On Tuesday April 7th Dan will be at Duke University talking from 4:30 - 6:00 PM at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy in Lecture Hall 03. He described Monday's and Tuesday's talks as completely separate and that he will not be repeating Monday's talk.

My raw notes from today follow:

#################################

Dan Gillmor
We the Media

AND not OR

"committed a random act of journalism"

first rule of conversation:
listen.

not oracle, but guide

use hyperlinks, the web's elemental unit

"try to get journalists realize there's a giant parallel universe of media in their communities"

don't link to an article on your own site about a person or company, link to that person's own site

web app mashups

bush-blair "endless love" mashup as impressive innovation
wants a fabulous Obama mashup but hasn't found one yet

DIY Mashup: APIs
Yahoo Pipes

Adrian Holovaty
data
Everyblock
http://www.everyblock.com/
aggregator of all info available about that street block

"Walmart's March Across America" data visualization
kiwitobes.com

ask audience for help: it works to help journalists
(crowdsourcing research)


innovation|adaptation
good news: trying new stuff is cheap
iterate
develop fast: put online before you think it's ready
fix broken
fail fast
repeat

founder of LinkedIn: if you're not completely embarrassed by your website when you launch you waited way too long

principles of journalism are still critically important

nonprofit / not for profit journalism is going to be big

non-prof. business structures make a lot of sense for good journalism

big on mobile platforms
US is backwards
if you want to see interesting mobile platform work, go to Africa & other similar places

mobile phones are the form factor of emerging citizen journalism, NOT laptops

ushahidi.com

mobility in journalism
some events move in time and space
art walks
what about 1000 smartphones used to document the protests in London last weekend?

NOTE: send DG note about Burma VJ film from Full Frame, his remark reminded me of the poster shown on the main site:
http://burmavjcom.title.dk/
http://www.fullframefest.org/more_film_info.php?id=64

smartphones have barcode scanner apps, some interesting potential. Gas price / googlemap mashups have been done, but how about the price of milk? Or anything else that fluctuates and has a barcode?

###################
Demand Side: Uh Oh

getting better at the supply side

too much information
accurate? verify?
(spoofs, pranks, hoaxes, disinformation)

wants to turn consumers into activists, users of media

* skepticism - be skeptical, of everything, BUT
don't be skeptical of everything in equal proportions, use your judgment
* judgment - DG assumes that anonymous attack comments are wrong, and the reverse is likelier true
* research - ask questions
* free think - look outside our comfort zones
* techniques - media, not just tools but manipulative strategies

wikipedia
DG thinks wikipedia is the best place to start, almost always the worst place to STOP research
(J Wales agrees)

*must* preserve anonymity for those who need it
esp. when free speech can mean loss of liberty or life
but in the majority of situations anonymity is not needed, what is needed is accountability that increases credibility.

in almost all cases anon speech lacks credibility
if a personal attack is anonymous assume it is a lie

principles for journalists
start w/ the above activist consumers, plus
thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, independence, transparency

q: Can we get people to be more active?
a: thinks it'll take time, but doesn't know the real answer.

DG worried about increasing ubiquity of cameras in public places

DG traceable anonymity is not anonymity, it's at best pseudonymity

DG absolutely believes in anonymity, but wants accountability for vast general communication online


q: how to deal with errors?

a: two categories: honest errors and intentional lies.
1) honest errors: it'd be incredibly easy for an online newspaper to (with the reader's permission) add a cookie to any article you read, then have the online paper email you any corrections to articles you've read. Not aware of any online newspaper that does that yet.

2) intentional lies or slanting - harder to id and track
starting a database of media errors, tracking, informing the journalists & inviting them to respond
(mentions subversion version control)

Speaking Tuesday at Duke.

giving away his book was part of his personal ecosystem

(note: memetic ecosystem)

q: micropayments?
a: DG doesn't believe in micropayments
"a lovely solution in search of a problem that isn't the problem we have, I just don't think it can work"


microbreweries saved beer in America
I think we need microbreweries of ideas in journalism as well as everywhere else (v. paraphrased)