Open brainstorming thread on BarCamp sessions for Sunday

[Daniel Bachhuber]

Hey all,
The BarCamp this Sunday will really be spectacular if we have
intelligent people leading intelligent conversations. Some sessions
can come together on the fly, but sometimes it's really useful for the
people who might lead intelligent conversations to think in advance
about what they want to talk about.

I've got my fingers crossed I'm hoping those intelligent people will
attend on Sunday. If they don't, let's continue the conversation about
what sessions we might hope to have on Sunday. Here's what I have:

- The digital basics (blogging, RSS, Twitter, Google Alerts, etc.) -
If we have a projector, this session could be really cool as a
"digital show and tell." I'm willing to orchestrate it, but I'm hoping
that different people in the room will come up and talk for 5 minutes
about their favorite tool and how they use it

- Tips and techniques for starting your own project (publication or
otherwise). Entrepreneurship and what it means. It might be useful to
talk about experiences in this session, difficulties that you can run
into, and how you should define success

What are you especially jazzed about and are thinking about leading?
Who do you know that would be a good discussion facilitator? We have a
number of ideas on the wiki now that I think will be even better when
crystallized into discreet session topics

Also, #bcuoj will be our #hashtag for #bcuoj

Cheers!

Daniel

--
Daniel Bachhuber
www.danielbachhuber.com
danielb...@gmail.com
cell: +1 971 998 5407
aim/skype/twitter: danielbachhuber

[@ddrrnt]

I think you're on the right track DB.

I can help teach Twitter basics and about the kind of value that
ideally 'should' come from
using it.

It would be nice to take a student who has a defined interest and help
them set
up RSS feeds, Google Alerts, and various sources on social networks.

I think it is helpful for students to figure out how to set up a
manageable information
stream that could then translate into linking, commenting, blogging,
and/or whatever else.

I think that an unbound j-school culture defined by tightly knit teams
across all concentrations
would be an interesting opener to a discussion.

I'd be happy to share my reflections about one of my entrepreneurial
projects and why I think
J-schools should be centers for innovation.

I'm confident we'll be alright no matter who shows up.

We just need to play with possibilities rather than just grit our
teeth and argue. You know?

G'night

On Oct 22, 5:15 pm, Daniel Bachhuber <danielbachhu...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> danielbachhu...@gmail.com

[Suzi Steffen]

I was thinking about iPhone/Touch apps and how the J-school might develop some. But I know NOTHING about developer-style things like, oh, coding, blah blah, etc. Still, I'd be really interested in proposing that we talk about apps for education and apps for news.

Hoping Matt Neznanski from the Corvallis G-T will be there — Matt, are you on our email list?  He posted some ideas about topics to the wiki, and I definitely think it would be great to have professionals from dailies talking about what it takes not to be "timid," as he puts it.

One of my students in Reporting 1 posted a great blog post about emotions and journalism; I made it sticky at http://reporting1blog.wordpress.com, and there's been a fair amount of discussion both in class and on the blog. And, of course, I experienced this intensely this week when our production manager died unexpectedly a couple of days ago, and I wrote a news story about him for our blog. So something about how to acknowledge and deal with emotions around stories/photos — that would be good (how to deal with them without resorting to the traditional journalist remedies of whiskey and cynicism, that is). I can definitely be one of the people for that discussion.

Finally, I'm sorry, but one of my best friends scheduled a baby shower at 2 pm on Sunday, so my plan is to leave at the end of the 1 pm session and be back for the 3 pm session.

We have interest from a prof in Vancouver (BC) about having a full PNW Redefining J-School BarCamp in the spring, so that's good! And a prof from the UW is forwarding info about this to the faculty there, so hurray for us; with the urging and help of Suzanne Yada, Ryan Sholin and Daniel B., we're starting a wave of discussions/possibilities for J-students and profs. 

Let's ROCK THIS.

Yrs,

Suzi  

[Matt Neznanski]

I'm definitely interested in moving the j-school conversation forward.
I just don't know if I can make it this Sunday. We'll see...

I'm also going to throw this out: One of the things I think we
struggled with at the Portland NewsInnovation barcamp was overthinking
the theoretical possibilities and underthinking the practical
solutions.

Some things I think that can change right away:
* change the focus from broadcast writing style to include much more
Web writing and community involvement
* encourage/reward students for initiative and innovation
* be realistic in coaching students about job opportunities (local and
community jobs rather than 'if you work hard you could work for the
NYTimes b.s.')
* be progressive in coaching students about job opportunities. I
really could have used a business basics course in college -- both
because I have some entrepreneurial interest and because it would have
made me a more rounded reporter from the get-go. This is key: business
savvy (to me) is more important than coding skill. The latter changes
quickly and it's more likely that a journalist in the near future will
work on her own with basic blogging software that requires very little
technical skill. But building a business model to pay for that
journalism is vastly more important and pressing.
* be positive. Don't confuse lousy earnings reports from news
companies with opportunities in journalism. This may, truly, be the
golden age of journalism! If it's not, maybe it's coming! The glass is
half full!

Back to work,
-Matt