Citizen Journalists start the day off right

SXSW is underway and after four interactive panels, one fantastic speech and an introspective movie, my mind is on information overload.

I had a hunch pretty quickly into it, but the first one I attended was going to be one of the better hours of the week. TeamCJ ("Citizen Journalism") consisted of a panel of 6 thirty-ish Dallasites who basically just set the state for a great Salon discussion.

Starting out with the question “What is a citizen journalist?” the discussion first steered around the difference between blogging for pay and blogging for any other reason. Panelist claimed that TMZ can be considered citizen journalists—at least when they were getting started. Several in the audience disagreed, some strongly, arguing that if you make money, you lose the "citizen" part of the title.
The discussion veered, happily in my opinion, away from that and more toward differentiating citizen journalists from, say, the print newspapers. A great story was told about the recent plane crash in Austin, and how web surfers researched information about Joe Stack and Tweeted with #atxplanecrash. Twitter became a news source, faster than any news agency could have done it. Crowdsourcing, in essence, drove the mainstream media.

This can happen in other, slower, ways too. Say through comments on websites or blog responses or even corrections to articles. Or, as was stated in another panel, NASA feels it gets better driving questions—and ideas—from the general public via twitter or blog comments than it does from the mainstream media.

A couple of sites came up in the discussion that are worth mentioning. Demotix takes citizen photos and combines it with the news story. Annarbor.com is apparently a group of journalists who gather in a cafe and run an online newspaper.

This was a fabulous panel, which was a great start to my SXSW interactive conference.

Austin's public transit

The more I learn about Austin buses (& soon to be 1 train line) the more I'm frustrated.
What's been in the news recently is the new trains. However, I find it hard to believe that it's really going to make any kind of impact on life in Austin. There's just not enough service to matter, and certainly not for the price tag the city has had to pick up.
What I would rather see is for there to be many more buses. The sporadic service is so inconvenient as to be non-existent. Today, for example, there are two bus lines that I can choose from, but neither stops more than every 30 minutes, and neither will allow me to stay downtown past midnight.
I'd like to see this cost comparison: for the money that was spent on this new train line, how many buses could have been added to the system? If bus service could be doubled--maybe 70% more daytime buses and run hourly all night--then I bet ridership would quadruple. And I suspect that kind of increase could have happened for the money that's been laid out for this sexy train line.
I'm not one of those who expects public transportation to ever make a profit, but I do expect it to make a difference in the lives of the majority of residents. Austin's Capital Metro fails to do that.

I-nigma

One issue that we had to learn about while working the info booth was the bar codes on everyone's conference badges. Basically, with an app on your phone, you scan/photograph/view your new friends' badge and their profile is available for viewing--at least as much of it as they've made public. Seems creepy, but really it's just the info that's already in the Registrant Directory that everyone receives. I think the cool part of this is that you can view each others' schedules during the conference. Coworkers, say, who want to attend different panels can more easily coordinate. Or if you've lost track of a friend, pull up their schedule instead of having to text/call.

I'll be interested to see how it's usefulness eventually plays out.

SXSW begins

I had a great time last night "working" the info booth during the registration day. The best part is just being with a bunch of cool, friendly people. Working is actually fun at SXSW, and I love being in the info booth--a great way to find out a bunch about what's going on and not going on, who's here and not here, what's working and what's not working. As an inherently curious person, it's cool to have a job where I have to find out stuff. (I have a similar perspective of teaching, too.)

Technology and Elections

The other night a friend was asking some questions about cell phone, and how they have changed behaviors. I think the intention of the question was about how our individual actions have changed, but I was reminded of a story from Senegal which shows about how it affected free, fair elections in an entire nation.

When I was leaving the country in summer of 1997, landlines were available house-to-house only in the 10 or so biggest cities, and large villages (say, pop>2,000) perhaps had a central pay phone available. At the time, cell phones were just becoming available. Fast-forward to 2000, and technological leap-frog had happened. Already no one is building landlines, and cell phones are EVERYWHERE. And there's a presidential election. Incumbent President Abdou Diouf lost, the first such loss of an incumbent president in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason he could not stuff the boxes? An unanticipated presence surprised everyone: the press quietly arranged for a reporter at nearly every polling station, conducting exit polls and calling in real-time results/predictions ON THEIR CELL PHONES from places that had never seen phones before. Perhaps Mr. Diouf would have been completely honest anyways, but he never got the chance. A free press with cell phones prevented any potential box stuffing.

Democracy due to technology?

A Hill of Beans

Way back when I started this 'blog' I called it A Hill of Beans. I don't recall, but that was probably a sleepless night in my little studio at Cabrini and 181st in Washington Heights. It's quite likely that I'd been watching my #1 fave movie Casablanca, and one of my favorite lines from it yields this title.

However, I'd never thought consciously about the phrase until this evening. I love the humility of it. (God bless if anyone besides me is reading this drivel.) However much I would like to think that I'm an insightful writer, I really don't expect to do this regularly or well. Hence, I doubt it'll be worth a hill of beans.

But, why are beans so worthless anyways? Doesn't it follow that the key to a healthy vegetarian diet is beans? "Beans, beans good for your heart...," right? Entire societies were built with the growing of beans as its core. (The Maya, was it?) To me, beans are more raw than other foods, perhaps because I shelled so many as a kid. It seems that in our urban(e) lives, the lack proximity to food sources has devalued the food itself. A worthless hill of beans? Only if you don't use them.

What is Google?

It's a snowy day in Austin and a 7-year-old in NYC has gotten me on a Google kick. I was already headed there after several googledoc files related to SXSW were shared to me and I couldn't read them.

What does it mean to have an online identity? How successfully can you navigate more than one--and keep them separate?

I started with my yahoo id in 1997 and have used it ever since. And I've got two work addresses, and now I'll use this gmail address, too? Have I been left behind the google train because of loyalty to yahoo? Admittedly, I'll never ditch the yahoo address--too many people from many years ago have it. Oh, the confusion of modern technology. I'm sure SXSW will confuse me even more.