#cmLDN: Community managers London January meetup and #CMAD

Thanks to all those who came to the first Community Managed LDN meetup for a Christmas social. We’re kicking off the new year with our first event proper.

It’s on Wednesday 25 January 2012 – from 7pm at Crayon, in Oxford Circus. See my last post on what the meetups are all about here – a friendly informal space to chat about building and developing online communities.

For the first event we’ve got Markham Nolan from Storyful coming to share some thoughts with us about community management in the year to come. Markham is a social media newsgatherer, sourcing and verifying news via social media using old journalism techniques alongside new tools. A core part of this is sizing up and building relationships with online sources and crowdsourced factchecking.

We’ll then have a couple of pitch sessions à la Hacks/Hackers London and some space for anyone to share a story from their community and questions/debate. If you want to take part in any of these slots please email communityLDN@gmail.com.

The very lovely people at Crayon have kindly offered up their cool space in the heart of Oxford Circus for us to meet up in so we’re looking forward to trying out this new space with this new group. Please do say hello to @nathanmiller and the @crayonlondon team to thank them for the room and the Ribena! There are more details on how to get to Crayon and a map here.

So all you need to do is head over to the meetup page here to tell us you’re coming. Once again we’ve organised this via The Community Manager - but you can also find our chat about it on Meegloo here, or follow some of the tweets here. If you add yourself to the London group we’ll keep you updated on future meet ups – where we’re likely to hear from speakers and do some more exciting things.

Also – in case you didn’t know, next Monday it’s #CMAD – community manager action day! Give you nearest communities worker a cupcake, hug, beer or any other sign of your appreciation. It’s an international event (there was an event last year in London too) so get involved via Twitter using the #CMAD hashtag.

Community Manager meet up – #cmLDN: Come and join us!

Laura Oliver and I have been discussing getting together with other community managers in the UK for regular meet ups to chat, share ideas and meet likeminds.

The Community Manager already has a number of meet ups going on in the US – so we decided to bite the bullet and get the first one started in the UK – setting at date for the first meet up and hoping to get things really underway in the new year.

So if you work in any way with online communities, and want to meet others in a similar field please do come along to our first meet up on Thursday 15 December from 7-9pm. We now have a location – we’re meeting at the Slaughtered Lamb in Farringdon. Sign up here to come along.

For the first meet up, and since it’s the end of the year and close to Christmas, we’re just thinking it’d be nice to have a social affair and hopefully speak to people about what they’d like from future meet ups – maybe even making sure we have a steering group to help organise things. If you add yourself to the London group we’ll keep you updated on future meet ups – where we’re likely to hear from speakers and do some more exciting things.

Let me know any suggestions or ideas in comments here or over on the meet up page. And hopefully see you in a couple of weeks!

The end of the scoop – News:rewired notes October 2011 #newsrw

Christine Spolar, FT; David Hayward, BBC CoJo; Paul Lewis, Guardian. Photo: John Thompson/Flickr

The last session I could make it to at Journalism.co.uk’s News:rewired conference 2011 was on investigative journalism and its precarious future.

Before I go into more depth on what the four speakers said – I’ll start with the most reverberating statement which many readers may find contraversial – but in which all four panellists were in agreement – it’s the end of the scoop.

Here’s what it said about the session in the programme:

Collaboration in investigative journalism

• It has often been said that collaboration is key for the future of investigative journalism, be that working in partnership with other news outlets or media bodies, or harnessing the power of the community in investigations. This session will feature advice on how best to make a go of large projects by sharing resources and inviting the community to help dig with you.

With: Iain Overton, managing editor, Bureau of Investigative Journalism; Simon Perry, founder, Ventnor Blog; Paul Lewis, special projects editor, the Guardian and Christine Spolar, investigations and special projects editor, the Financial Times.

Iain Overton – don’t let exclusivity stamp out profitable collaborations

Iain Overton, Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Photo: John Thompson/Flickr

First up Iain Overton from Bureau of Investigative Journalism – a not-for-profit org which runs investigations for press and broadcast media. Since April 2010 TBIJ has seen 26 front pages. He was buoyant about now being a great time for investigative journalism. The Economist and FT have new investigations editor – it’s refreshing, he said when elsewhere there’s a real lack of in-depth original reporting.

Glossing over the outlook for investigative journalism, however, Overton outlined how investment is a perpetual problem – you have to think about the cost of paying journalists to live in London, lawyers and the like – you could get multi-skilled TV producers like at ITN – but there’s a to what one person can do (amen!), so you need to generate as much sales across as many platforms as possible.

But regaining an optimistic tone, Overton said there were exploitation opportunities for the web and multi-media – it’s not just about being a Sunday exclusive read – and this is where collaboration is key. In particular international collaborations. “The easiest way to find money for is international documentaries based on human rights” – he said, as there’s a ready market. But if you become too specific other commissioners get bored.

Then came Wikileaks – and the biggest media collaboration ever. But sometimes exclusivity deals can kill investigative collaborations (which Overton said the BBC was a particular cuplrit for). The model is still sustained by philanthropy – collaborations need to be subsidised. Overton ended on saying investment in investigative journalism could put more energy and financing into the beleaguered journalism industry.

Paul Lews Photo: John Thompson/Flickr

Integrated storytelling: NewsRewired 2011

With Storify very much the darling of storytelling tolls at this NewsRewired conference session I’ve pulled in my notes from the session alongside tweets, videos and pictures in a Storify – I’ll be posting here with more from the other sessions I went to soon

Here’s what it said about the session in the agenda:

Integrated storytelling

The opportunities for multimedia storytelling online are vast — from video, photographs and audio to social media, visualisations and mapping — but how can journalists bring together an array of different online platforms to tell stories in the most effective way? This session will look at the collection of tools out there to do just this, and some top tips on how to curate and collect the best content for the platform.

With: Xavier Damman, co-founder, Storify; Adam Westbrook, online video journalist and lecturer and blogger; Stephen Abbott, executive producer, culture, the Guardian and Andy Cotgreave, senior product consultant, Tableau Software.

Adam Westbrook said if he was going to tell the story of the conference session he’d probably use Storify – and with the new media tool in the spotlight I thought it apt to pull together my notes on the session with other tweets, photos, audios and bits of media to tell a snippet of what was said.

Link love: BBC Social Media Summit catch-up #bbcsms

A view from the summit, by 영국에서 미투하는 지호 on Flickr

I was unable to attend the BBC Social Media Summit last week, mainly due to the pickles of moving house and entering the final week of the Guardian Cardiff blog, but as you’d expect with a conference stocked full of some of the most prolific tweeters, bloggers and social media users and journalists – it was quite possible to catch up with some of the talks, thoughts and teachings at the summit from afar.

Readers of this blog may have found a lot of the content related to the summit out there already, but I thought it well worth pointing out some of the blogs and online content I have been browsing through over the last week.

Seven ways to make money online

Cardiff’s women in tech were recently lured to the latest Cardiff geek girl dinner with a talk entitled ‘make money from your online content‘.

Approaching the topic with a huge dollop of scepticism that one man could in seven bullet points give the hidden secret causing so many online publishers constant fury, I actually came away pleasantly surprised.

Now I’m not promising seven steps to millionairedom – but Miles Galliford, co-founder of SubHub.com, gave seven bite-sized easily-digestible ideas which might help towards getting some petty cash to make a website not-for-loss.

Notes from #TAL11 – Talk About Local Unconference 2011

The first Talk About Local event in Cardiff was a great success!

This Saturday saw the hyperlocal collective make its windy way along the stuffy Southwest train system to Cardiff (via Crewe) for the Talk About Local Unconference 2011.

The first event of its kind in Wales, online publishers and bloggers with an interest in their local area met at the Atrium for a day of sharing ideas and making news ones, with a great contingent from Cardiff and Welsh language representing the locality.

The day kicked off with a quick fire round of game show round of pitching ideas which were organised into sessions using the unconference-friendly post-it note system.

Sessions ran throughout the day within the sunny glass walls of the Atrium – with much pastry-munching, tweeting and networking inbetween. Here are some notes I took from a few sessions I went to (I didn’t take any notes in the council session or ‘I’m a hyperlocal celebrity get me out of here’ – but both were great and informative debates).