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Kevin: Robin writes about the Telegraph blogger open house. He says that traffic has trippled over the last 10 months and that they take in about 1500 comments a day. We will be doing some Guardian blogging events. Watch this space.
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Kevin: My friend Stanislas Magniant writes on Netpolitique whether a French presidential candidate will be “the JFK of the Net”, a political figure who does for the internet what JFK did for television. It’s a great election to watch.
Yearly Archives: 2007
Help wanted: Movable Type wrangler and are you going to EconSM?
Everyone asks me if I have work for them at the Guardian, well yes indeed I do. We’ve got some exciting things coming with our blogs, and we need some more help wrangling Movable Type and developing some cool things. If you’re a Perl developer, check out this job description. It’s a six month contract position. Our current developer, Peter Corlett, has done a great job whipping Movable Type into shape, and now, we want to move forward with some cool things. I’ve got more ideas than Peter has time so we need another coder. We’re moving past the grunt work and into more innovative territory. Click on the link above to check out the job spec and apply. It says that the closing date was 12 April, but if you’re a strong candidate, it’s worth a try.
I’m also looking for someone who is going to the Economics of Social Media conference in Los Angeles. It’s a bit of a long trip for me to make for the day. If you’re going, let me know. I might be able to pay for a little blogging.
technorati tags:econsm, jobs, movabletype
links for 2007-04-12
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Kevin: Roy Greenslade at the Guardian highlights findings from the World Editors’ Forum about the online strategies of Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Sun and the Daily Mirror in the UK. To integrate or partially integrate?
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Kevin: Metro and Six Apart’s Vox partner for user blogs.
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Kevin: A range of stats at the top US newspapers. Fascinating to see how long people spend on the sites. Almost 40 minutes per visit at the NYTimes.com.
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Kevin: Robin Hamman gives a nice review a talk by Justin Hall at the BBC. Justin discusses aggregating his life online through various social networking sites and services. More than that, Justin discusses our activities online and privacy.
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Kevin: A site about passive online multiplayer games. Follows activity online.
links for 2007-04-11
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Kevin: European editors are hopeful about the future. They are looking to digital for new revenue streams. Listen to Bruno Patino at Le Monde. I met him last October, and he’s a sharp mind. Also interesting things at Svenska Dagbladet.
Best…comment…ever
As part of my day job, I was reading a post on Comment is Free by Jonathan Freedland about the proposed blogger code of conduct following the threats against Kathy Sierra.
One commenter responded with some force and more than a little eloquence:
Must have been so nice to be a journalist or commentator in the old days. Just lock what you say in print and damn the masses. Times have changed. You can lock the doors, but then there’ll just be you.
Brilliant. Certainly there are risks to opening up and engaging, but this comment succinctly highlights the risks of doing nothing.
And just to be clear, this isn’t me having a go at a colleague on my own blog. I’d do Jonathan the professional courtesy of responding on Comment is Free, either in the comments or most likely in a proper post. This is just one of those brilliant comments that sums up some of the changes in media these days. It’s as if, suddenly journalists have been transported into the kitchens and lounges of our readers and viewers as they scream at the paper and swear at the telly.
There are some great comments on that post highlighting the range of opinion about blogging and freedom of speech online. If you’re running or considering running a site like Comment is Free, it’s well worth the effort to read.
Community doesn’t come for free
I expanded on comments I made at the recent Guardian Changing Media conference about community and news in a column for the Press Gazette. I go over some common mistakes that news organisations make when crafting and executing a communities strategy, and I highlight some success stories. Just to highlight the main points:
- Your audience isn’t a community.
- This isn’t just about choosing the right tool or technology.
- This is about changing the culture to involve the public.
- It doesn’t come for free. A little investment in a lot of engagement is a key to success.
links for 2007-04-06
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Kevin: Terry Heaton draws parallels between the 15th Century and media today. “here’s money to be made in this new world, but the ticket for entry requires, among other things, a willingness to let go of the weighty baggage of the world that preceded it
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Kevin: Amy Gahran thinks the lessons from the 15th Century and a fight for control over printing Bibles is similar to today’s battle over intellectual property and copyright.
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Kevin: Peru’s El Comercio tests out novel AJAX-based timeline to navigate the news. I like the idea, but I found it slow to load. I hope it catches on and is refined.
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Kevin: Random link for Easter weekend. Lateral or should I say parallel thinking. Strapping together a bunch of Sony PS3’s for research. Put all that gaming power to good use.
links for 2007-04-03
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Kevin: News and community strategist Steve Yelvington encourages journalists to get our from behind their desks and talk to real people. Steve is involved in project that is sending journalism students out to talk to hundreds of people in communities. Mor
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Kevin: Tim Porter (of First Draft) and Michele McLellan (ex-Oregonian) announce the results of their American newsroom tour. “It’s the people who have to change, they say in an excerpt from their new book. And guess what? It’s happening.”
Connected Marketing podcast
At the end of March, Kevin and I had an interesting chat with Justin Kirby of Connected Marketing for a series of podcasts he’s running (unfortunately our bit doesn’t have its own link UPDATE: which now has its own link on the new Connected Marketing blog). We chatted on Skype for a good hour, a fun conversation which Justin summarised thus:
We discuss many aspects of business blogging, including: how it is used to created a two-way dialogue with your audience; how businesses can gain insight from consumer conversations; how participation requires resource and commitment; the cultural changes required to incorporate blogging successfully into your business; and how corporate blogging in the Europe and the UK compares to that in the US.
Justin has split the discussion up in to three short episodes of about 15 minutes which you can manually download in M4A or MP3 format.
Episode 1
(3.5MB)
(4.99MB)
Episode 2
(3.52MB)
(5.02MB)
Episode 3
(3.77MB)
(5.44MB)
Supporting the Open Rights Group
I don’t normally write about the work of the Open Rights Group here because it seems a little off topic, but we have a really important fundraising event coming up on 11 April in London that I’d like to give a wee bit of bloggy love to. This is cross-posted from Chocolate and Vodka.
It’s just over a week til the Open Rights Group‘s Support ORG (and Party!) event, at which there will be public domain DJs, free culture goodie bags and the chance to win some really cool schwag. Our special guest speaker is the wonderful Danny O’Brien, who is always fantastic value for money and well worth coming along to see. So, if that sounds like fun, come along – it’s free! Well… it’s sort of free – we just ask that you bring someone who might like to become a new ORG supporter.
If you can’t make it, then you can still support ORG by buying a raffle ticket for just £2.50 (link to PayPal is at the bottom of that page). Prizes up for grabs include:
- a signed copy of Code 2.0 from Lawrence Lessig
- £150 in O’Reilly book vouchers
- a signed copy of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property from Andrew Gowers
- a signed copy of Bruce Schneier‘s Beyond Fear
- a set of a dozen Beatpick compilations
- a signed author’s galley of Cory Doctorow‘s next novel, Little Brother and the opportunity to be written into it
- … and the pièce de résistance, as far as I am concerned – a ‘very battered keyboard with a key missing and everything!‘, signed by our Patron, Neil Gaiman.
Many thanks to everyone who has donated! Buy your tickets on the night, or online via PayPal. At £2.50 each, they’re a snip!
Oh… and also, please blog about this as widely as you can. ORG has a busy year ahead and we really need to spread the word – your blog post is as valuable a way of showing support for the work that ORG does as buying a raffle ticket or becoming a supporter.