KMD Digital Journalism 2010

I had two ideas that were pretty important to me. One was a discussion of the future of entertainment, but I actually sat down and wrote that today. The other was a repsonse to the oil disaster in the gulf of mexico, and with the push to develop oil pipelines through British Columbias north coast, and the government exploring the option to open up deepwater drilling off the coast.

Background:

The freedom needed to create the cultures of a complex society need a substrate of open processes, where the technical wherewithal and cultural competencies embedded in creative endeavors are conveyed more fully than is possible from just openly licensed end products. In disciplines and industries where the process to product ratio of knowledge is relatively great and the process is relatively closed, knowledge that is “in the air” often gets trapped in regional balloons of stubbornly uneven economic and cultural resources (Marshall 1920). Today, however, much of that situational knowledge is not only in the air, but it is also written down, digitized, and locked up behind hopes of achieving the recognition, funding, and opportunities that come with or without the IP protections bestowed upon the first claimant of the resulting completed creative product. These gifts often surpass those specific to the legal determination of property ownership - a fact that is often invoked in justifications for open licensing. But to seek a truly free culture - a fertile culture, where roots can penetrate the composting thoughts and struggles of creations that came before - we need to understand how to disperse processual knowledge in optimal balance with end product rewards.

Project description:

I'd like to conduct interviews to (1) identify key factors that influence the adoption of open process practices in varying disciplines and industries and (2) assess different methods for encouraging such adoption. I'd love to develop the beginnings of a framework around this and post it in wiki form to collect data from experts in a wide range of disciplines and industries. Ultimately, I envision a blog with posts from these experts describing their personal views regarding their discipline's potential to embrace open processes, as well as any experiences with different open process initiatives. I also hope to accompany this with a series of discussions about the balance between processual contributions and project completion, perhaps in podcast form. How, exactly, this would be broken down to fit in a seven week class, I have yet to determine.

Journalistic motivation and impact:

In some sense, this is an academic endeavor, albeit one that is highly applicable to the real world. But in other ways, this is an issue that needs the help of [critical] mass media to bring the problem to the dinner table. As with all cultural shifts resulting from and leading too new tools and policies, there's a chicken and egg phenomenon that requires constant, iterative communication in order to progress forward, to the best solutions available. That's what I'm hoping to provide by bringing a journalistic approach to this issue.

I also feel that there are significant efficiencies to be gained from collaborative journalism (which I'm sure we'll talk about extensively in this class). I'd like to use this wiki+blog/podcast approach for this to explore the synergies in a push-pull problem solving endeavor, particularly one that relies on intimate situational familiarity that, presumably, has parallels in disciplines and industries all over the world.

Experience and contributions:

I have no idea what I'm doing. If you don't either, we'll get along just fine. That said, those with skills and experiences are encouraged to apply.

Hi all,

My proposal:

A presentation for Pecha Kucha Charlotte on July 16, and/or perhaps modified for Ignite Charlotte, on Aug. 10.

Would include slides on Google Docs and/or Slideshare under CC license (share, modify, etc.)

I'm not naturally comfortable doing presentations, so this work is for personal practice.

Both events require 20 slides, with an accompanying talk. Pecha Kucha allows 20 seconds of talk per slide (6.6 minutes total), and Ignite Charlotte allows a total of 5 minutes.

Content idea: The faces of "edupunk." I had never heard of the word until recently, but ran into the term and some images that don't look like the students and teachers online that I'm finding.

Here's a Google Image search: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=edupunk&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi...

Where you come in:Would any of you like to contribute slides or just photos of yourselves? I could pull them from your profile pictures here, but might run into image size problems. I might seek a word or two to describe you, like where you're from or what you do outside of class.

And if anyone wants to take a photo of themselves with "edupunk" written on their fists like in the Google images, that would be awesome. :O)

EDIT: (after reading the stories of supply lines in Pakistan) A map would be really cool too, and shareable by all. Anyone want to put themselves on a class Google map? http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=1129968960637927...

Purpose: To show our diversity. Images work great for that, and I'm fairly decent at making slideshows.

The creator of the term, Jim Grooms, seems as if he'd embrace the idea: http://bavatuesdays.com/the-glass-bees/

My accompanying talk would describe "edupunk," or more broadly, open online collaborative learning, and include P2PU and other alternatives.

Philosophical note: I don't totally embrace the idea of peer education being separate from capital and money, as I'd like to see more ways for people who can teach to make money to sustain themselves. But this presentation won't be about idealogy: It's just introducing a concept and showing its diversity to a general audience, perhaps to encourage more peer sharing and education.

My proposal:

In this economy, I believe it is helpful to be reminded of the importance of what economists call the non-market economy, and the value of the contributions we make to it every day. For example, we grow the non-monetary economy whenever we do a favor for a friend, or a complete stranger, or whenever we invest in a relationship.

Organizations like Gallup and the New Economics Foundation and even some countries- such as Bhutan and France- are hard at work creating and understanding new metrics which give as much weight to macro indicators like Well-Being as to Gross Domestic Product (the supreme weathervane of the market economy). This line of thinking is something we sincerely hope will catch on in the U.S. too, as evidenced by a recent story in Time Magazine on the topic.

Using existing templates as a guide, such as the Bhutan's Gross National Happiness impact statement and Gallup's Well-Being Strength-Finder tool, we will explore two questions:

1) Is it possible to show that any individual business or organization has had a positive impact on well-being in any given community? Through the lens of local organizations that intentionally build communities, I will seek to report what impact they have had on the well-being of the Washington D.C. community. Potential interviewees include: Progress D.C., Weatherize D.C., Heller's Bakery in Mt. Pleasant.

2) Is it possible for any organization to intentionally set out to improve well-being in their strategic planning? Potential interviewees include: the organizers of Hub D.C.

As background, it may be helpful, if time and access permits, to interview some experts behind the Bhutanese Gross National Happiness Index, the Gallup Well-Being Survey, the New Economics Foundation (creators of the Happy Planet Index, an alternative proposal to GDP), Robert Putnam (Havard author of Bowling Alone) and Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (advisor to the French committee on alternatives to GDP).

In the future, I hope this leads to a larger blog-based art project to highlight the many ways different individuals help contribute to the well-being of their community every day, very often through activities not captured by GDP.

Here's a recent post on my blog on this topic.

I feel that there is so much I want to write about. I would like to get my blog rolling forward which covers making a choice about life. Choosing our health, our finances, our spirituality, our social life and our emotional well being.

I am also in charge of marketing for a hypnobirthing certification class in Sept. and thought that writing something along those lines and advertising it using facebook and twitter would also fall in step.

Open to having other join me for either project.

Calista
Make life a choice.

My proposal is:

I've seen some maps based on Google Maps platform (http://code.google.com/intl/es/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/) that I thought showed great geographical dispersion of the points where an accident occurred on the basis of how close we come on the map. Seeing this, I got the following idea.

An example: http://losupeencuantotevi.blogspot.com/search?q=chile&x=0&y=0

Proposal:

My proposal is to create a map that marks the municipalities whose mayors were convicted of corruption, by year and by putting his political group colors. In this way, we could see in Spain the total number and as we approached by provinces, coastal or interior areas, etc.

I am currently checking to what extent is it possible to access the case to put links to the various statements that corroborate the facts for anyone to know the causes of crime and learn Flash to create the map ... I'll take two days, and will not be too complicated.

The project would be only in the province of Almería, since once the tool is not generated simply increase the number of data and is what requires more time commitment. Their growth would be a matter of time.

Reasons.

Do not believe in political promises because I believe that politics is an argument for the exploitation of natural resources, although natural in human beings, their own organization. So my hope is that someday these data are taken into account and is no longer the most promising or most meets, but steals the least. I think it's a way to win all the games credibility and transparency and citizens, why not, They will report cases of corruption in their towns. Ambitious is not it?

At first is an individual project because I have no language or geographical proximity to any other member of the course ... But a project is easily extrapolated to the rest of the world and whoever can do it too.

(thanks to Google Translater xD)

My project blog http://novosjornalistas.wordpress.com/

New Journalists - A collection of texts about the new abilities that the modern journalist must have.