Moderating a panel on web security, as being aired yesterday on CSPAN 2 Book TV.

The Founding Fathers would have loved and leveraged social media but been fearful of its future implications on privacy and speech issues, said a host of experts at an event on the impact of new communications patterns.

Earlier this month, I moderated a panel on the subject at the National Constitution Center featuring Jennifer Preston, a social media reporter from the New York Times, Kashmir Hill, a web law reporter from Forbes and Lori Andrews, the author of a related book which served as regular fodder for the discussion, which appeared on CSPAN 2, Book TV.

Find background and audio of the entire program on the NCC blog here. Watch the entire hour-long panel discussion on CSPAN here.

Thanks to Stefan Frank for organizing the event and including me. Below, I have a three-minute clip of the final question of the night, in which, after spending the evening speaking about the perils of social media, each panelist reminds us of the power and benefit.

Some takeaways:

• A herculean battle is being balanced between the speech and communication power of the social web against privacy and security concerns.
• There is a gray area between private company and utility — when does presence on a social network become so part of social life that there should be greater scrutiny over privacy than any other service?
• I created this document and circulated it with my fellow panelists before the event.

More than 50 people watched a panel discussion in the 10! Show studios featuring NBC 10 staff Vince Lattanzio, Tracey Davidson and weatherman Hurricane Swartz.

Local TV news is, perhaps even more than other in the media business, a ratings game.

That’s a distinct takeaway I had, leaving NBC Philadelphia headquarters on City Line Avenue after the latest local ONA meetup featured the affiliate’s web strategy and news direction. More than 50 journalists, NBC 10 representatives, bloggers, freelancers and other media representatives had Yuengling and pretzels before seating in the 10! Show studios. The event was well-planned, well-run and well-received — though this writer is one of the local group’s organizers, outside of promotion, this event was entirely organized by NBC 10 social media editor Lou DuBois.

The event featured video clips from the WCAU station’s long history, presentations on the affiliate’s web and mobile strategies and then a panel Q&A session featuring the station’s tech trends reporter Vince Lattanzio, its consumer reporter Tracey Davidson and its weatherman Hurricane Swartz, moderated by social media editor and event organizer DuBois, who did a smashing job. It was a distinctly different (and so thoroughly compelling) event than our group’s other two programmed events like this, one with the Philadelphia Media Network and the other with public media outfit WHYY.

While the latter is a nonprofit and NBC 10 partner, the former also has to operate as a business with investors in mind. So, it was interesting to hear the suits talk so differently about the work they do.

It’s no surprise that TV and newspaper-based news business is different. But what was interesting to me was how from its web team to its business development team to, yes, even its ‘talent,’ local TV news speaks in a manner of audience acquisition: engagement, text tools, story teases and, as the weatherman said, what happened to Demi Moore?

Let’s be clear, one of the most important topics of the night was the NBC 10 mobile strategist talking about revenue plans — sustainability is key — but it was so stark to me that in an event that also featured people whose business cards have ‘reporter’ on them, there was none of the high-minded chatter of journalism — of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, of informing and engaging in civic discourse.

When the publisher of the Philadelphia Media Network addressed the ONA group last November, peppered throughout his pet project pining were the kind of Fourth Estate extolling that a man in his role is compelled to do but sometimes actually means.

There was none of that from NBC 10.

Understand: this is less criticism than recognition, and it certainly is no crime committed by only one local station. On the contrary, I’m trying to better understand why more substantive content isn’t generated by local TV news, and I’m getting closer to some answer. I rather like the NBC 10 crew, but maybe, as a friend said, the 10 o’clock news should be categorized more as entertainment than journalism.

Indeed, in the shallow pool of local TV news, NBC 10 does some genuinely compelling work — its Mayor Town Hall last year deserves an award and its FCC-mandated public affairs programming outlet ‘At Issue with Steve Highsmith‘ is consistently strong — but their competitive, inch-by-inch, Nielsen-obsessed business world is more different than I often realize.

Wednesday night after the event, I walked out into the mild, cool air through the dark station parking lot that straddles the border between Philadelphia and suburban Bala Cynwyd pleased with an interesting event. Still, in the pursuit of a smarter citizenry, the intractable issues at play may make it as likely to have NBC 10 cross City Line Avenue and move into higher-profile, more costly Center City offices as it would be to have that station, or any of its local competitors, ever offer much in the way of consistent public affairs journalism.

The trouble is that those residents that high-minded elites seem to suggest we most need to better educate, engage and empower are, for now at least, more likely watching local 6 o’clock news than reading an investigative story from the Inquirer. Or so we think.

Is that because they don’t care? Maybe, or even likely. But we have a few years yet before the solution leaves the local TV news studio, so it’s a good place to look.

I’m moderating a panel on privacy, security and democracy concerns surrounding the social web at the National Constitution Center in Old City, Philadelphia next Thursday.

You should come. More details here. It costs $10 for non-members.

My colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I learned plenty at the 2011 Online News Association conference in Boston, but we also did more touring and connected more with old friends and colleagues than last year. We even sneaked out to use the city's new bicycle sharing program and visit Fenway Park, among other sights. We were in Boston for the conference from Sept. 22-25. Photo by some lady who took the camera from her elderly father.

Sometimes, if not most times, what happens outside of the sessions can be what’s most valuable about a conference.

I learned plenty the traditional way at the 2011 Online News Association national conference, held in Boston this weekend Sept. 22-25, but I surely got more out of reconnecting with friends and colleagues from other markets, even more than I remember doing at past professional events. It also didn’t hurt that I dove more into Boston than I have while visiting elsewhere for work travel.

ONA has been a national convener among news innovation conversations for more than a decade, and more locally, I’ve been involved with reviving the Philadelphia chapter of the group.

Full disclosure: this year, I was able to attend thanks to the very generous support of the Center for Public Interest Journalism at Temple University and the Wyncote Foundation. I was able to attend last year with similar support from the William Penn Foundation, which has additionally funded the Transparencity reporting project I have led.

After a few years co-running a sustainable niche news site, participating in the online discourse around news innovation and attending events like ONA and others from the Aspen Institute, the University of Missouri and, yes, our own BarCamp NewsInnovation, I felt like attending the event was just as important to talk shop with others doing similar work across the country as it was to catch up on a lot of in-session conversations that felt less relevant to where we are professionally.

Tourism and good, smart friends aside, below I share what I learned in a conference’s traditional way.

A Morning Conversation with Vivek Kundra

Kundra, who served in the Obama administration as the first federal Chief Innovation Officer, kicked off the conference.

Tweets and Takeaways:

• Shorter @vivekkundra: Let’s get the government out of the re-inventing wheels business. @eyeseast
• Why the cloud makes sense for government now: “In the 1960s the greatest innovation in tech was happening in government. In 1980, innovation moved to enterprise. In 2005, something big happened — all innovation moved to the consumer side.”
• Being able to, say, scan baby crib and see if it’s recalled only benefits parents w/access to that tech. $$$ creates tech divide  @AmyZQuinn
• Will data.gov survive the election? “It’s a one-way street,” he said.
• On @WikiLeaks, @VivekKundra cites “inherent risks,” but says “it shouldn’t have happened,” security was insufficient.  @EricCarvin

You Can’t Duck the Math: Entrepreneurial Journalism

B. J. Roche, Jeremy Caplan, Laura Frank and Jennifer Lord Paluzzi get set to start the session.

I was a little disappointed by this session and don’t think it much pushed forward the conversation, with little actionable advice or experienced details. That said, there were some small takeaways.

Tweets and Takeaways

• @Laura_Frank: try to be an ‘intrapreneur’ before you’re an entrepreneur. Now’s the time to pitch ideas within legacy orgs. @McKennaEwen
• “Be revenue promiscuous.” @meghannCIR
• When you start one site people pat you on the head and say, “Isn’t that cute.” When you launch six at a time, they take notice. @eyeseast

Below watch a video chronicling ‘five minutes in the life of ONA 2011.’

Five minutes in the life of ONA11 from Curt Chandler on Vimeo.

New Platforms for Longform Journalism

Panel (L-R): Tim Carmody, Mark Armstrong, Evan Ratliff, Joshua Benton

I’ve been interested in the movement to use tablets and even more read-friendly smartphones to return to longform roots, celebrated by this session.

Tweets and Takeaways

• Longform content movement is in some ways a rebellion to the shortening and speed of content online, says @jbenton
• Already an emerging vocabulary, in which #longform fits for 1-5k word mag-style pieces and ‘short books’ for longer, I think
• Mac Lion @arstechnica tutorial was free on site, still sold 3k in 24hrs at $5 Kindle ebooks, says @tcarmody
• We make ‘short books’ not ‘longform journalism,’ because offering something LONG isn’t a good sell says @ev_rat of @theatavist
• And how many of those are really read later? MT @alicyp: Pieces saved online to “read later” are only between 250-2k words. @hbillings

A Conversation on the Front Lines of the Arab Revolution

Friday ONA 2011 keynote 'A Conversation on the Front Lines of the Arab Revolution' panel, from left: moderator New York Times reporter Jennifer Preston, NPR social media star Andy Carvin, former Egypt Today editor Rehab El-Bakry, noted Middle East freelance journalist and blogger Issandr El-Amrani and American Islamic Congress outreach director Nasser Weddady.

The lunchtime session was timely and interesting, hearing from those involved with the coverage of the Arab Spring.

Tweets and Takeaways

• It’s good to be reminded how relatively small my contribution to the world of journalism. ….Remarkably small. ….Inconsequential, really.
• At #ona11, in session on Arab Awakening, @acarvin warns of not romanticizing a “hot mess” of political transition. @paufder
• @acarvin sometimes the best sources are also the biggest activists @VOAHutch
• “I think of my Twitter feed as a sort of an open-source newsroom,” @acarvin

B.S. Detection for Digital Journalists

My buddy and strangely proud Canuck Craig Silverman presented with Huffington Post star Mandy Jenkins drew me to this session, which had some small takeaways of value and for which you can find their notes and slides here and coverage of the presentation here.

• New users w/o photos, dated updates and few or spam-centric followers are easy signs of less credible Twitter users: @mjenkins
• Image verification tools like errorlevelanalysis.com and regex.info/exif.cgi and tineye.com shared by @CraigSilverman
• “The best verification tool a journalist has is still the telephone,” says @CraigSilverman
• If you get tricked into spreading a hoax or false information ‘it is your responsibility’ to do your best to contact every person online who is continuing to spread that falsehood, said Silverman.

Making It Work with a Small Staff

Silicon Prairie Insider Managing Editor Danny Schreiber and my colleague Sean Blanda presenting at ONA. Yes, notice the local Harpoon beer we gave out.

My colleagues and I submitted three sessions to present at ONA and one was accepted, this one on working with a small staff, which Sean led on our behalf, with Danny Schreiber, who is the managing editor of Silicon Prairie Insider, not unlike a Technically Philly for the Midwest. They shared this sheet (bit.ly.com/small_staff) of their takeaways from their experiences.

Yes, we gave out beer, as depicted above, to note that small staffs have to develop good environments, and the people loved it.

Tweets and Takeaways

• Check out their brain dump sheet here.
• Video Sean Blanda handing out beer from local Boston brewery Harpoon

• best panel ever @harpoon_brewery
• Content departments and scheduling evergreen resources and features can make staff time more efficient, says @seanblanda
• Video of their ‘How large is their editorial staff’ quiz
• How much do you work? @seanblanda notes @technicallyM now limits to 40-50 hrs to fight burnout, @dannyaway says 70+ but says he loves it
• @AmyZQuinn @jerseyshorejen are understandably nervous for freelance rates. @siliconprarie pays $50 & we’ve limited freelancing due to costs
• Screenshot of @dannyaway @siliconprarie 400+ feed Google Reader account for leads, a ‘time suck’ that leads to insight, he said

I Screwed Up (And You Will Too)

My friend David Cohn, of Berkeley and Spot.Us fame, led this session and shared, with Denise Change of the Grand Rapadian, professional failures they had encountered and what they learned from it. Grab their notes here.

• Rule of the Internet: It is faster to try something than debate about trying something, says @digidave
• “The journalism community has begun to recognize failure as something positive. The journalism industry hasn’t.” @moniguzman

Below, watch a video interview collection around challenges various conference attendees felt were the most daunting for the industry, including what looks like a less than thoughtful addition by this reporter.

Other #ona11 Tweets and Takeaways from other conference sessions

• Journalists who add analysis to FB postings about stories get 20% better response. @kmingis
• Twitter doesn’t take down parody accounts like @BPGlobalPR. But will take down impersonators. @lheron
• 40% of Twitter users are just listening, using Twitter as a wire service – @EricaAmerica
• About 200 million tweets are sent every day, @ericaamerica said. @lheron
• General consensus in the room is you never delete a tweet, even if it is wrong. Clarify, be transparent. @PoppedCulture
• I attended briefly an un-conference called Tango with Django, which was a small kick-in-the-pants in us non-developer journalists about trying to learn some basic programming languages.
• The candidate voting guide is one of the dullest yet important things news orgs do. Could really use spicing up online. @kev097
• Some question came out of the annual awards show about whether enough independent and niche sites are being honored. I didn’t want to dive into that mess, though I did not that we at Technically Philly have never even thought about applying, despite doing some pretty substantial journalism projects.

Photo by Dan Victor

Nearly a year after launching, the team behind the NewsWorks community-driven online news effort from WHYY, the Philadelphia public media organization, shared its lessons. It was the third event from a revived local chapter of the Online News Association.

After an hour of beer donated by Boxcar Brewing, sandwiches from the Trolleycar Diner and pretzels from the Center City Soft Pretzel Co., I kicked off the night and introduced WHYY editorial chief Chris Satullo.

Satullo and Don Henry, two of the many leading faces behind the NewsWorks initiative, shared five tasks they got right and five tasks they got wrong. Text of them all and video of the first few below.

Me kicking off the night. Photo by Dan Victor.

What NewsWorks says it got right

1. Made ads behave themselves , focused on straightforward design — No obtrusive ads, Henry said.
2. Hyperlocal pages — The team was proud of their work in the northwest
3. Partnership network broadened our mix.
4. Changed the culture of the newsroom, provided ample in-house training.
5. Got the damn web site launched — Henry said there was no IA or strategy or staff in May 2010 and still launched in mid-November, “not so bad,” he said.

What NewsWorks says it got wrong

1. Missed change to fully leverage WHYY’s rich audio content — No early in-roads in podcasting, though movement has been made
2. Failed to dislodge perceptoion that site was principally ‘citizen journalism’ and hyperlocal
3. Membership strategy still needs work — Needing to fund and sustain bigger work
4. Social media were not the leading edge of our participation strategy
5. Got the damn web site launched — It was surely lacking a lot of what the staff hoped it could be, but it was a start.

Other takeaways from Q&A session:

• Having strong content partnerships early on is a big priority to recommend to others, said Satullo
• “In the time it takes to make the website you really want, it will no longer be what you want,” said Satullo.
• Just 13 percent of traffic to NewsWorks comes from visitors using the URL, much more from search and social, suggesting the site isn’t as widely known as it is useful, Satullo said.
• July and August saw 30 percent increase in readership, helped by “an earthquake, Irene and Arlene.”
• “People want something that tastes, looks and feels like NPR but is local,” Satullo said. “But if you really listen, NPR hogs up a lot of the average hour. We just have a few minutes at the top and a little at the close. It’s hard to blow the wheels off City Hall in less than 10 minutes.” Adding the daily NewsWorks Tonight show is WHYY trying to “make a bigger canvas to do that.”
• NewsWorks, which has a hyperlocal effort in northwest Philly, won’t be expanding until “this thing is sustained,” which involves growing membership around it, said Satullo.
• The site is tablet ready because it doesn’t use Flash, but the team is seeking a new mobile template to more friendly to smartphone users, said Henry.

A variety of strategies and expectations remain, but online media conversations can’t happen in good conscious without at least a glancing mention of business sustainability.

That was my first takeaway from the New Media Unplugged #UncappedLive event held at the historic Sigma Sound Studios in Center City Philadelphia Tuesday night.

On behalf of Technically Philly, I hosted the event with Tayyib Smith of 215mag.com and led the conversation, featuring a half dozen five-minute introductions from niche publishers seated in chairs amongst 40 attendees in the room, decorated wildly by lead sponsor Vitamin Water and featuring free samples of Heineken Light, which didn’t turn out to be half bad.

See below some of what I learned.

Photo lovingly stolen from Eric Smith

SPEAKERS:

• 6-630pm: people arrive and grab their first couple beers. 6:30-7:30pm: our conversation and questions. 7:30-8:30pm: people chat, meet and grab another beer or three.
• Tayyib Smith, who helped organize the entire two weeks of #UncappedLive in his role at Little Giant Media, introduced the event
• I introduced the event’s purpose (getting indie publishers to know each other and sharing best practices) and talked about kicking off Philly Tech Week 2012 plans, a major revenue generator.
• Eric Smith, Geekadelphia co-founder, talked about the site’s role and its recent success with Philly Geek Awards.
• Shannon McDonald, the founder of NEast Philly, talked about developing partnerships and raising awareness in Northeast Philadelphia.
• Adam Schmidt, the founder and president of Drink Philly, introduced his work and spoke of their plans for expansion.
• Jon, the new editor of Naked Philly, shared the site’s unique collaboration between a real estate company and news site for development news.
• David Raible, the executive director of new philanthropy news site Generocity.org, talked about its plans to democratize nonprofit insight previously most often only known to wealthy donors and Generocity’s goals to scale.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Talk business sustainability: Tayyib poked fun at himself for “blowing a half a million dollars” of investment on the (gorgeous) early editions of two.one.five magazine and asked to hear more about revenue plans. I gave my Technically Media spiel, Adam Schmidt talked about advertising and merchandise fueling Drink Philly and Erika Owens from the accomplished Public School Notebook talked about membership and foundation funding. What I thought was equally important was having Eric Smith talk about his preference that Geekadelphia remain a fun, labor of love, something he wrote about in his writeup on the event. The point was that even though Eric doesn’t want to make money, he understands it’s important to have that be a choice, not just an avoidance.
• Print still sells: Jimmy and Bob Smiley, the father and son team behind the Frankford Gazette, marveled that no one had ever approached them about an online ad after four years of work. After just two newsletter-like print issues to accomodate the neighborhood’s digital divide, “we already sold a $40 ad.” That’s not bringing on any full-time reporters, but shows what hasn’t changed for some.
• Print still has relevance: George Miller, the Temple professor behind music mag startup JUMP Philly, talked about nearing profitability by better paying print ads and being easier to be distributed, understood and shared.
• Different voices mean different audiences: Ashley Hahn, who recently joined PlanPhilly to help the built-environment news site launch a shorter-form blog, talked about the need to offer a different style than the site’s existing longform, detailed articles to attract a younger, more engaged audience.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Jim MacMillan hiding from Daniel Victor's iPhone camera to my enjoyment at the August 2011 ONA Philly meetup at Nodding Head.

Sometimes you need that kick in the pants from an outsider.

There is a new Philadelphia chapter of the Online News Association, something of a trade organization founded in 1999 for journalism innovation that hosts a popular annual national conference I attended last year and regional events across the country. (I’ll be attending the national 2011 ONA conference, this year in Boston in October, too.)

But it’s not the first ONA chapter here. As recent as summer 2008, an ONA Philly chapter, led by then Inquirer online editor Chris Krewson and Philly.com editor Wendy Warren, held a big regional conference. But it was a time of heavy contraction and stress over at 400 North Broad Street. The workload wasn’t spread enough and that iteration fizzled. (Credit to Krewson and Warren for first bringing the group here — and setting up the first Facebook group.)

Fortunately a newcomer has taken up the cause. (And has a new Facebook group up, in addition to a Twitter account to follow news.)

Young sage Daniel Victor, who took a gig at Philly.com under Warren earlier this year after the collapse at TBD, has taken up the cause. Enlisting the Technically Philly crew and local AP editor Amy Fiscus, Victor is bringing the show back.

We had small 20-30 person meetups in July and August and now are moving forward. On Sept. 15, NewsWorks is hosting a show and tell on their near one-year anniversary of work from WHYY, details above at right in sidebar.

From what I know, there’s never been a national ONA conference in Philadelphia. That’s something I’d like to see changed.

Standing with my colleague Sean Blanda, City Managing Director Rich Negrin and my colleague Brian James Kirk at Signature Event. Photo by Rachel Playe.

The inaugural Philly Tech Week has passed, and I shared a roundup of the entire week, but I wanted to focus in on one of the larger events.

As I noted, my Technically Philly colleagues and fellow PTW organizers each took hold of a portion of the nine of the week’s 65 events that we organized. Among what I handled was taking the lead on our Friday night Signature Event, featuring a 150-person, catered cocktail reception at WHYY in Old City, featuring keynote speaker Rich Negrin, the City of Philadelphia Managing Director who discussed good government initiatives.

I have some take aways below, which I hope to add to, in addition to the text of the quick address I gave to kick off the evening and video, showing that I’m not very good at actually listening to what I write.

My prepared remarks:

Thank you all for coming to tonight’s Signature Event and, perhaps more importantly, thank you for participating in the inaugural Philly Tech Week.

Together, we organized 65 events with more than 50 groups across the city in a variety of industries and venues and styles. Philadelphia: can we please applaud ourselves?

My name is Christopher Wink. I am one of three co-founders of technology news site Technically Philly. Together with my colleagues Sean Blanda and Brian James Kirk, we conceived of and organized Philly Tech Week, but everyone in this room knows the technology community of Philadelphia is bigger and broader and bolder than any of us on our own. It just needed a voice.

I’ve been joking with friends recently that the real future of news is event planning. In truth, convening and creating action is a clear path, and one we’re embracing at Technically Philly. We believe one of the clearest ways to grow Philadelphia’s reputation and impact is reducing redundancy and fostering collaboration to take on our region’s challenges together.

So in March we brought together a small group of technology community leaders from diverse industries and backgrounds to meet and be the face of this year’s Philly Tech Week around collaboration. We’d like to share a short 3-minute video, produced by our colleague Steve Metzger, with you now.

COLLABORATION VIDEO FROM STEVE METZGER

Then I went on:

City Councilman Bill Green introduced a Resolution that named these six days officially Philly Tech Week, and as I said then, I’d be surprised if any vanity resolution ever had as many proper nouns as ours had. This is a community with more corners than anything in geometry, from entrepreneurs in life sciences and social gaming, to hackers, to coders, to developers, to designers, to IT professionals, to social media stars, to activists, and all the dreamers and the doers therein.

This was the first Philly Tech Week, thrown together in a few months time. Despite that, among 65 events, we saw the unveiling of OpenDataPhilly.org, a civic hacker tool built by Azavea and endorsed by the City of Philadelphia’s Division of Technology. Tomorrow, during BarCamp NewsInnovation at Temple University, while 300 journalists learn about the future of their craft, a few dozen coders will build tools using that data, and the lines between those two groups will continue to blur. The Emerging Technologies for Enterprise conference from Chariot Solutions sold out and continued its reputation as one of the country’s premiere development events. Five new Philly startups were pushed out into the world, our nascent video game and robotics communities showed off what they can do, the future of music, sustainability and shelter were all discussed, with technology being the primary driver of change. WordPress, Rails and other platforms and languages that build this new world were shared with new friends and embraced by old ones.

There were 65 events. I couldn’t begin to mention them all.

I do want to thank our sponsors, WHYY for being our official headquarters, Chariot Solutions, Alteva, PHD Virtual, Morgan Lewis, Verizon, Tropo, University City Science Center, Little Giant Media, Bluewolf, Monetate, InterDigital, NPower, Open Desks, Jarvus, Reed Technology, Krispy Kreme, Vitamin Water and even more, actually.

I want to bring up former Inquirer editorial page editor and WHYY News and Civic Dialogue chief Chris Satullo to talk about this community’s power, the role public media can play and introduce our keynote speaker, but first let me leave you with this.

It’s my role as a journalist to question power, and here, that means, in part, the City of Philadelphia. But there is something very powerful for which I want to credit the City’s Division of Technology, with direction from former Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. Last fall, Frank and his team shared a more detailed Digital Philadelphia vision.

Under a mess of branding and a push for more funding, there was brilliance. Technology has very little to do with iPhone apps and servers.

Technology will shape the future of Philadelphia in three profound ways, the vision said: it will help us create jobs, it will help us give better access and education to all Philadelphians regardless of income and it will make our government more transparent, effective and efficient.

It doesn’t matter anymore if our government will do these things because we can do so on our own. If you need a call to action for now and every day until next year’s Philly Tech Week, it will be to collaborate behind those three goals.

Thank you for your time and let’s go out and continue to make Philadelphia a better place for all of her residents using technology.

With colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and PlanPhilly Managing Editor Matt Golas. Photo by Rachel Playe.

TAKE AWAYS:

• No matter how many times I see myself speak, still, I want to tell myself: speak slower (I hate the idea of speaking for too long so for some reason I think I’ll solve it by speaking too quickly)
• Three speakers, five minutes each max
• More booze, less food
• Do get a caterer
• Sell tickets cheaper early and jack the prize up to incentive early buys

Kind tweets

• You had a plethora of attractive women at a geek event @christopherwink / help out @Devnuts please. @PhillyTechWeek @215tayyib
• @christopherwink is a superstar #phillytechweek @phillyphriedman
• Loved meeting so many tech savvy people in one room. @RichNegrin

By way of City Council resolution, it is officially Philly Tech Week.

Back in January, I first announced here this open calendar of events meant to promote technology and innovation in Philadelphia, as organized by my two colleagues and I at Technically Philly.

Thanks to our all of our sponsors, including the official Philly Tech Week headquarters WHYY, some 50 event organizers, thousands of attendees and friends, we have brought together a week-long celebration of technology and innovation featuring some 65 events across industries, focuses and interests.

Listen here.
Here’s the radio spot currently running on WHYY.

This morning, at a kickoff breakfast for event organizers, we launched the first ever Philly Tech Week to finish up Saturday. This afternoon, we’ll be unveiling the first catalog of City of Philadelphia data online and much more is to come.

Below, find some highlighted events:

MONDAY, APRIL 25

• Open Data Philly unveiling (12-1p.m., WHYY)
• Philadelphia Content Strategy Meetup (5:30-6:30 p.m, TUCC)

TUESDAY, APRIL 26

• Augmented Reality Check panel (6-8 p.m., Museum of Art)
• Office Space Printer Smash (6-8 p.m., The Hacktory)
• Switch Philly (6-8p.m., Wharton)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27

• Emerging Technology for the Enterprise conference (All day, Sheraton)
• Innovations of Philadelphia2035 (12-1p.m., WHYY)
• Future of Music (5:30-7:30 p.m., UArts)
• Artician Digital Media Gallery (6-8 p.m., Devnuts)
• Tech Quizzo (8-10 p.m., Grey Lodge)

THURSDAY, APRIL 28

• Philly Robotics Expo (2-4 p.m., Drexel University)
• Indy Hall Beer Pong tournament (6-8 p.m., Indy Hall)
• Chiptunes Showcase (7:30-10 p.m., Mad Decent)

FRIDAY, APRIL 29

• Green Tech Showcase (12-1p.m., WHYY)
• Philly Tech Week Signature event (6:30-9:30 p.m.)

SATURDAY APRIL 30

• BCNI (9 a.m.-6 p.m., Temple University) The third annual national BarCamp NewsInnovation held at Temple University, happening concurrently with our first Civic Hackathon presented by Tropo. Register for FREE here.

Data, context and engagement were the themes of the Hardly. Strictly. Young. event at the University of Missouri Reynolds Journalism Institute this week, says Michael Maness, the Knight Foundation Vice President of Journalism and Media Innovation.

Also read a Columbia Journalism Review overview from fellow attendee, new friend and total asshole Craig Silverman, who takes the opportunity to poke fun at me. (I forgive him.)

The two-day conference meant for brainstorming alternative recommendations to implement a 2009 Knight Commission report was something of an idea-hackathon.

Though I arrived on Saturday to couchsurf in St. Louis first, the confab kicked off with a welcome dinner Sunday night and was made mostly of rotating groups of us 30 members discussing implementation ideas Monday and presenting those ideas Tuesday. The goal was to create real ideas for implementation.

The Knight Commission Report on Informing Communities, released in September 2009, was the broad culmination of a year of hearing testimony and collecting insight, featuring 15 recommendations on ensuring American communities are better informed and engaged.

This  week’s invite-only event was led by leather-jacket adorned, Spot.Us founder and current RJI fellow David Cohn, after he attended an Aspen Institute roundtable of media executives discussing how to implement the initiatives. Cohn felt perspective from a group of largely younger journalists, who are ‘creating their own centers of power,’ could be valuable. Despite the largely journalism-focused attendee list, it’s important to note that the Knight Commission report is more broad, including curriculum-based media literacy and universal broadband access.

Monday group sessions, this one led by Daniel Sinker and Greg Linch. Photo by Lauren Rabaino

Here are the primary nuggets from some of the proposals that came from the four rotating groups for each of the four recommendations that the event focused on:

‘Media’ Education at Various Levels

• Orange Team (led by Linch and Sinker): Report for America initiative — a year-long intensive fellowship for post-undergraduate students of various academic disciplines
• Red Team (Silverman and Lewis): Adopt a Wikipedia page — Have high school classrooms adopt relevant Wikipedia pages and update and monitor them for an academic year

Presentation room. Photo by Lauren Rabaino

Increase the sources of news providers

• Green Team (Boyer and Bachhuber): Create local best practices fund — Bolster a fund for (1) events that connect entrepreneurial journalists together to develop and share best practices; (2) digitize local government documents and services, perhaps in partnership with Google, and (3) develop software solution to use Knight’s community information needs assessment guide.

Matt Thompson and myself fielding C.A.T. Signal-related questions. Photo by Lauren Rabaino.

Expand Local Media Initiatives to Reflect the ‘Full Reality’ of Communities They Represent

• Blue Team (Thompson and Wink): C.A.T. Signal — Within a narrow test-case neighborhood or town, create a networked coalition of civic groups that will respond to a one-time-only request — a C.A.T. signal — granted to all residents. The scarcity and direct action will increase buy-in and solving problems will grow involvement. Yes, there is a website. Peep the slides here. Our rather smilingly self-indulgent trumpeting brought quite a bit of interest in the idea.

Ensure that Every Community has at least one Local Hub

Presenting the Webabago idea with Kim Bui. Photo by Lauren Michell Rabaino

• Red Team (Rabaino and Yada): Local government publishing dashboard — Create a low-cost or no-cost open source toolkit of services that can be provided to local governments to create workflow and publish relevant data, information and local news. There are concerns around transparency, but this is a start.
• Green Team (Bui and Wink): The Webabago – Using partner anchor institutions for promotions, credibility and location, launch an initiative of rurally-focused mobile internet-connected computer centers that offer (1) computer access, (2) media literacy and (3) media production training for an online hub that starts with a community calendar and moves toward news coverage. This is an expansion of rural book-mobiles and university extension services, as recommended by the Knight Commission. The foundational assumption here is that we cannot develop online hubs without in-person hubs first.

Webabago slides


• (Amico and Lee) Expand Wiki tools — Like the famed Davis Wiki, local wikis can help smaller communities develop their own institutional memory and essential hubs. Chris Amico’s ideas of what an online hub is.

Take Aways

• Great big thanks to Cohn, RJI, Jeff Beeson, Knight and everyone else who came: it was a great privilege, experience and opportunity
• The Hardly. Strictly. Young conference name is a play off the annual Hardly. Strictly. Bluegrass outdoor concert in San Francisco and that while our cohort of mostly 20 and 30 somethings was younger than the Aspent Institute summit, that wasn’t the rule, says David Cohn.
• Work with anchor institutions, bring the journalism to the people, don’t have the people come to the journalism.
• What a great event for RJI to host, bringing 30 innovative journalism leaders to see its beautiful facilities, campus and its interest steps forward
• ‘Nobody ever creates a cocktail at full bar” says Brian Boyer
• It’s tough to do so with such a busy crew, but I think we all would have been more productive had we all fully read the Knight Commission report (I did on the plane there) as I believe there was some duplication
• St. Louis rocks and Columbia, Missouri is a nice college town
• David Cohn likes living there because there is a ‘nice, little bunny’ that lives under his porch