through to this list of literally dozens of international media executives, innovators and academics who will be sharing their ideas in Perugia – which is itself a vibrant hub of culture and progress.

In addition to presenting two days’ worth of speakers and panels at the IJF, Media140’s crew of specialised ‘backpacker reporters’ will cover the festival using only hand-held devices and online publishing tools. Flips, iPhones, Nokia N96s, audioBoo and Qik will be the kind of apparatus with which we break into the festival’s vault of brilliant ideas just like Croker and his crew – minus the criminality.

Lead editorially by the much more softly-spoken Claire Wardle, the Media140 team admittedly has little in common with Croker’s band of thieves apart from the unique and honed skills each one of them brings to the – err – job. Moreover, Croker had just one ‘computer specialist’ and Wardle will have a gaggle* of them.

media140 will not be blowing the doors off of anything, but we certainly plan to blow minds with a powerful fusion of social inquiry, journalism and technological exploration.

Tickets to the festival are – astonishingly – free. All you have to do is make your way to picturesque Umbria in late April, where spring will most probably just have sprung.

When Italians hope to meet again, they say ‘arrivederci’ – and that is what we bid you!

Ande Gregson – Founder, media140

*All suggestions for a collective noun for computer specialists are welcome in the comments section below …

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Discussion: No Comments

On a freezing Thursday afternoon, a room full of good folks from charities and not-for-profit organisations braved icy roads to gather at Media140 Third Sector to enjoy a drink, a nibble and a chat about the real-time web. The event was part of London’s inaugural Social Media Week, and gave everyone from newbies to experts a chance to talk about how online tools are extending the third sector’s reach in campaigning, fundraising and the recruitment of volunteers.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Discussion: No Comments

The real-time web is already proving to be an effective – and cost-effective – way for the often under-resourced Third Sector to publicise causes, galvanise support and recruit volunteers.

Media140′s next event, taking place in London on Thursday 4th February, will celebrate this rapid uptake of real-time technology by so many go-ahead charities. We will also examine current and future trends and take a closer look at some of the new tools which may be of real benefit to the sector.

A surprising number of Third Sector organisations have been quick to adopt social media tools, enabling them to further extend their reach via an innovative variety of platforms including live-blogging, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The event is taking place as part of the inaugural London Social Media Week. Entitled Media140 Third Sector the afternoon event will showcase several NFPs which have already successfully integrated the real-time web into their current campaign strategies. There will also be plenty of opportunities for intrigued and enthusiastic newbies to ask questions about relevant topics, including cross-platform campaigns, real-time fund raising, building support communities and volunteer networks.

An impressive list of charities, non-profits, volunteer organisations and agencies specialising in Third Sector work will all be sharing their respective insights. They will also be able to further enhance their existing networks at the event, which comprises a varied series of keynotes, panels and case studies.

Confirmed speakers include:
• Steve Bridger, Builder of Bridges
• Rachel Beer, Founding partner of Beautiful World
• Jonathan Waddingham, Digital Strategist at JustGiving
• Jacqui Darlow, Digital Marketing Manager Dog’s Trust
• John Carnell, Founder and Chief Executive BullyingUK
• Rob M Dyson, Digital/Social PR Manager, WhizzKidz
• Lucy Buck, Founder of Childsi Foundation
• Jaz Cummins, Web & New Media Manager, Amnesty UK
• Damien Austin-Walker, Head of Technical + Online Systems, Timebank

Venue: We are Social, The Qube, 90 Whitfield St, London W1T 4EZ.

A limited number of tickets are free with a suggested donation to the Disaster Emergency Committee in aid of the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal and are available at www.media140.com/socialmediaweek.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 Discussion: 2 Comments

Much anticipation in Sydney ahead of the day two keynote, live from New York, courtesy of Skype from respected commentator Jay Rosen. Guest live blogger Paul Farrell managed to post this lively summary and analysis of what was, by any criteria, a powerful and thought-provoking speech. Oh -& the tech all worked beautifully too!

Professor of journalism at New York University Jay Rosen, delivered a powerful talk on the way that new media was transforming the news system. His main initial point was that “the audience isn’t atomized any more, it’s connected horizontally”, and his discussion painted a bright picture about the democratization of information online. The very nature of the way that Jay’s talk was conducted, via webcam, seemed to prove the essence of his point.

But one topic of discussion that proved to be hard to swallow for the audience as they tweeted away was on the topic on filtering, and how “we have to get much better at creating intelligent filters” for information distribution across social media platforms. As soon as the word “filters” was thrown around, the bloggers in the audience collectively raised their hackles.

Jay went on to say that “we can build filters that are much more personalized”, and this tied into one of his other ideas that “transparency is the new objectivity”. New media is credible because of its honesty, and Jay says this is how people gain audiences and responses.

But what are the implications of this? What will happen when filters become more sophisticated and the ways that people view information with social media changes? It seems that this could have some potentially disastrous impacts for the democratization of information on the web.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Discussion: No Comments

By now, we have all worked out quite how potent social networks like Twitter can be. Whether you are a humble blogger hoping to drive traffic to your latest post or a mega-brand bent on forging consumer loyalty, well-timed links, ideally enshrined in intriguing tweets, can significantly improve everything from simple traffic to stickiness and substantially boost the profile of the blog, or gig, in question.

Media140 asked BusinessZone.co.uk Editor Dan Martin to tell us a bit about how he has used Twitter – with great success – as a key part of the marketing strategy behind BusinessZone’s “search for an entrepreneur” The Pitch. The Wildcard section of the competition is still underway and you have until the end of this week to vote – see below for details.

When formulating a marketing strategy for an event, you’d be stupid to leave out Twitter. I know from personal experience that the social network offers valuable benefits before, during and after an awards ceremony, conference, exhibition or any other type of gathering.

An example of a successful event behind which Twitter was – and continues to be – a key driver is The Pitch 2009 which I have helped to organise.

Established in 2008, The Pitch is a Dragons’ Den-style initiative for entrepreneurs. Last year, the event took place in Bristol but in 2009 we decided to expand it and as well as Bristol took the competition to Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and London. A total of 30 entrepreneurs pitched to 22 judges for the chance to make it through to a grand final on 16 November where the winner will walk away with business support products and services worth £50,000.

Twitter played a small role in 2008 but given the scale of this year’s contest I created www.twitter.com/the_pitch last autumn and used it to build up interest and intrigue around the competition.

Once we started accepting entries, I encouraged applications among our followers and it is no coincidence that in the section on the application form which asked ‘how did you hear about the competition?’, almost a third of applicants said Twitter. The social network is also the third most popular source of traffic to our event website at www.thepitch2009.com.

But my use of Twitter didn’t stop at the application stage. During the regional heats I posted live updates and images using Twitpic as entrepreneurs pitched to our judges. We picked up several retweets particularly from the friends, family and colleagues of the contestants.

Five winners from the regions were selected for the final with the remaining entrepreneurs competing for one wildcard slot. Again, we have used Twitter to encourage people to vote for their wildcard choice while many of the contestants have also used it to drum up support.
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Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Thursday, October 15, 2009 Discussion: 4 Comments

We have already had an extremely heated discussion on this blog about the value of live, real-time, coverage of the many events of interest to the Media140 audience. In a debate which we dubbed “Sifting the News from the Noise” Brian Condon and Steve Jackson, not to mention several engaged commenters, engaged in a lively exchange of views on one of this forum’s busiest days to date.

Media140 regular Caitlin Fitzsimmons has already posted valuable tips about Twitter for bloggers, #FollowFriday and other thorny matters of web etiquette. Here, she suggests some original ways to carry on live covering, without drowning out the rest of “the Conversation” –

If you are going to a conference and you use Twitter, then you may be tempted to tweet about what’s going on at the conference. But if you want to add value and not annoy your followers, then you should think carefully about the why and the how. Personally, I think Twitter can be a fabulous tool for conferences, but most people should think twice before using their own accounts for this purpose.

Live-tweeting is a controversial issue and we’ve heard from two opposing viewpoints on this blog already. Brian Condon (aka @brian_condon) explained why tweeting conferences and live events has value, while Steve Jackson (aka @ourman) argued that a lot of it is just noise and crawling to Twitter powerbrokers.

I think they are both right. I also think there is an easy solution.

There is no doubt in my mind that Twitter can enhance a conference experience and extend its reach. There will generally be a conference hashtag set up for any tweets about the event, so it can provide an immediate camaraderie and means to communicate and collaborate. Tweeting about what is said in sessions can amplify the salient points and spark discussion and debate and further questions. If there is a critical mass of people tweeting then it can help break the ice – after all, one of the biggest reasons to go to many conferences, is the opportunity to network with other attendees.

Hopefully, so the theory goes, the Twitter back channel can also bring the conference to a wider audience. It lets people who are interested but couldn’t attend in person know what is going on and feed back their own thoughts and questions.

The problem is that Twitter is a broadcast medium so it is also reaches a lot of people who are not interested. It’s all very well to say that you can always unfollow someone – this is true, but not very useful advice when any one of your followers may attend a conference and suddenly start tweeting like crazy at any moment in time. You may also want to follow the conference-attending tweeter on any other day of the year, when they are not at a conference. Supposedly the Twitter Snooze tool, which lets you temporarily unfollow someone, can help with this, but it didn’t work the one time I tried it.

One alternative is live-blogging, which is 100% opt-in and offers a permanent record of what happened at the conference. The disadvantage is that it’s not as collaborative and fun as tweeting.

I think setting up a separate Twitter account for the conference is the obvious answer. I’ve done this twice and it works beautifully.
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Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Monday, September 14, 2009 Discussion: 12 Comments

“Never disagree when you can crawl instead?” As a tsunami of live-tweets by various attendees of last week’s Frontline Club On the Media event “Access Denied” filled – (some might say clogged) the Twitter feed, a lively discussion developed in tandem – and more or less simultaneously – on the propriety, usefulness and sheer etiquette of this type of hashtag frenzy.

Brian Condon, who both live-blogged and participated in the debate on the night, has already discussed the practical issues of live coverage on this blog.

Here, in a characteristically forthright post, Steve Jackson – whom many readers will know as @ourman on Twitter – argues that the proliferation of social media tools and the exponential rise of those of us using them has decimated genuine “news” values, encouraged a culture of back-slapping sycophancy and self-promotion and comprehensively undermined the value of the Social Media “Conversation”.

Spend any time at all following any number of journalists on Twitter and you’ll never be too far away from PR-bashing.

The essential stereotype is normally “how did they think this was news?” or “why did they send this to me?”

In short, the accusations are of no news sense and a scattergun approach.

It’s interesting then that when its hacks running the show, and no one to edit, a different tact is taken when social media is involved.

Suddenly there is no concept of news values. Only just how many tools can we use to spread the thin story just about as thinly as possible? There is never any thought of “what is this worth?” or “is this a story?”

Just keep on spreading.

I say this following my disagreement to a bout of sustained tweeting surrounding the Frontline Club. You can read more here. But essentially, such was the glee of the assorted Media Twitterati that the usual social media niceties were dispensed with.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Wednesday, September 9, 2009 Discussion: 5 Comments

As more and more reporting – of every kind – makes its way on-line and instantaneously in our new real-time age, those reporting are facing a whole range of new challenges, whether purely technical, involving editorial judgement or simply of cyber-etiquette. In this timely and comprehensive post, Brian Condon reflects on his own experiences of covering last month’s Science on Line 09 at London’s Royal Institution:

It’s very unusual to go to an event where you don’t know anybody at all. But that is exactly what happened to me at Science Online 2009, held at the Royal Institution on 22nd August. Of course, I’ve been following a few people on Twitter from the ‘science blogger’ community which is how I found out about the event in the first place (from @kejames). Most of the attendees were scientists and academics, with representatives from the academic publishing houses and and information providers. I did feel a bit of an outsider, or perhaps the term “interloper” better describes it.

It is always fascinating and useful seeing a community you don’t know dealing with an issue you do know about. So, from a Media140 perspective and, with realtime media in mind, I’ve been thinking about it.

During the event I made an AudioBoo piece about the issues – especially about a really good session on Realtime Statistics.

Second Life as a realtime presentation medium . . . Hmmm

Interesting and odd at the same time was the use of Second Life both as a medium for ‘virtual’ participation and also for a keynote. Dave Munger (www.wordmunger.com) was due to give a keynote in person but discovered, as he completed his packing, that his passport had expired. The organisers suggested that he present in Second LIfe. Brave. I’ve been at events where Second Life has been used – and this is the first time I’ve seen it work (kind of!).

Dave blogged about his Second Life presentation experience for Seed Magazine here. He also said in his opening remarks that he’d tried to add a paunch to his Avatar to make it slightly more ‘realistic’ but that he still considered it too ‘Adonis-like’.