Disasters - Public TV and Social Media - Iowa and St Louis

June 13, 2008 at 3:56 am · Filed under Flickr, IPTV, KETC, Public Media, Public TV, Social Networking, TV, Trust, Trusted Space, User Revolution, Video, Web 2.0

How does a small public TV station provide its state with complete coverage of a statewide series of disasters?

Iowa is truly a disaster state right now - not only has it record floods but also tornadoes.

IPTV, Iowa Public TV, has asked the public for help and it is getting it. Here is its video page where you can see not only a selection of Videos from the public and the station but also its process of attracting them into the station. This is a thumbnail so click to see more.

Here is is Flickr Feed. Click to see more.

Ironically, the minimal resources that Public TV has is making its adoption of social media more widespread and the result is of course that the stations that have gone down this route are getting more attached to their members.

With the fire in San Diego, the Bridge collapse in Minneapolis and now the Floods in Iowa, we are seeing Public TV starting to find a new definition for the term “Public Broadcaster”.

At KETC in St Louis we begin a new chapter in covering disasters and in engaging the public. For normally when we think “Disaster” we think of a flood or a fire. But what about the great and complex social problems that we all face. What about education? What about health care? Are these not “Disasters”.

Unlike a flood, they are persistent and they are pervasive. They also seem insoluble - maybe until now? For their causes are surely systemic and we are very poor at even seeing systemic issues, let alone coping with them. We tend to line up along special interest lines. There is not enough trust in play to break through.

There has also been no Trusted Place for the real conversation to be held.

Next week we will start to see if we can help the people of St Louis cope with the mortgage crisis. What could be more complex than that? What could be more dangerous that large segments of any city losing hope that they can be part of society? Our hope is that Public TV can offer the Trust that can connect the unconnected and hence mobilize the Trust that is surely the essential element of how a community can come together and confront these dangerous systemic social “disasters” that are eroding our society.

I will be posting the story of how we do this as it unfolds. I hope to share with you in real time our thoughts and our struggles to take this next step in media. (Cross posted to Robert Paterson’s Weblog)

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The First Fatal Car Accident - History and Social Media

January 4, 2008 at 8:37 am · Filed under Flickr, Social Media

I cannot help myself - Bill talks of his grandfather being safe in his car because of the old conditions that provided ruts to keep him safe when he slept behind the wheel.

As a school boy I passed this sign every day. I found the picture by accident last week when I searched Harrow School on Flickr

Here is the lane where the accident took place and you can see how it might have happened by the gradient

The shot of Grove Hill was taken by another person to the plaque. My House at Harrow, the Grove, had its boys’ entrance about 2/3 of the way down on the left. I remember hardly being able to get up the hill in icy conditions with my Oxford shoes with smooth soles.

I am amazed at what I can now find by using social media - what will Flickr and YouTube be like in say 10 years Time? You will be able to find your whole life here or find images to support most events.

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Old Media meets New @WOSU and COSI in Columbus

November 12, 2007 at 4:05 pm · Filed under BBC, BBC Manchester, COSI, Enterprise 2.0, Flickr, Hyper Local News, Jeff Jarvis, NPR, Ning, PBS, Public Media, Robin Hammam, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Objects, Twitter, WOSU

This Wednesday, Nov 15th, the guys at WOSU will meet with may of the leading local bloggers in Columbus to see if they can find things to talk about and to do with each other. Here is the invitation:

We at WOSU and COSI have been wondering how we could do more to help our community cope with some challenging issues. We asked ourselves:

What if we — your local public broadcaster and science museum — and those of you who are the local blogging experts got together and learned how to use Social Media to bring back that great American tradition of the community taking charge of its own problems?

Here’s what we’re wondering:

Could we use social media and our many talents and resources to breakthrough the bureaucratic barriers that seem to block so much local reform?

Could we gain enough support and understanding to shift our education system so that our children are equipped to face the sometime harsh realities of the world?

Could we start to make sense of what our aging population, our health care system and even our food system may mean to us?

What other issues should we be discussing with an eye toward change?

Many local bloggers have deep subject knowledge and are also part of existing communities that also care and know a lot.

We have a big megaphone—radio and web site—and some great resources—a centrally located facility with cutting-edge technology (studios and a mediaLab) that we could add to the mix.

Can you imagine what we might be able to do together?

Interested? We would like to invite you to the first meeting of the Columbus Social Media Cafe — a “Town Hall” Open Space Meeting — on Thursday, November 15 at 6:30 pm, to see if we can find an agenda that we can all get excited about and to see what will emerge if we get together.

The meeting is at WOSU@COSI inside COSI at 333 West Broad Street in downtown Columbus.

Tim Eby, retiring Chair of NPR, will be blogging here - see the picture above - and he will be Twittering here. Scott will be vidoing some of the participants and WOSU will put the clips up on their site soon.

There will be pictures here on Flickr

This is a look at part of the amazing space at COSI.

The hope is that this may be the beginning of a new approach to Hyper Local Coverage - where the bloggers and the public TV/Radio - can combine their talents and efforts.

Many thanks to Robin Hammam at the BBC and to Jeff Jarvis for inspiring this efort.

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Fires in California - How Social Media is helping + Moblie Phones

October 24, 2007 at 8:32 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Corante, Debi Jones, Emergency, Enterprise 2.0, Flickr, KPBS, Mobile Messaging 2.0, Mobile Phones, NPR, News, PBS, Public Media, Social Media, Twitter, Wisdom of Crowds, security

If you live where I do 3,000 miles away from the fires, maybe pictures of the fires and interviews with people who have lost their homes might be interesting. BUT what if you live where the fires are? Surely then I would want to know in real time EXACTLY what was going on.

KPBS - a public TV Station is providing this service using Google Maps, Twitter & Flickr. They are also broadcasting on air and on the web! They have all the bases covered. I have suggested to some PBS/NPR stations that they should create an Emergency Plan - they have pushed back saying that they don’t do “News”. Here is a joint license showing that covering emergency well is surely one of the key “Public” tasks of such a station - showing also how by using social media - they can do this really well by accessing their community

Here is the Google Map - all the key detail is there - what is going on and where and when (875,000 views and counting this morning)

Here is the Twitter feed - note that the feed is operating on a minute by minute basis

Here is the link to Flickr

They are using the Comments Section on a blog as a tool to allow people to make local reports - see how it works here

They have got the full suite all cleverly applied

Update - In this kind of emergency - Mobile Phones are now the main link - here is a great post by Debi Jones on how this is playing out:

The disastrous fires burning in San Diego have initiated a service used by the city and county government to inform and update residents. Mandatory evacuation orders have been communicated via reverse 911 on both landline phones and mobile phones. The messages are prerecorded and as I’ve said, three messages have been received on my phone. The first was an evacuation order. The next message was a notice that San Diego schools are closed until further notice along with the instruction to keep children inside and restrict their activity levels (smoke and ash is so thick in the air that keeping it out of your house is impossible during large fires). The third message was information on evacuation centers that were still open as several are already full.

Regulation in the US for Enhanced 911 or emergency service which incorporates location data has resulted in a number of emergency related services that are unique to the US market when compared to other geographical regions like Western Europe or Asia. The reverse 911 system isn’t specifically a mobile service, but that it does include mobile phones is impressive and to see this system work in the case of a disaster saving time and lives is an important development. To this point, 262,000 households have received reverse 911 calls.

It is likely in a very bad situation that cell phone networks will get jammed - what we are learning though is that SMS tends to get through - so Twitter as a feed may be the core of a good plan

Advisories have been announced on CNN and local San Diego TV stations asking people to limit their mobile phone use as the networks are saturated. This is a common problem during emergencies as we’ve seen over and over. The one component that continued to provide communication during the London bombings, post Katrina flooding in New Orleans and now in San Diego is text messaging. Twice today my mobile calls have been rejected with the network reporting, “all circuits are busy”. And yet, I’ve continued to be able to send out SMS.

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