by Rob Paterson
April 29, 2008 at 8:13 am · Filed under
ABC News, CBS, Information Management, Interview, Messy World, Michael Skoler, News, Politics, Public Insight Journalism, Public Media, Public TV, Social Networking, Trust, Trusted Space, User Revolution
It’s ironic isn’t it, that at a time when the problems that confront us, such as the end of cheap oil, a war that we cannot get out of, an education system that fails 40% of Americans, a healthcare system that serves only a few, that our news is so awful.
CBS put all their eggs in Katie’s salary and now are thinking of leaving news. ABC spend half the debate on stuff that doesn’t matter. We now know that most of the experts called in to advise us about the war were on the payroll of the Pentagon.
News is becoming entertainment or has often been bought just when we all need to be informed.
How can we get a sense of how these issues, or any issue, really affects us?
I interviewed Michael Skoler of American Public Media to find out how he is using new technology to draw on the real experience of over 50,000 citizens to ground their news at a price that they can afford. His project is called Public Insight Journalism and may be part of the foundation of a more relevant way of offering news.
Over 55,000 people are in the network and are tapped for their experience - how are gas prices affecting your life rather than what do you feel about rising gas prices.
This network is facilitated by a new kind of journalist and by a new kind of social software that keeps the system healthy.
The experiment is now 5 years old and has gone beyond the experiment into the operational and is now starting to spread.
What do you think about the news today? Do you think this may help?
by Rob Paterson
January 27, 2008 at 7:32 am · Filed under
Andy Carvin, Business Model, Community, Grooming, NPR, Public Insight Journalism, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Twitter, User Revolution, Wisdom of Crowds, iTouch
This is a slice of time last night on my Twitter. I am watching TV but I have my iTouch in my lap. When the ads come on, I mute the set and go back to my Twitter feed. here I have a real friend - not a Fake Friend - Andy Carvin covering the South Carolina Primary. I also have a Twitter friend worrying about how to cope with teen boys - her son is out late.
As Andy twittered his coverage, others that I know, pitched in too.
This was not strangers talking to strangers but Friends Talking to Friends - much much much much warmer.
Add the back channel of a parent asking for help about how to cope with your teens being out late and this is an entirely new Media Experience.
I am inside a system - inside a system that is deeply human and that I feel a part of.
BPPDiner - the Twitter inner circle for Bryant Park Project is also adding this warmth to the show. Already we are seeing program ideas being discussed in real time with the listener. Over the weekend even contact is still there between the crew and each other and their inner group.
My intuition is shouting out that somehting that I don’t fully understand yet is happening that will turn out to be momentous.
by Joe McKendrick
January 7, 2008 at 9:38 pm · Filed under
Blogging, Business Model, Change, Culture, Economics, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Messy World, Public Insight Journalism, Relationships, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, User Revolution, Wisdom of Crowds
Getting people to work effectively together in organizations has been a challenge since Og and Um opened their first wheel shop in 10,000 B.C. Over the ages, various motivational and management techniques have been employed, from floggings to trinket rewards to floggings.
In the 20th century, we saw the rise of “scientific” management, but still, organizations continued to look like pyramids — with a few individuals on top, and the rest at the bottom.
Will Enterprise 2.0 flatten the pyramid, once and for all? Gary Hamel is Visiting Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School says that the Web may finally be sweeping away the rigid hierarchies and replacing them with truly participative and collaborative networks.
Here’s how he says it can happen:
Encourage more corporate democracy: Before, employees further down the food chain rarely had their views heard. Hamel urges organizations to use blogs to unleash the same “citizen media” forces within organizations as is happening across the Internet at large.
Unleash formerly hidden creativity. As Hamel puts it: “Make no mistake, your company is filled with video bloggers, mixers, hackers, mashers, tuners, and podcasters. The question is what is your company doing to help all of these ingenious people become fully empowered business innovators?”
Non-traditional funding for new innovation. Hamel notes the rise of non-traditional lenders, enabled through social markets, which potentially can create more funding options for employees eager to experiment with new ideas. Imagine, he says, a company in which managers and employees “was given permission to invest up to 55% of their discretionary resources in any idea, anywhere across the company that they deemed attractive. Suddenly, internal entrepreneurs would have the chance to appeal to dozens of potential ‘angel investors.’
Internal market for decision making. “The Web is a great tool for collating the views of hundreds—or even thousands—of individuals and has spawned a wide variety of ‘opinion markets,’” Hamel says. Suppose “your company created an internal ‘market for judgment’ that aggregated the views of a broad cross section of employees with the goal of establishing the odds that a particular project will meet its intended return. For every big new project, employees would have the chance to buy a security that would pay out only if the initiative achieved a predetermined rate of return.” Such online markets already exist for predicting the outcome of world events and elections.
Liquid power. “An ideal management system would be one in which power was automatically redistributed when environmental changes devalued executive knowledge and competence,” Hamel says. “You may find it hard to imagine an organization in which authority is a fluid commodity, flowing smoothly toward leaders who add value and away from those who don’t, yet this is how the Web works today. In the online world, power and influence are the product of de facto leadership, rather than de jure appointments. Hierarchies get built from the bottom-up, rather than from the top down.”
by Rob Paterson
December 19, 2007 at 10:10 am · Filed under
NPR, OPB, PBS, Public Insight Journalism, Public Media, Relationships, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking
Oregon Public TV is starting a TV version of Public Insight Journalism. Here is a link to a neat video that they are using as the invitation - it makes it all come alive for me.
My own bias is that I want to be connected to people that know a lot about things that are important to me. Knowing what my friends had for breakfast is important - one of the reasons I like Twitter. But I still value expertise.
The web enables me to get connected to individuals who really do know a lot. For instance, the man who runs the music department at Nicholas Hoare’s Book Shop in Toronto is a genius who seems to know everything about serious music - I would love to have him talk online about what he knows and to be available to host a chat.
