Simon Perry

Following guidance from Sarah Hartley, who's chair of the panel that I'm speaking on at the first Journalism Enterprise Summit (#JES2015), below are a list of things that we've tried over nearly ten years of running our Isle of Wight News publication, OnTheWight.

Sarah impressively boiled down her speaking guidance to three points: What have you done?; What have you learned by doing it?; and, What are you doing next?.

Below are the first two. They're made up of our experience, of course others may have had completely different outcomes.

If they don't make sense, or need more clarity, do get in touch.

I'm lending a hand at Open Data Camp (#ODCamp) this weekend by helping people Network while at the event.

The goal of this Network, or Speed-dating as some of the #ODCamp crew have called it - to help people coming to the event to get the most from it, not only in the sessions, but by having fruitful conversations between sessions that will serve to stimulate, or perhaps grow into collaborations. This could be swapping ideas, have questions answered, building collaborations.

There's 130 people going to the event, so there's no real way of me getting to know them all, no matter how much research I carry out in advance.

It got me thinking about ways/systems to help people self-network - Peer-to-Peer networking, if you like (Ah, P2P, that takes you back doesn't it?).

Easy discovery of people's interests

In last night's organisers' Hangout, it popped into my mind about how coloured stickers were fantastically effective at the late-90s First Tuesday networking events for joining mutual interests. There it was a simple two colours - One for I have money to invest, the other, I have an idea looking for investment.

Chatting the initial idea over with the others, it wasn't quite right. Having applied more thought to it, Open Data Camp isn't that simple, there's a lot more areas/interests. Given that you'd end up needing a look-up chart for what each colour meant, defeating the point.

During a phone call with Chris Gutterdige today we kicked the idea around and I think have formed the start of an interesting idea.

Self-declaring your #Intro via Twitter

Before the event, on the way there, or during the event, if #ODCamp attendees Tweet out one/a few Tweets about themselves, How they're connected to Open Data and what their looking for, the P2P networking can start online and hope fully flourish at the event when they meeting in person.

Essentially you're creating a bit of data about yourself.

Examples are often the best way - So I might Tweet

@simonperry #ODCamp #Intro I use open data in our journalism at @OnTheWight 

#Intro your interest

Another might be the equivalent of the colours badge stickers, but much more flexible a mix of the things that you do and your interests.

@simonperry #ODCamp #Intro #Creator #Consumer #DataGeek #Analyst #Hyperlocal

Other tag labels might be #Visualisation #Dev #LinkedData #Tables #Graph

Perhaps the area you work in - #Gov #Charity #biz #Social #Hyperlocal

#AskMeAbout - What your interested in sharing

Chris suggested #AskMeAbout - if there's an area of Open Data that you've got a strong knowledge about and are willing/keen to share. 

@cgutteridge #ODCamp #AskMeAbout #LinkedData

or

@cgutteridge #ODCamp #AskMeAbout Organisational Open data http://odcamp.org.uk/open-data-and-auto-discovery/

#WLTM - People you'd like to meet/chat with

The last idea was for people that you know that you like to meet up with. This one is lifted from dating/small ads - #WLTM - Would Like To Meet.

@simonperry #ODCamp #WLTM Others in news and those interested in Open Data for social good

@simonperry #ODCamp #WLTM #Dev interested in data in journalism

All searchable

Of course this all bring the advantages of search-ability. If you want to meet up with people at #ODCamp who work in a particular field, they'd be easy to find and therefore connect to at the event.

Let's give it a go!

I don't know - this all might be a complete daft idea, or it might be something quite useful. Either way, let's have a play at ODCamp - if it's doing to work anywhere, this is a good place to start.

Of course, if you have any thoughts on this, want to meet anyone at #ODCamp, or just want a general chat about Open Data, just come and say hello.

Tim Bourne (a friend and past colleague) raises the question of local news being decimated in the UK. Interesting points brought up on his recent personal experience.

Here's my response/take on it

I think the address of the Ealing Gazette's editorial office says it all Tim - It's 8.5 miles away, in middle of Hammersmith. That's not a local paper. That's a team trying to gather together goodness knows how many papers spread around a wide area, away from where they actually are.

It's past management decisions to centralise editorial to increase profits that enabled Hyperlocal news to flourish in the UK in the first place. Hyperlocal news providers are based in the community.

Agreed income have been hit by classified revenue loss, but past withdraw of editorial away from the areas they cover started the rot.

(Thanks for kind words about OnTheWight BTW)

I saw BrixtonBlog's Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign today. 

I think they've hit exactly the right note  - especially liked the tone and cut of the video.

Wishing them very best with it. 

I'm not wanting to cast a shadow over it in any way, as I know they do good work.

The Entitlement question

It does raise what I think might be an interesting discussion point - a point that Sally had brought up about crowd-funding, when we'd been discussing at OnTheWight - How much entitlement might those who donate feel that they have over the publication?

Our (frankly rather strange) experience in the past has pointed to this as a possibility. It's happened a few times - by individuals or a business or two.

One real-world example

One case - an individual had given us a tenner (yes you read that right), then started to write to us attempting to steer our editorial policy, feeling he had the right as he was 'supporting' us. He had, to that point (and since, mostly), seemed quite a sane and reasonable person.

Obviously he had chance in directing us, but to underline the point we took the decision to refund his money.

Cross-fingers this won't happen with BrixtonBlog, but for hyperlocals it worth considering how can this be avoided and planned around.