NPR’s New Web Site will arrive July 28th – Preview
by Rob Paterson
NPR continue to press ahead in their search for how to make the web work. Here is their wonderful new site – a masterpiece. Not simply visually but in how it contains all the relationships that are at the core of the new web world.
I am also profoundly affected by this work because I am now seeing that all the effort put into learning how to cope with the web by NPR, the system and me back in the day is paying off.
Back in 2005 NPR did something that I think is still unique. They hosted a mammoth engagement process, New Realities, that involved over 300 stations and over 1,000 people. The purpose was to discover what the web would all mean. You can see the results in so many of the actions that NPR and the radio system have taken since then. This new site is a pinnacle of that collective insight
But at first, at the end of the process, I and many who had been involved were disappointed. For the immediate result was not there – or so I thought. For two years, like seeds in the ground, there was little or nothing to see. But with NPR Music, the real green shoots began. Since then, the seedlings have grown and multiplied.
I had been foolish and naive. I thought that the conversation would produce results immediately.
But! Now – 4 years later – I am beginning to see the real result. And it is this. That NPR and the lead stations in the system are convinced and are committed to making the web work. They also have a common language.
This is simply not true for most others in the media world. They have not had this personal and deep experience with each other in an examination of what will come.
I think I see the true result of New Realities now. It is cultural readiness. For is not Culture the main barrier?
