Susan Mernit's Blog

Managing anxiety by doing what I avoid

2012-08-24T00:03:26Z

One of the habits I have I dislike the most is that I will fixate on something I don't want to do and just don't do it. It could be something I should do, and would benefit by doing, but it becomes the little hard nut of neurotic worry that I don't do. And it festers.

But one of the habits I have that I like about myself is when this little hard festering nut of worry gets acute enough, I have a change of heart. I decide the only way to make myself feel better is to attack and finish and resolve this issue that I have been avoiding and make it go away through working on it.

I've just spent 2.5 hours on one of those little hard nuts, one that has been driving me crazy for the past 4 months, much to my shame. Only--in just 2.5 hours--I fixed it.

I timed it so I could show myself that this chore I've avoided for weeks didn't take any time at all once I decided to do just it.

And that is the lesson I want to remember--not only to jump on things I need to do, but to realize that worry can take much more time than taking action.

Code for Oakland: "Most diverse hackathon ever"

2012-08-09T23:40:12Z

As one of the founders of Code for Oakland, and a member of the committee that planned the event that just happened on July 21st, seeing posts like this: “Code For Oakland: The Most Diverse Hackathon Ever” | Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog http://bit.ly/NmrfOi make me happy beyond measure and this one: Code For Oakland: The Most Diverse Hackathon Ever - Forbes http://onforb.es/O43dYZ
I moved to Oakland in 2008, after a short start-up stint in Boulder and many years in Silicon Valley, and immediately started to wonder where the tech community was, how we could build more tech community and why a city like Oakland with good infrastructure and cheap commercial real estate didn’t have more of a start-up scene.
Fast forward 4 years and we’ve got alot more traction on all these issues—but we need to keep hammering on diversity and opportunity for everyone—and not re-create the old school view of what an entrepreneur, programmer, coder, or product developer is (and you probably know exactly what I am talking about.)
So we’re looking for ways to keep Code for Oakland going, and expand and build on it and get more partners and supporters. We’re also sharing our process with people from other cities who have made inquiries—if you’d like to do a civic hackathon a la CFO in your city—let us know.
Some photos from the event here:

That place of my own: approaching a month and some insights

2012-08-06T05:19:11Z

It's been almost a month since I moved, and I am still loving it. Some changes I am noticing

Sleeping better--those blackout blinds really help
Eating less--fewer big meals
Healthier eating--I only buy what I am going to eat and I follow my friend Michele's advice to Buy treats for the week---and go without when they're done.
More exercise: My resolve is an hour a day or more, which I did not do today, but which I have Done for the last 6 days and hope to continue the rest of the week.
Feeling better: More aware of muscles in my body and feeling pretty energetic.
Not lonely., My life and work are so full of people, the silence of living alone is a HUGE pleasure right now.
Writing more and responding to work more efficiently. This was a huge driver in wanting to make a change, and I am seeing the results already--I wrote 2,000 works of the social media and news project, as well as chunks of an e-learning module for another project and lots of planning for a Oakland Local project we're about to kick off.

I'm also moving into a mode, which I love, of going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, a good fit with my personal natural rhythm. Oh yes, and it's so uncluttered. Love that.

Taking a deep breath..and starting to write

2012-08-04T22:31:30Z

This is my writing weekend. I have an exciting project to work on that also scares me--I want to do a good job. And I am at the moment when I have created the outlines, gathered up the materials, organized some of the information--and now I have to get to work. And I'm feeling scared.

Can I really dive into this pool once more? How do I get myself to the place where I am inside the work and feeling one with it so that there's a strong, compelling flow? That's my goal for today.

Like the canoeist pushing off into the river, the diver on the board, this is the moment to engage--with both my intent and my material.

By this time tomorrow, I would like to be a third of the way down the river--but I will only get there by writing, not by talking about my need to write. And so this is the moment I take a deep breath, strive for calm, and turn to the piece I need to write.

New project: Soil remediation, Oakland backyard

2012-08-01T19:42:47Z

It looks like the soil in my yard may be toxic--or just industrial--enough that weeds don't grow. It's so dusty and filled with little rocks and glass. I'm thinking about experimenting with soil remediation techniques to improve it and make it less toxic before I plan and landscape.
Ideas:
Test the soil
Plant sunflowers, bonset, goldenrod, yarrow for the year and see if they can improve the soil--maybe make a path around them but plan some big beds of them--have no idea what it takes to grow any of these
Talk to this fellow who's in Detroit and doing soil remediation of his yard--Soil Remediation: Detroit Experiments Explore Urban Farming's Next Frontier http://huff.to/R9w1mm

Share on Oakland Local?

Snug as a bug and working away

2012-07-23T00:25:11Z

I'm in the new house and loving it. Still more to put away, but it's a terrific space for me and I am thrilled to be here--especially since I have a whole series of writing projects this summer. Among the things I will be working on:

Some news ebooks funded by The Fund for Investigative Journalism--their grant will help Oakland Local make the lead to a new format.
A series of e-learning modules
Hack the Hood, a new economic development and youth training project we're going to pilot in East Oakland via OL
Raising money and selling ads for Oakland Local

More to come on all this.

Big congrats! Sree Sreenivasan

2012-07-12T14:07:35Z

Columbia University Names Sree Sreenivasan First Chief Digital Officer - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD http://dthin.gs/MlOGFi

Way to go, dude!

6 days to moving

2012-07-11T15:28:45Z

I'm moving six blocks from my current spot, to a house I bought in Oakland, and I am super excited. It's been a long time since I owned a house, and renting felt right for so long for reasons like wanting flexibility, doing start-ups, etc. But this house..in a part of North Oakland I love, on a street that seems filled with good neighbors...has me so jazzed. It feels like the room of one's own--that, even with housemates--it will be a great place to write and work, as well as savor life.

Hanging at The Ramp SF

2012-07-06T04:33:13Z

Part of my world view right now is to seize the special moments. So when I finished a meeting in Dogpatch with a terrific Oakland Local client and realized I was hungry, I decided to find someplace to stop for a bite before I crossed the bridge and went to another meeting. Back in the day, I'd spent a good amount of time at Technorati at 3rd and 22nd St so I thought there might be some good options, but I didn't see anything until I swung past The Ramp, a place I hadn't been since Steve Freund had a big event there many years ago.

Wow, was that fun! There's nothing as nice as taking an hour to relax in a spot you'd usually visit only on a weekend, or after work. The Ramp's view of the Bay was great, the sky was clear and blue, and the buzz was happy. And I was happy. A hour of The Ramp and 6 more hours of work seemed not so bad.

Pinterest vs Tumblr

2012-06-24T22:13:09Z

I wasn't so hot on Pinterest when it first launched and, in fact, I made fun of it a bit. Tumblr, on the other hand, I just loved--who wouldn't love a micro-blogging service that both clipped and quoted and allowed original content?

Over the course of the past 18 months, I've made and launched multiple Tumblrs, mostly for work (news/community/media/events) and a little for fun. Pinterest, not so much.

But then, this month, I bought a house. A house that was bare of window treatments, furniture, rugs, and pretty much everything else. A house I was going to have to plan and organize. Suddenly, I was all about Pinterest.

What started as a series of boards about ideas for my yard repairs (backyard was a wreck), fence and patio turned into more boards about what the living room might look like, home offices, and wall decor, as in hanging photos. 3 weeks in, that's blossomed into additional boards on ceramics (a passion), textiles(another passion) and healthy eating.

Meanwhile, my tumblr is sitting kinda idle--and I am thrilled to have had a chance to learn more about the purpose of pinning.

So, what gives?

Pinterest really is great as a visual collection, mood board or organizer. This is true whether it's an idea board for a visual project or a list of data visualizations or info graphics. The ability to sort and categorize and tag is very powerful on Pinterest and lends itself both to projects and to virtual collections.

Tumblr, on the other hand, is much more in the river of news mode. Tumblrs are great accretations of interesting snips, posts, images around a sensibility or a topic, and, unlike Pinterest, they do a great job of offering words as well as images,

Both services offer types of community--Pinterest through tagging and commenting functions, and Tumblr through hashtags and comments/questions.

So where would I use each?
Pinterest has totally captures my interest for riffs on a theme. Whether it's a collection of Oakland cafes, vintage hankies, or photos of a newsmaker, Pinterest has a tremendous ability to catalog that is so appealing.

Tumblr, however, excels in presenting a sensibility or a theme in a more random, discovery-oriented fashion--and it's funnier. The hellyeah! and Ryan Goslings series are hysterical on tumblr, not so much on Pinterest.

Tasting happiness

2012-06-22T20:25:41Z

This has been a month of transitions. I'm moving, for the first time since 2008, and excited about it (still staying in Oakland). Working like a maniac--still--but also making more consistent time for both friends and exercise. And the best news, of all, is that I seem to have become really good friends with my son (and love his friends!)

What's cool here is that we're not only family, we've evolving into preferred people--Z and his lovely GF were the people I drank that amazing bottle of Opus 1 I scored ten years ago with and savored every drop (along with the super meal son the chef made). We share books, music, movie recommendations, ideas, tips, advice--he's become a great friend and someone I love to see and talk with.

It's true that my son's generation, probably impacted by the economy, is the one that says their parents are their best friends, but as someone who came of age at a moment when wanted to get as far away from my parents as possible, our friendship is both sweet and unexpected. The fact we can spend a day together with no tension whatsoever is something I never had with parents, and something I don't even have with some close friends.

The happiness of seeing Z over the past few days has been keeping me smiling all week, and probably will last into the weekend and way beyond that.

Advance cuts 400 staffers in Alabama: thoughts on the future of news--and the past

2012-06-16T13:24:38Z

"Is it a local paper if you don't have an editorial board to weigh in on matters of local importance, to call out the school board and complain about lousy streets? Is it a local paper if you rely on stringers to cover the big football games and miss the Cinderalla story that a beat reporter would've nailed?"
--What the future of news looks like in Alabama after Advance cuts staff by 400 | Poynter. http://bit.ly/LsG2Gd

In 1995, Jeff Jarvis and Steve Newhouse hired me to create and edit New Jersey Online, the first Newhouse online site, which drew from three local papers. Here we are in 2012, 17 years later (!), and Newhouse has just laid off 400 people at their three Alabama papers and created a hub structure for managing operations. Steve Myers has a terrific piece about the layoffs at Poynter where he asks questions about how the papers will be able to operate locally with such deep cuts.

Meyers also quotes management as saying "The Mobile newsroom, which after vacancies are filled will have about half the current staff, "will be a hyperlocal operation." The staff "will cover the hell out of local news." "

He also says: "Advance seems to think a local newspaper is three things: a small group of reporters, advertisers who need your paper whether it's published three days or seven, and some readers."

Welcome to the present reality, folks. We're in a value-based economy here on the hyperlocal news front, not one based on brand, distribution or who's friends with the Mayor. The level playing field is now about big corporate entities trying to scale down to the size of, say The St. Louis Beacon so they can pay their bills, turn some profit, and survive.

Here in Oakland, where a small team of us run Oakland Local, a future of news non-profit web site and training organization, we're adding advertisers and audience as the local paper, now managed out of San Jose but with a just opened "community newsroom" downtown, struggles to copy our model (and that of many other hyperlocal sites) and involve citizen reporters (even though they can't appear beside the union folks).

Like the Alabama Newhouse properties, the Bay Area News Group papers are also being run as a hub, and they seem to be surviving, if not thriving--but the word is that more cuts are being planned there, as well. Certainly, the paper's ability to cover Oakland has diminished as Oakland has become less of a profitable focus for the hub organization, but hunger has driven flexibility, as seasoned general-assignment reporters cover not one, but two to four beats.

Here in the East Bay as Oakland Local--and our cousins Berkeleyside and The Alamedan-grow, my sense is that we are both picking up readers who no longer turn solely to the local paper and new readers who never cared about the paper in the first place. In Oakland, OL's audience is notably younger, browner, and more entreprenurial/activist/small business/creative class that the core audience for both the local paper and the local alt.weekly; in Berkeley, Berkleyside is developing a huge following based on an insider voice the local paper never achieved, and in Alameda, the newly revived local non-profit news site is covering stories the paper also doesn't seem to see.

The good news: relevancy drives audience. The bad news: it's economically brutal.

What the papers have that the hyperlocals don't is infrastructure and scale. While Myers is correct that selling locally will be tough without local salespeople, the reality is that alot of the great money is in regional and co-op buys, which most hyperlocal sites are not set up to handle. The myth of print distribution means that a run of papers, read or not, can sell a buy to a regional advertiser who will also be willing to do a smaller online buy, state-wide. An Oakland Local can't (yet) compete with that, though that day will surely come.

Newhouse has been printing and distributing papers since the early days in Bayonne, NJ and I don't see them getting out of the business anytime soon. But in this economic climate, cutting staffers, consolidating operations and--as much as possible--trying to act like a lean startup--is unavoidable.

Welcome to the future of news, where the Minimum Viable Product isn't just a tech idea, it's a real way to produce local community media.

Freedom to Connect 2102: Eben Moglen

2012-05-22T16:08:25Z

In the second day at the provocative and interesting #F2C conference, organized by David Isenberg, and listening to the amazing vocal stylings of Professor Eben Moglen. This amazing human being not only has superb command of rhetoric, he's got some interesting ideas behind the aphorisms.
WOW. More to come as I process--and as I get a copy, I hope, of the speech on innovation and austerity he just delivered.

May 17: Speaking at Carlos K. McClatchy Symposium at the Journalism School at Stanford

2012-05-14T04:30:47Z

I'm honored to say that I've been invited to be part of an annual Stanford John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships program this coming week. The topic of the event is "#Hashtagged: How Social Media are Revolutionizing the News" and the other speakers are from NPR, Google and Yahoo; we're going to be talking about the impact of social media on news, a subhect dear to my heart.

The symposium is being help on Thursday, May 17th, on the Stanford Campus; deets here: http://comm.stanford.edu/mcclatchy/

Besides me, the other speakers are:
Krishna Bharat, distinguished scientist and founder of Google News, an automated news service aggregating more than 50,000 sources, with more than 72 editions in more than 30 languages. He is on the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships Board of Visitors.

Andy Carvin, senior strategist, NPR Social Media Desk. During the Arab Spring, Carvin developed a large following on Twitter who came to rely on his messages and retweets of news and information developing in the uprisings.

Sheigh Crabtree, lead editor and strategist for social, Yahoo! News and Yahoo! Finance. Crabtree has extensive expertise as an interactive strategist, editor and producer. Before joining Yahoo! she was executive editor of UberMedia and has journalism experience with the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter.

James Bettinger, director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, will moderate the symposium, which is open to the public and The symposium, part of a series that began in 1964, is sponsored by the Department of Communication. It will be in the Vidalakis Room of the Schwab Residential Center.

The symposium is open to the public and will be followed by a reception. http://comm.stanford.edu/mcclatchy/

I'd like to think that I was invited to speak because of the great job the Oakland Local team has done in using social media both to source the news and community voices and because of our use of social media to cover local issues with national interest, including Occupy Oakland, the trial of Johannes Mehserle and the killing of Oscar Grant, and the recent shooting death of Alan Blueford, a young man shot and killed last week by an Oakland police officer. The format of the symposium is informal, but I'll be preparing some comments/thoughts to post here to complement the talk.

Thank you so much, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, I am honored.

Love, love, love, love my Oakland community

2012-05-06T02:13:07Z

Okay, if you know me at all, you probably know I am a workaholic, Work to live, live to work, work work work...the whole deal. No sleeping till 10 am, etc. And today, I didn't do any work. Instead, I rested--along with many others in what I am more and more coming to feel is "my" Oakland community. Here's how it went:
10 am: Digging in the garden with my most fabulous housemates, pouring out chicken manure and planting pole beans while discussing House of Local, Oakland Local and why the East Bay Express and Oaklandish somehow happened to name their new t-shirt line Lokal (like, should we complain or just say no biggie, huh? Maybe we'll just started the Oakland Express line--oh, I forgot, we called something Oakland Express a while ago and the Express protested.)

Anyway, we got the garden all set up, at least for now.

Then 12:30 I was in North Oakland, at PLACE on 64th, for a wedding of two friends. Both the leaders of social justice organizations, they had a potluck wedding at a communal space and invited their community to attend. What can I say about such an amazing gathering? It was so lovely to be with so many people working for change in Oakland, come together through shared purpose and transformed into friends and community. The energy and the love was magnetic, so special, and it was easy to spend several hours there, eating the good food, chatting with friends and dancing to the best 80's funk around.

By 4 PM, I was at my friend Susie's new house in North Oakland, sitting outside in her yard with a bowl of strawberries and a bevvy of her friends contemplating coconut water vs. procsecco ( I had both, eventually). One of Susie's friends is a handyman with 3 sons, one of whom plays/played bass, and we had a terrific talk. Another is helping to raise money to transform the 17th street train station, another is an editor...and so on.

Sitting there in the yard, talking and feeling the sun, Oakland felt like such a good place to be.

And then, by 6:30, I was home, and back outside my my own yard, now alot cleaner and more organized than it was this am, playing catch the ball with my dog.

Throw Catch Throw Catch Throw Catch Throw Catch Throw Catch The dog doesn't tire of this, probably because he thinks he's doing it to please me.

Thinking about checking out Heart and Soul, a Religious Science congregation many of the folks at the wedding go to, tomorrow am, but also resolved to catch up on all the work I didn't do today (and go out with a friend tomorrow night).

Ah, Oakland. Today you really feel like my place.

Covering Occupy Oakland/May Day General Strike @ Oakland Local

2012-05-02T05:14:48Z

It's 10:15 on May 1st. At 8:30 am, I started getting materials ready for Oakland Local's team to cover the Occupy Oakland General strike. With three people in the field, and 3 volunteers in the office, OL managed to pump out more than 300 photos, 60 tweets from the scene, and 3-5 articles, depending on how you count the updates to the stories. We'll be filing more stories tomorrow, including some reflection/opinion pieces from the reporters, who are welcoming a chance to share some impressions now that May Day is (almost) over.

How did we manage to create content that was picked up and carried across the country with a team that's part-time, could definitely be better paid, and was 50% volunteer?

Or--to put it another way--how come we keep doing this work when the calls for support for funding our Occupy Oakland coverage-which probably more than 6,000 people read today, if previous stats mean anything--didn't even net us contributions to cover the way too small sum we spent on our hard-working reporters?

Part of what keeps me working at making Oakland Local work is the pride I have in the talented team. We have a number of people--our managing editor and several reporters among them--who've worked with Oakland Local for more than 2 years (we're 2.6 years old).
These people tell me they stay with OL because they believe in what we're doing and think it can work--and they thing our reporting and trainings are making a difference in Oakland.

To me, that sense of dedication was evident in the reporters we had out there today. Our team started at 10 am, covered more than 3 actions and marches all over the city, came into our workspace and filed and dumped photos so volunteers could process their work, then went back out and kept working late into the night. Unlike the folks at the mainstream media outlet when went off shift and were done for the night,our team chose to keep going right till the last policeman moved people out of Frank Ogawa Plaza.

As the editor/publisher of this enterprise, this is a great moment to reflect not only on the good work we did, but on how Oakland Local motivates people. With the late-night,woozy haze of a glass of wine and post half-watching a movie, some reflections:

People on the team choose to work here. OL doesn't pay well enough that people who are unhappy, feel misunderstood or unappreciated have incentives to stay. In a way, it's a zero sum game--if it works for you, you enjoy it. If it doesn't, you split.

People on the team know their work has impact and makes a difference. In such a flat organization, people are appreciated for what they can do--and they can make substantial contributions fairly quickly. One of our newer reporters, who has a flair for social media, has incredibly enhanced our work by live-tweeting from the field, for example.

We try to have a play to your strengths environment. You do video, you like to live tweet? You're all about data visualization? Because OL is about shared and mutual incentives, we try to support and use the skills and passions people have, as well as help them learn new things.

We haz food. Yep, food. I'm positive that our reporting team did such a good job, in part, today because when they came back for lunch, as we'd arranged, they found trays of Vietnamese sandwiches (including a vegan one for the vegan), fruit, salad, home made smoked trout salad, crackers, cold cuts, a fruit smoothie, soft drinks, beer, chips and energy bars. This food a) gave them some more energy b) showed them people cared and valued what they were doing.

We're all invested in what we do. Yes, we're all proud of Oakland Local. We're proud of what we do even as we wish it paid more, swear it needs to pay us more, and wonder when it will. The money's not so great, but the human capital and the pride are valuable--as is the resume credential for many of our writers.

A place of my own 2012

2012-04-18T17:46:56Z

I've just set up a workspace and table in our living room for myself, facing the front window. Through the thin blinds, I can see people walking up and down my street.

When we moved in here, I set up the back office as my work space, with the idea A had an office and a job to go to. Later, after he started working from home, he asked if I would agree to reconfigure my space to allow him to share it and I reluctantly agreed.

We changed to larger desk, added more bookshelves and moved cabinets around; after we'd finished, we had a space that fit us both but felt too small for us to use at the same time. (A's a big guy, 6"4, 230 lbs, who likes to spread out).

Fast forward 18 months and A's computer and stuff is spread over the dining room table, taking over a shared space, and I'm in the back. office. Dining room table is always messy, making it seem not public, not shared.

Then, when the idea of the biofeedback machine as an life management tool for A came back to life--along with the purchase of a series of programs and some training sessions to use it-he needed space to spread out the monitors, computers and music speakers he wanted for his biofeedback program.

Ergo, time for a new workspace. For me.

My new spot is my old white wooden gate-leg table from Ohio, which I have worked on for more than 25 years, with the same white painted wooden chair I bought off a farmer moving to the city.

I've written poems on this desk, consulting documents, site plans, pitches, essays...pretty much everything. And now it's nose up in a corner of our living room, facing the front windows, wireless humming just as nicely as can be.

Right now my new desk has a funky old linen tablecloth cover, tea cloth sized, and soon it will have a functioning desk light and a desk cover. I've been working here for an hour or two and in feels, in a way, like a coming home. A place of my own.

driven by rage gets results

2012-03-01T22:21:09Z

Sometimes I am amazing how powerful a tool anger is for getting me to address things. This week, I got a packet from my insurance company that told me that, in 3 months, my policy would increase by 27.8%. That means my health insurance would pretty much start to cost like a home rental. NOT GOOD.
SO I immediately got online and researched options with my current provider, then called their health line and talked to someone. That person recommended a high deductible policy with MUCH lower payments: I have about a month to decide.
I then went online, check out the local HMO and applied for coverage there--that's almost half the price of these other quotes and won't have the honking huge deductible.

I'd like to be angry enough to apply this to my auto insurance premium (could be lower), cleaning the house more often, and reducing other insurance costs. Man, it feels good to get in front of a problem for a change.

2012-02-25T17:56:04Z

I just got back from the Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar 2012 and wanted to share some of the materials I provided for the attendees.Here's a list of useful llinks and white papers focused on civic engagement and future of news projects:

The Knight Foundation Community Information Tool Kit, http://www.infotoolkit.org

Released in April 2011, this tool kit helps leaders harness the power of information to advance their goals for a better community. It offers a simple, easy-to-use set of tools to help take stock of your community's news and information resources, and take action to improve them.

(See a related video discussion with Mayur Patel: http://vimeo.com/19721589 )

Getting Local: How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability

http://www.knightfoundation.org/publications/getting-local-how-nonprofit-news-ventures-seek-sus

How are successful non-profit newsrooms engaging audiences and diversifying revenue? The Knight Foundation's Mayur Patel, with Michele McLellan, studied eight well-funded organizations and reports on the results in this fascinating survey.

From Idea to Implementation, Taking your project to the next level, http://slidesha.re/vbDUjQ

This presentation by KCIC Circuit Riders Susan Mernit, Michele McLellan and Lisa Williams offers essential tips and resources for kicking off a successful project that are useful to everyone who has to execute on an idea.

Thinking about site sustainabiity, talk by Ben Wirz, The Knight Foundation

http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/site/resource/3373/?/seminars/video3-3/knight_community_information_challenge_bootcamp_2011/

What are important indicators for sustainability to think about in the early days of your project? What lessons can Silicon Valley Startups teach us about building for success? Wirz' talk is loaded with useful ideas.

Web Development 101: Getting Your Site Right From the Beginning, Lisa Williams

Preso: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/seminars/agenda/boot_camp_for_knight_community_information_challenge_projects1/

Video: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/seminars/video4-2/boot_camp_for_knight_community_information_challenge_projects1/

What do you need to know about web developers BEFORE you start a new project? What do you need to know about what you want? Circuit Rider Lisa William takes you through key questions to ask.

Social Media for News Sites, Susan Mernit, Kwan Booth & Amy Gahran

http://bit.ly/vtISpi

This on-line module focusing on social media, civic engagement and tools for news provides an easy-to-read window in some of the fine points of using social media tools and is part of the Knight Citizen News Network from J-Lab at American University.

The Top Ten List: Tips and tools for managing a civic engagement project

2012-02-25T17:53:24Z

I just got back from the Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar 2012 and wanted to share some of the materials I provided for the attendees.Here's a very useful list of cloud-based tools:

The Top Ten List: Tips and tools for managing a civic engagement project

There are so many different tools and resources available to help plan projects, manage virtual teams, and tap into open source civic engagement projects that figuring out what's useful for you and your projects can be an overwhelming job.

To streamline the process, the Knight Community Information Challenge Circuit Rider team spoke with a number of grantees about online and virtual tools and resources that were useful to them as they thought about projects, planned projects and got started actually building projects that focused on civic engagement as a key component.

What follows is a list of some of the most useful tools out there--a Top Ten Tools list to check out and share. Each of these tools is easy to use, free or low-cost, and considered best in class by Knight KCIC grantees, Circuit Riders and staff.

· Basecamp, Easy to use project management software, http:// basecamphq.com

· Doodle, Help your group find a meeting time online, https://www.doodle.com/

· Dropbox, Send big files easily, http://www.dropbox.com/

· Freeconference.com, Phone conferencing tools, http:// freeconference.com

· Github, Software code sharing repository, https://github.com/

· Google Apps for nonprofits, free tools for site operators and project teams, http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html

o Google Apps Mail, Set up mail for your domain, http://www.google.com/apps

o Google docs, Share documents and collaborate online, http://google.com/documents

o Google Calendar, Create team and project calendars, https://www.google.com/calendar

o Google Groups, Create a group for shared communication, http://groups.google.com/

· Google Analytics, The go-to resource for measuring traffic and engagement on your web site, http://google.com/analytics

· Google alerts: Monitor your reputation and what's being posted, http://google.com/alerts

· Toggl, Time tracking for projects, http://www.toggl.com

· Toodledo, time and task management tool, http://toodledo.com

Jargon Watch: Words for the wise you'll want to know

2012-02-25T17:36:59Z

I just got back from the Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar 2012 and wanted to share some of the materials I provided for the attendees. This list, Top Twelve List: Words for the wise you'll want to know, is part of series of posts I did for attendees that I'll also share here:

Top Twelve List: Words for the wise you'll want to know

What are the emerging ideas, buzz words, and concepts you'll want to make sure you're familiar with in 2012? Here's a list focused on civic engagement, digital solutions and digital inclusion that will make you feel super-clued in to some of the topics we're discussing at the 2012 MLS.

Apps: Short for web application, an app (formerly known as a widget) is a piece of software that runs over the internet so that it can execute queries and display results in a web browser, or via a mobile platform

Civic media: What is the relationship between emerging forms of media and civic engagement? Civic media is media that goes beyond news and story-telling to help citizens and communities become more informed, engaged and involved in the issues of the day.

Crowd-funding: Why not ask the public to help fund a project? Sites like Indie GoGo, Kickstarter and Knight-funded Spot.us enable the public to give directly to projects they want to support.

Crowd-sourcing: Increasing, conferences are crowd-sourcing speakers by Marchhaving prospective attendees vote on speakers and programs and reporters are using social media to find original sources for their stories. Both of these are examples of crowd-sourcing.

Data catalog: A data catalog is a centralized, online listing of available information, often presented in both APIs and flat files, that developers can work with to build apps.

Data commons: A data commons takes the data in the data catalog and organizes it to ensure there can be standardized access, delivery and accuracy of the information provided.

Data visualization: It's possible now to tell stories with numbers as well as pictures; data visualization is the art (and the science) of presenting large sets of complex information in visual form.

Digital inclusion: Digital Divide denotes the gap between information technology haves and have-nots; digital inclusion is the intention to make sure civic leaders, educators and industry work together bring everyone into the digital commons so they can participate and have a voice.

GIS services: As mobile phones become ubiquitious, location-based services, aka geospatial information technologies, become an important part of the data we need. Adding GIS data to projects is increasingly relevant and allows users to locate places, views maps, and add data to specific locations.

Engagement: On the internet, page views(the number of times pages on a website are loaded) surely matter, but user engagement--the amount of time a visitor spends on a web site and the number of pages they read per session are increasingly important as ways to measure a reader's level of attention and even participation.

Gov 2.0/Open Government: How can technology solve civic problems, make information more accessible, and support government accountability? Gov 2.0 and Open Government are both catch phrases for projects--both local and national--that are built on these ideas

Hack day: Hack days are brief--often one to two day--public events where developers, product managers, designers and others gather to focus on identifying and discussing specific problems and then building software that offers solutions.

Creating a web presence: workshop for business folks

2012-02-17T01:51:18Z

Just gave a workshop in Oakland on creating a web presence, focused on business folks. There were about 35 people there, very attentive. My fav moment: the woman who asked why social media would help her business, and when I explained why it might said, “Wow, I never realized that before.”
Here’s the preso I made for it:

Developing a web presence 2012

View more presentations from Susan Mernit.

California Media: Sites that are thriving without giant budgets

2012-02-09T13:37:47Z

I was thrilled to hear about the CIR/Bay Citizen merge plans, but Ken Doctor's post about it leaves out so many things I had to write my own post. You see, if you just read Ken's post, you might think tat things today were just like in 1999, or maybe 2003, and that the only new news models to get excited about were the big ones, with budgets over $2MM (The Bay Citizen had a projected 2012 budget of $6.2MM before the merger; CIR's was about $3.2MM). In reality, local news entities can't and shouldn't aspire to budgets of this size unless they are a) in wealthy communities b) have friends with deep pockets c) are doing a scale of work that requires 17 + reporters, a rarity for most news operations today).

What's more viable--and not mentioned by Doctor's post--are the smaller local news outlets bringing valuable news and discussion to their communities and making a go of it. Not only is there the no-so-small Voice of San Diego, there is the Voice of Orange County, Noozhawk in Santa Barbara, Oakland Local, Berkeleyside, Sacramento Press, SF Appeal, SF Public Press, Natomas Buzz, Lake County News, YubaNet, and all the local sites supported by local J-Schools, Mission Local and The Alhambra Source. And that's far from a complete list.

Most of those sites are 1-8 person operations and they're making it work--and the scale of the budgets are much more in line with sustainability.

One of the things I'd like to see come out of the CIR/Bay Citizen merger is a way for the new entity to work MUCH more effectively with smaller local news partners than Bay Citizen did in the past. These sites are the drumbeats of their communities, Ken, and they are another important piece of the media landscape of the future.

Update: Maybe some of us are "surviving", as much as thriving. But let's not be overlooked.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead: Inspiring

2012-02-07T07:32:22Z

Okay, I just watched the Joe Cross movie, and it is inspiring. Getting off processed foods will save your life, whether you go raw vegan or not. And the standard American diet is toxic.
But I have some issues with this movie:
It's all men, big brawny men
No one seems to struggle with going on juice and going cold-turkey on everything else
How enduring is it? As with May I be Frank, the Cafe Gratitude/Frank Ferrante film the big issue isn't only the miracle transformation, it's the sticking with it.
Hell, I weighed 40 lbs less 10 years ago and 20 pounds less 4 years ago.

Warching this movie made me go look up my BMI. Looking up my BMI made me view photos of people with this BMI. And that...well that made me think about how I could do better with what I ate--and didn't eat.

Bay Citizen may merge with California Watch, CIR

2012-02-03T16:31:44Z

I started hearing these rumors three weeks ago, and then, today, the Bay Citizen scooped itself, posting that Phil Bronstein would likely come in as CEO for the troubled Bay Citizen--and help it merge with California Watch and The Center for Investigative Reporting (disclosure: I consulted for CIR for a year).
This is one of those moves that is not only fiscally sound (merging two organizations each having annual budgets of over $3.4MM would surely result in economies of scale), it's editorially wise, since The Bay Citizen's problems all along have had to do with finding a unique voice and making good use of all their resources and people, and California Watch's issues have been not around a voice or content (they have some terrific editors), but around distribution.
Further, the story goes that folks like Bronstein and CIR's director, Robert Rosenthal, were instrumental in helping Warren Hellman shape his thinking before The Bay Citizen was launched, and that in fact, there was some surprise that Hellman formed the organization without CIR.
There's also the important cash flow fact, which is that while CIR has done a brilliant job raising money from both national and local foundations to support California Watch, some of its largest funders are now pulling back, both because o f a change in direction and because it is rare for a foundation to supply large funding for more than 3 years.
One interesting question is--what would the merge look like? With two organizations that both have reporting teams of more than 13 people each, a "reduction in force" would seem inevitable, even as efficiencies of scale would be valued.
I'd love to see this happen--there are some terrific people at both organizations--and the Bay area could use a broadly focused digital news voice that had the funds to do deep-dive investigative reporting--and partner with organizations like Oakland Local for more local coverage.