by Rob Paterson
June 24, 2009 at 5:51 am · Filed under
Adoption, Andy Carvin, NPR
Dan Schorr seems an unlikely Social Media coach. But following the laws of adoption he is ideal.
He is influential
He is connected
He is a peer of the reluctant
All people really need to know is that this is OK and useful. Only people in your organization like Dan can help
So at NPR, where it is vital that most people adopt – what do the folks do – they tell the story of Dan the Coach.
Before this, Andy Carvin got Dan and Scott Simon on air to try this. Scott is also very influential and is younger than Dan dut he is not a kid.
Andy, the NPR Social Media Guy, is being very shrewd and clever – What is your plan?
by Rob Paterson
August 31, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Emergency, Gustav, Mashups, Network Effect, News, Ning, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, User Revolution, Video, Videos, Web 2.0, Wikis
Social Media came of age after the Tsunami. It showed its power to provide vital information very quickly when the official channels could not.
With Gustav a day away from landfall many of the most experienced people in the field are coalescing on a Ning site that will aggregate as much information as possible in one place. Wiki, Twets, RSS feeds from Blogs, Video – everything.
Here is the address of the site
by Rob Paterson
July 8, 2008 at 6:54 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Bryant Park Project, Culture, Innovation, NPR, Personal Branding, Platforms, Public Media, Social Media, Social Objects, Trusted Space
One of the aspects that I love about NPR’s new morning Show Bryant Park is that the show shows you what is going on behind the scenes with their Twitter feed and a daily video showing what will be on the show the next day.
BPP was tested in beta by allowing a lot of interaction – real time research.
Now NPR are going further – they are starting a blog whose purpose is to get behind the scenes, under the hood, open the kimono. What people like Andy and Dennis understand is that the more human NPR is, the greater the attachment.
Here is the fist key post:
On behalf of the NPR Digital Media team, we’d like to welcome you to Inside NPR.org, a new blog that will serve as our official headquarters for new features and services we’re developing for the NPR Web site. It’s a chance for you to explore some of the many projects we’re working on, and help us make them more useful as we roll them out.
The idea behind this blog has its roots in our two newest shows – Tell Me More and The Bryant Park Project. Both of them were rolled out as blogs many months before they were ready to go on air, in the hopes of getting as much public feedback as possible. Historically, it’s common to develop a show behind the scenes, only giving listeners a chance to hear it when it was ready for prime time. By creating online communities for each show while they were still “rough cuts,” we were able to build better programs because of it.
Now, we’d like to apply the same rough cuts idea to our online services in general. Whether it’s rolling out social networking, building new mobile products or improving our online strategy in general, we’re hoping we can develop better tools if you’re a part of the conversation.
In the coming weeks and months, you’ll hear from a variety of people from behind the scenes at NPR.org – software developers, product managers, online producers and others who are working on new Web site features. We hope that talking about these activities more openly will help create a virtuous cycle of product development and feedback.
Thanks for joining us; we look forward to brainstorming with you!
— Andy Carvin and Daniel Jacobson
by Rob Paterson
April 14, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Blogging, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Paid Work, Seth Godin
Jeff at NPR with Andy Carvin, me and David Weinberger taken by Doc Searls
Jeff Jarvis writes today about the value of his blog – He says that it has got him all his work over the last few years. The same is true for me. NPR, all my work in New Media, Blackwater, Education – all my paying gigs have come through this medium.
Our money comes largely as a side effect: Here is Seth on that -
At a seminar at the local library, someone asked, “how do I make a lot of money blogging?”
My guess is that at least week’s seminar, the one on growing orchids, no one raised his hand and said, “how do I make a lot of money growing orchids?”
Sure, people make money growing orchids. Some people probably get rich growing orchids. Not many though. And my guess is that the people who do make money gardening probably didn’t set out to do so.
Blogging is much the same way. The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.
If it makes you happy (and your readers happy) it’s a great place to start. Step by step you get better at it, and then you discover the ancillary benefits. But the benefits kick in best when you don’t set out to achieve them.
What about you?
by Rob Paterson
March 12, 2008 at 11:21 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Get My Vote, NPR, Platforms
NPR are on a roll. Recently NPR Music, now politics. Here is a new “world”that is not simply site. It is a new platform called “Get My Vote“. Here you can add your views on what would get youir vote and you can check out and talk about other’s all under the brand of NPR.
If you look at the Cloud, you can also get a feel for how a national agenda might emerge. Imagine a politician partcipating here – could be municipal, state or national. This is what I mean by a platform. This has the potential to become a force for democracy. If not in its present form with a few tweaks it will.
This door way into the “World of Politics” is a bit like WOW. You enter as an unknown with few powers. But if you work hard here – you could become a somebody.
I think that this represents a breakthrough in thinking away from the NewsRoom knows best and the NewsRoom defines what is important and what is quality.
This is a platform and not merely content. As such it has the potential to grow and to become ever more complex and hence interesting.
Platforms will be the future of the social web.
Well done Andy and the gang:
As the name suggests, the project is based around a basic premise: what will it take for political candidates to get my vote? Every person has their own reasons for selecting a particular candidate, their own litmus tests, and we’re asking the public to articulate this in the form of open letters to the candidates. Using Get My Vote, you can upload your own commentary – audio, video or text – and talk about what issues or concerns will drive you to the ballot box. NPR is then planning to incorporate these commentaries into our shows throughout the rest of the election cycle.
We’ve also designed the project in such a way that local stations – both NPR and PBS stations – can create their own Get My Vote initiatives on their websites by embedding Get My Vote widgets. That way, a station can localize the project. A station in Arizona, for example, might create a local version of Get My Vote focusing on immigration perspectives, while a station in Massachusetts might challenge users talk about what it would take for local mayoral candidates to get their vote. So while most users might end up talking about the presidential candidates, I’m hoping it’s used for state and local races as well.
On the Get My Vote homepage, you’ll see that we’re using a tag cloud prominently. These tags are submitted by users when they upload their commentaries. For example, a commentary from an Iraq war vet about healthcare for vets might include tags like “Iraq,” “healthcare” and “Walter Reed.” The more often a particular tag is used by commentators, the larger it appears in the tag cloud. That way, you can get a sense of what topics and ideas are being referenced most often by commentators. Clicking any tag also will show you all commentaries associated with that word or phrase.
We’ve also ensured that the commentaries are embeddable on other websites and social networks – a first for an NPR project. There’s an embed code available for commentaries that you can grab and place in your website. You can also click an option to post on another blog or network, giving you a list of more than 20 sites where you can upload your own Get My Vote commentary, or someone else’s.
The site is now in public beta. This means that anyone can now access the site, upload their own commentaries and explore the site in general, but we’re still working out a few bugs and other minor fixes. We’re hoping that if you have any problems with the site you’ll alert us through the contact form. Over the next few weeks we’ll continue to tweak the site, and soon after that, we expect some of our shows to begin using it on air.
So when you get a chance, please visit npr.org/getmyvote, upload your own commentary and please let us know what you think. Our team is really eager to hear what you have to say. -andy
