NOV 2, 2009 Thought Leader Social Media Call

  <Click here to listen to a recording of this call>

Participants:  Roberta Baskin, Carl Ganter, Maryalice Quinn, Michele McLellan, Michael Skoler and our guest Adam Glenn of Columbia University

A Word from Michael Skoler
I tried to keep up with notes of the call, but missed wonderful parts of the conversation.  Maryalice recorded the conversation and will post it, but because of my mistake in sending out an incomplete code for the call, the first 10 minutes or so were not recorded.  My apologies.  Those on the call want to meet again, so I expect we will have a follow up.

The Call
We started by talking about how we currently use media.  Roberta says she is really a wannabe social media person.  At the end of the call, Carl reminded us that we are all wannabes in trying to figure out how to use social media tools most efficiently and effectively in our lives.  

Carl – He uses software that automatically posts on Twitter anything he and his team post on the Circle of Blue web site including links that they feel are relevant to their audience.  “We’ll even do direct messaging [ed:  Twitter function that is a private message] to people who are connected to stories that interest us.  It’s a way to connect with many people.
A lot of major stories are not being twittered yet, so it is not a replacement for finding enterprise stories and many experts aren’t tweeting.  It’s an added tool, but not the only source that we are following.”
“We are using FB (Facebook) to drive our content to people.  Also using Tagger, project by Thomson/Reuters, to see where content travels and that makes life easier to see what pieces in a story are popular stories around the Web.  It allows us to tag and reach more people and help people to find what interests them on our site.”
We tag within our tweets using the # sign to help people find material on a subject. [ed: a Twitter tool to tag tweets by subject, so that you can see many tweets on a topic]

Adam – Suggests that the most effective tools for Twitter allow you to have an “echo” in other conversations, and # tagging is one way.
Two of the best ways to share info and start conversations with an echo effect.
    •    I use Tweetdeck [ed: software to manage Twitter and other social media accounts].  It allows me to post to Twitter and simultaneously to Facebook.  You can become overwhelmed by all the different social networks and tools, so this allows you to work across networks without having to post on each..
    •    Delicious  I started by using this software to keep track of my own reading on the Web, but what I found is that now when I tag a story, say, on the Chicago Sun-Times site, it allows me to automatically tweet that link.  It enables people who find something interesting that they think should be in the conversation to add it to the conversation for all their followers.  You can also feed your links, along with excerpts and comments directly to your blog.  Amy Gahran is doing this and posting simply as she reads interesting things on the web.  The tool lets you share what you find in an automated way to your followers.
These tools let people participate without going crazy and spending all their time on social sites.

Carl – the going crazy part is true.  Maybe we can come up with ideas or maybe a support group so that we don’t become circular and just report and pass ideas among our own small groups.  This can be expansive, but we also have to go out and find what is interesting and not just rely on what others find interesting.  I want to be ahead of the trends and to be finding the trends.  
What about the idea of crowdsourcing and asking people to help us find stories?  I’ve been following Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo and how he uses people to crowdsource documents on politics.
He thinks DocumentCloud could be hugely beneficial.  [ed: a service that is allows people to post original documents behind stories for all to see and comment on.]

Adam threw in a moment of levity about becoming a social media burnout – Quotes Craig Stoltz from a Poynter blog:  Succumbing to Social Media Overload
“I -- like Jim, Amy, and (I'm guessing here) you -- are beginning to suffer social network circuit overload. It is the '07 version of the '06 RSS feed flameout, the '04 bookmarking debacle, and the '02 e-mail catastrophe. Take my social networks, please:”

Adam uses social media to gather info as well and find stories.  He says crowdsourcing is a good evolution from citizen journalism.  [ed: it taps knowledge rather than reporting and writing skills of audience.]  We have had to rethink the capability of the technology and now we can move into distributed journalism, where others help us find and write stories.

Michael [ed: me] – describes how he created Public Insight Journalism model as a way to systematically tap the knowledge of audience.  I believe that journalism is better when it is widely sourced and doesn’t rely on the usual experts.  My system was aimed at building continuing relationships with people to learn all their various expertises, but it was more one-on-one.  Social media doesn’t track and categorize knowledge of people, but does allow you to get to know people over time and reach out to a wide source network.  

Carl – I’m using LinkedIn’s service to ask questions of many water experts around the globe.  [ed: there is a question broadcasting function in LinkedIn.]  I’m a member of a bunch of groups and I’ve tried posting to these groups, but LinkedIn is not as dynamic as say Facebook.  People don’t respond quickly.  LinkedIn helps me to find experts in other ways – by searching profiles.  FB and Twitter are better at getting people to respond to a question.  LinkedIn is more buttoned down.

Example – we did a 25,000-person survey on what people’s priorities are in regard to climate.  I was looking for a climate sociologist/expert to comment and a quick search this morning led me to someone at Stanford.  Used LinkedIn and searched under expertise.  As it turned out, I had met the guy and had forgotten about him.  I linked to him and then sent his info to our reporter in Barcelona so the reporter could follow up.

Adam - LinkedIn has 50million users, so it is powerful.  When consulting with a new organization that I haven’t work with before, I’ll look for people who are in the organization to get advice on understanding the org’s culture and history and to find people who used to work for the organization who will have a different perspective.  With the LinkedIn question function, there is a bank of previously asked questions and you should check before you ask a question, so you don’t ask old questions.

Adam also uses Ning – It’s a platform to build social networks on the fly.   You can build a network in a few minutes.  Participants have the ability to customize their experience on the Ning social network and start other networks within the network, or start a new network.  A local beat journalist created a community for his beat, invited folks to participate on Ning and managed that conversation.  That’s an example of journalists as curators of a conversation and that’s a good model.  We need to think of ways to coalesce conversations and then tend them, like a garden.

Michael – Asked Adam to describe the difficulty of tending a conversation and convincing people to stay engaged.

Adam – Discussed his experience with a Boulder, CO community.  Found it was tough to get people into a conversation.  Better to find a discussion that is already going on sometimes and then join that conversation.  Adam is also involved in a Ning group for the RJI Collaboratory, where he and colleague Amy Gahran pulled experts together to help journalist-entrepreneurs who want to launch community Web sites.  You can bring feeds from twitter or various blogs into a Ning group.  In effect, you aren’t taking a conversation away from somewhere else, but you are bringing the conversation into your space.  But it is challenging.  Always try to start from where the conversation is happening.  Sometimes, though, the conversation is not happening and you have to start it.

Discussion of Google Wave as a collaboration tool.  
Michael – I just got an invitation to try out Google Wave in beta.  It is not an open tool yet, so you need an invitation.  Many people are discussing it, praising or critiquing or just trying to understand it.  The best description I have seen says that it solves the problems of using e-mail threads to collaboratively discuss and/or create a document or a project. http://danieltenner.com/posts/0012-google-wave.html
I am playing with it because I feel collaboration is key to the future of news.

Adam – Thinks Google Wave might help because we need tools that allow us to go from conversations to ideas and decisions to actions.  Ning is fine for having conversation and distilling ideas, but not for generating a to-do action list.  Base Camp is great for action, but not for having a conversation. [ed: Base Camp is a collaborative project management tool.]

Andy Carvin at NPR used Ning to mobilize volunteers to build sites for Hurricane Gustave.  

Michelle – I have not found a really good way to collaborate using social media.  I use it mainly to communicate.  I’m mainly on Twitter and I spent a lot of time figuring out the people I would follow and to know what I am using it for.  My Twitter is all about links to journalism and technology.  When people feel it is getting out of control, I say think hard about what you are using it for, your goal.  I also go in a few times a day and don’t worry that I am missing things.  I follow 200 people and I feel maxed out.  Jay Rosen, who is a big twitterer, follows 600.  We use Ning at Knight Digital Media Center to keep communication going with multimedia classes after they finish.  Be sure to have purpose to your social media.

Adam – have you used Twitter Lists? [ed: a relatively new tool that allows people to assemble a group of people and then follow the group]

Michelle – I’m not sure people have figured out how to use it.  Everybody wants to be on a lot of lists – there’s a competition.  That will pass at some point. When I think of making lists, I go for short lists that are very focused.  So someone could follow my list without getting a bunch of noise that they don’t want.

Adam – I am trying out HootSuite [ed: a tool for managing social media] and may switch from Tweetdeck to that.  It allows you to tightly focus on what you want to follow and move from interest area to interest area.  HootSuite allows you to make tabs for each group you want to follow.

Michael – asked for a quick takeaway from each participant in the last few minutes.

Roberta – you’ve given me some places to play, like HootSuite and Twitter Lists.  What I’m grappling with in my new life with the Inspector General’s office of HHS, I’m trying to figure out what I can do to make our reports more accessible to the public.  So social media might help me with that.

Carl – I would love to keep this conversation going.  I am worried about going crazy and missing opportunities.  Collaboration tools are the most important thing for my life and for reporting in the future.  We are all wannabees and we want to figure out how to integrate these tools.  There’s no way we can keep up.

Michele – It would be great to continue this.  My project as a Reynolds Fellow is focused on civic engagement and how journalists and others are using social tools to promote engagement.   Advocacy groups and marketers seem to be ahead of journalists.  I’m trying to find lessons for journalists so they can be players in civic engagement.

Maryalice – I’m really into Google Wave and want to do more with that.

Adam – I would like to be on a follow-up conversation.  We have started to become more comfortable in using these tools for listening and marketing, but we’ll find the real power comes with the participatory journalism model.  That has tremendous potential.  I am happy to mentor others [ed: said with humble caveat that he is only a fraction ahead of others in social media tools] and people should feel they can contact me.

Michael – I would love to continue the conversation and I’m particularly interested in how to be more efficient in staying involved with various social media groups, especially some of the private networks I’m on (alumni networks, advisory networks as opposed to open networks like Twitter and FB and LinkedIn.)   I’ll be looking for tools to post to several platforms at once.

Roberta – throws in a tip from her 18-year-old daughter to use Stumbleupon which she describes as addictive. [ed: it’s a browser add-on that helps you find info and sites about things you search for from your browser.]

Michael - Thanks much to Adam Glenn for being our guide on this social media tour and talk.