Role of the news org

I've been working on rewording/reordering the presentation. Kate and I are meeting at 12 today to finish it up. We'll send it out to everyone for before the call tonight.

One thing though: can everyone send us a like one sentence idea of what they see Locker Talker doing for the news organization. It's still kind of a whole, presentation wise. Having other people's wording would be really helpful.

Thanks everyone!

feedback

Hey guys,

So here's what I took to be notable feedback...

1) Dianne thinks we need to allow users to show off their filp books to other people... She said that it isn't really fun if you can't show it off.

2) someone brought up that the news org. should actually make magnets for kids to put on their real school lockers... so they can show off that they are 'in the know'

3) someone suggested there being music in the locker.

4) It was emphasized that we need to know what the consequences of Locker Talker are on the demographic, and why it means good business for the news org.

Harry has everything

So the four hour process of sending Harry all the files is complete (don't ask .... it took forever). Tyler redid the main mockup this afternoon to make it look a little more realistic and appealing, so he now has everything & hopes to have it back to us for Monday.

Dave - Harry needs file

Dave can you send Harry the original file you have for the flip book?
I'll send you an email too in case you check that first.

Thanks!
Andrea

Valuable feedback from Christina..

via e-mail:

"The stickers on the lockers need to look like advertisements, many of them didn't. Post-it notes need to look like post-it, many times they do not.

Also, kid-friendly headlines are better than '2 soldiers dead in Iraq' as people protested the severity of content... I say we just avoid the issue all together in the mock-ups...there was more feedback, but I do not have the opportunity to post it at this moment... this is all I think we need to be concerned about with the mock-ups. Also a sense of consistency is key.. the tyler-made ones looked different from the andrea/kate-made ones."

Discuss this as a group and then communicate decisions to Harry pronto.

mock up help

so we've found a Flash guy. can we just use this post to quickly iron out what needs doing in the mockups? we obviously need the notebooks "coming forward" from the locker. anything else? also, are we looking to get it so that we can click on the notebooks to make them come forward in the mockups, or do we need only a few Flash animation files to put into the Powerpoint?

also, Christina and Dave, did you guys get any feedback on the mockups?

last thing--I think Kate has the mockup files so she will have to send them to the Flash guy.

presentation

hi guys - christina is working on the presentation hand outs - she didn't get a copy of the presentation so far - can somebody from st. mike's shoot her a copy so she can get started thinking about order and what extra content needs to be there

thanks...kim

Webinar call tonight..

..at 9:30 p.m. You should have the numbers sent last week by Kim. If not, let me know. Kim's in CA and may be late to the call.

Come prepared to finalize lingering questions re: the presentation.

We are planning a Sunday, Oct. 14 Webinar call at 8:30 p.m.--another mock presentation with the three presenters; we will all listen, ask questions, and comment.

Talk to you later.

check out this blog post

with a story about a multimedia package - uses the bulletin board as a theme - iwth photos and videos - kind of interesting

The SMC mock presentation...

...went extremely well. Kate, Andrea and Tyler did a terrific job on the first run and they received some pertinent feedback. (Andrea has already given you a summary in a previous post.)

From my perspective (having listened to the presentation, as well as read the individual surveys that audience members filled out), a few key elements need to be strongly emphasized in the Toronto presentation:

1) clarify the problem (i.e. young people not reading newspapers, not tuning to local news; high percentages of youth on online sites; existing sites are superficial, play-based; no online sites out there (cite your research) allowing youth to personalize news interests and share info with other youth groups in a secure environment).

One SMC audience member suggested beginning the presentation with: Do you (as news execs) want to help spawn the citizens of the future? This is attention-getting!

2) mission of LockerTalker (a written mission statement in a PowerPoint slide) communicated in 2-3 bullets. (Citizen journalism is a buzz word that online news executives are all discussing--looking to implement; needs to be emphasized in presentation--this connects to Knight Foundation goal of Incubator Project.)

3) explanation of social networking sites (i.e.Facebook) and how LT differs--how it's an "alternative to social networking for social-networking wannabees"; why parents will like this platform for middle-school age (you all need to clarify exact age range re: Andrea's previous question--many listeners didn't get the narrowed demographic info--there were quite a range of answers to the survey question, "what is the target audience?"); secure news and education environment; privacy rules.

4) explanation of 6 primary LockerTalker features (i.e. notebooks, laptop, post-its, etc.); a suggestion to add video headlines on the laptop, which is a great suggestion--hitting viewers with even more news. (I would definitely suggest ripping from current headlines and inserting them in the mock-ups. This will give news execs a feel for the types of stories that will appear.)

5) explanation of why this is a valuable application for a news organization (what are the concrete benefits for them?); advertising revenue; sparking an interest in news/information and connecting youth to their news sites at formative ages; news is being consumed by a virgin, untapped target market for most news orgs.

6) how LT is financially feasible for the news org--how you envision oversight of the site? How many staff needed to monitor and customize news stories? What kind of labor hours are required to monitor/produce content for site? Play generation card here!

7) restatement of mission, demographic, benefit to news org.

youth groups

We need to contact some youth groups (try, at least) to see if the interest is there before Toronto. I know some of the big ones we came up with were Girl Scouts, 4-H, CYO, Girls Inc.!, Babe Ruth and Little League baseball and softball ... I honestly can't remember what else but people had more creative ones.

Just post which ones you contact, that way we don't all do the same ones.

I'll start with Girl Scouts and 4-H ...

focus group

Both Jordan and the SMC group received the same feeback re: the idea of using a focus group before Toronto. We're trying to contact the director of our community service office, as she runs a Middle School Mentors program. Hopefully, we can show our mockups and ideas to some of these middle schoolers this week (unfortuanately I think they are all girls). We'll let you know...

more SMC feedback

Here's the feedback from the multimedia guy at the Free Press addressing first, whether this is classified as an Intranet or not and second, the possiblity of Locker Talker being a browser:


Your second question first: I'm inclined to agree with you that classifying the project as an intranet would be too insular/limiting. A primary strength of Locker Talker, as I see it, is the way it interfaces between the vastness of the web (which no one can navigate alone) and an individual's interests and tastes. Also, I think there's a pragmatic reason to avoid conceptualizing the project as such: most newsrooms have intranet systems that store photos and stories...generally speaking, those systems are slow and outdated. As for the suggestion about locker talker as a browser: Social networking sites typically cater to niche audiences. The Free Press has a social networking site for moms , for example. The idea there is to bring a particular demographic together for a particular reason. Locker Talker, on the other hand, seems to have a larger potential to be an environment through which people navigate the web. For example, I go to YouTube to see videos but YouTube does not become my web navigation system. It's merely a stop along the way. Facebook, as you mentioned in the presentation, comes closest to being an environment that helps people navigate the web via groups, hobbies, taste, etc. And it's major drawback is definitely privacy concerns. (This: "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship" is fom Facebook's "privacy" policy). Locker Talker offers the privacy -- it respects individuals sense of space -- without shutting out the really fantastic elements of social networking. Why a browser? Browsers are the tools that currently structure our web environment. It is always with you, no matter where you go on the web. Explorer is the most popular...but it doesn't offer much in the way of personalized space. Check out Flock, which does a lot more by giving accessing to feeds, ability to upload photos, blogging capabilities, etc... Locker Talker, I think, would work very nicely like this.

Feeback from my presentations, finally.

Feedback from Presentations:

There was a lot of feedback that I got that has been unnecessary to post. People gave me ideas like making a power point (of course college professors would say that) and maybe doing a focus group, which I think is something that should be done after we prevent these ideas to the ONA by whoever decides to pick it up. In general there was extremely positive feedback and most people thought it could be implemented, etc.

People said some general comments which they thought were stronger were:

Our goal

Our use of technology/the internet

Starting with a smaller community newspaper

Clear concept

They liked our name for it

The relevant interests to our age demographic

Using buzz words like hyper-local, etc. were responded to well.

Easing networking into news

Safety

Personalization and privacy of lockers

That our demographic is too young for MySpace and Facebook.

They liked our ability to adapt to potential sponsors and the flexibility for change

Tricking the students into reading news

Still using the professional journalists while involving the community

What they felt still needed work (based on a rough presentation and then a little smoother one the second time around from me by myself – keep this in mind.):

We need to look more into what the target audience wants to learn about

Risk of censorship

Streaming video potential?

Will the content be repackaged for these kids?

Wondering if there are strong community newspapers online (I SAY YES TO THAT)

How to convince fearful adults (TO THIS I SAY, THE KIDS ARE ALREADY ON THE INTERNET DOING THINGS, LET’S GIVE THEM AN ACTUAL SAFE PLACE TO SPEND THEIR TIME.)

Approaching a paper for moch content instead of creating headlines in our presentations ourselves.

Some other random suggestions:

Look for smaller community newspaper, not one owned by the big guys

Advertising money worth the audience (I SAY YES)

Are we doing this more as a community service or as a way to make money… (I’D SAY THAT’S A REAL QUESTION WE’D BEEN STRUGGLING WITH IN THIS PROJECT OVERALL. I TOOK IT ORIGINALLY TO BE MORE ABOUT A PUBLIC SERVICE AT FIRST, BUT SINCE THE LAST TIME IN ITHACA, MY THOUGHTS HAVE CHANGED.)

Have a really clear overview of the moderator (WHICH IS SOMETHING I THINK WE ALREADY HAVE, I JUST DIDN’T HAVE ALL DAY TO TALK ABOUT THIS PROJECT.)

It was really quite the learning experience for me being on the other side. I feel less bad for professors than I used to because I can’t tell you how many of them looked like they weren’t giving me their full attention, several half-assed their comments or were playing on their phones the whole time. I guess now I know how they feel, but it’s not like they are any better.

Also, several questions arose that I already stated in my presentation and I had to reanswer them. Maybe that means we should stress them more in our presentation?? Things like how to implement it in the first place, advertising revenue, and moderation of the site were big ones I got questions about.

Thanks guys.

PS – Andrea/Kate, whenever you get a chance, can you send me the powerpoint and script so I can look over it and stuff? I still haven’t gotten it from you.

another possible tie-in

When looking up for info on the Girl Scouts tonight for the Interest Project/cit jo tie in, I found Girl Scout TV. It's basically TV clips of things relating to the Web site. Perhaps if this youth organization relationship actually takes off, such clips could work off the computer along with the video components and PSAs. Just a thought?

Check it out: http://www.girlscouts.org/news/gs_tv/

two more things...

...any way you can think to safely tie in YouTube? How about a mapping feature similar to what Hyperzoom wanted to do?

SMC Presentation Feedback

We presented at SMC yesterday afternoon to 5 Journalism professors, a marketing professor, director of Public Relations for SMC and the person in charge of multimedia for the Burlington Free Press (and a SMC grad). It went really well and we got some excellent (as in very helpful yet still encouraging) feedback.

• The biggest thing across the board: Although everyone thinks there is something there, we need to come up with a clear and coherent response to the question "what does this do for the news organization?" Why should they want to adopt this/put energy, time, money into this? Beyond the fact that our demographic is largely untapped ... why would they find this appealing. In terms of answering the question of "who will staff this," one of our professors came up with a great response. It's people like us -- who are graduating with the multimedia skills to support sites like these -- that would be a perfect fit for such a staffing opening. It's what we're trained in. And the whole concept behind the Incubator project.
• The question of what groups are acceptable and who decides this. In our explanation of "applying" to the site admin for a public group, the question was raised regarding where the line was drawn, particularly in the political groups. And our marketing prof raised a good point: what's good in one community might not be in another depending on where they fall on the liberal/conservative scale. We can't lose the privacy/security feature, but need a solution to what is allowed and what's not (I guess a methodical way of deciding what flies...)
• A suggestion: why not strengthen the laptop feature (and tie in more video components) by having video headlines automatically begin when the locker is accessed. This way more news is getting delivered, without a choice on the user's part. Also would also for more Internet safety PSAs to be fused in. This particular prof. said we needed to make it so more news "had" to be seen.
• Another thing across the board: how is this different from Facebook. This is a question that was asked to us, and I babbled off a long explanation to which he replied "right that down." The point being, it is different, and for good reasons. We just need to reiterate that at the beginning of our presentation because some of these news orgs aren't as familiar with social networking sites as we are, and there's the potential that they could see this as familiar if it's not clearly stated how it's not.
• Clarify the problem. And offer Locker Talker as the solution. And what other solutions have tried, unsuccessfully, to do what we're doing. We can look back at all those middle school girl sites we tackled the first two weeks back from Ithaca as to what we saw wrong and how we're better.
• Play the generation card. Again, this is a demographic that we're not all that detached from, but our audience is. Use that to our advantage. Two suggestions: one, really play up the hypothetical locker idea of "Kathryn's locker" (and maybe a male example) and keep that consistent, actually referring to the person, throughout the entire presentation. Another suggestion was to begin the presentation by asking the news organization "Do you want to create a citizen?" because that's what our product has the potential to do. Obviously not a marketing thing we would use to the users, however.
• Really strengthen the part about Project Sharing. This is a great feature of the site that we came up with at the end and subsequently, it's stuck at the end of our presentation. It really encompasses the whole citizen journalism aspect. Also, if people want to turn their diary entries into stories to be shared (through the site admin), allow it to be possible. Encourage writing because it's encouraging cit journalism. They though the tie in to local groups and the community was a strong part of this project however.

There were also some general presentation concepts that our Chair and another veteran prof shared with us after that were really helpful. One was to storyboard the presentation. Start with front of the locker and work your way through in order. Really play the generation card and the hypothetical students. Start the beginning of the presentation with the problem, the failed solution, and how this is the solution and how it is distinctly different from existing social networking sites, because it is.

We're also going to look into combining our PowerPoint and Mockups presentation into one. Consolidate the PowerPoint, with the above info at the beginning, and then move into the mockups with the product explanation.

The good news was they all felt this was practical and could be implemented by a news organization, as long as we came up with the answer to the first question I posted. I have an email into the Free Press multimedia guy regarding a couple questions he raised.

Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense...

Presentation Script/Questions/blah

During the last phone call we talked about Kate and Andrea sending out some of the script for ONA. Could you guys send me what you have (if its anything new)? It'll help me make the hand-out sound like you guys speak, you know what I mean? Like everything is a piece of the same whole.

Right now it is pretty beastly looking

Also, how old can Pew statistics be about the middle school age group's internet habits before they are too old to be used in the handout?? Is 2006 too old? 2005? I have no idea how to handle evolving, time-sensitive statistics like these. I want to include some of them, as it proves how LockerTalker can easily be taken on...

Brandy set up a presentation next week for us over here at IC in order to get more feedback. So, we'll have something to report later on.

mockup issues

I took some pictures of real lockers and notebooks and things to make a better mockup, but it just ended up looking like a really messy, stupid collage.

meanwhile, during our presentation today at SMC (more on that later) we used the mockups we already had, and it seemed to get the point across to the attendees. Dave's flipbook even got specially mentioned as good (must've been that bit about the pretty kitty).

i've been messing around with gradients and such in Photoshop to give the mockups more dynamics while retaining a simple look that would load quickly on the web. unfortunately I can't get the upload box to load, mainly because my internet is running at dialup speeds (as usual, thanks a lot St. Mike's IT).

however, one of the people at our presentation was looking for some kind of website. so my point is--should we not worry so much about our mockups as they are and worry more about creating something that works more like a webpage? don't think any of us can code enough in Flash to make a website, but I think I could make a graphics intensive HTML page using the existing mockups that would at least stand in as a working model.

any thoughts on what we should do here? if people think I should forge on in refining the mockups, I will. I just don't know where I should spend my energies so that the presentation has the best net gain in the end.

Not to make you nervous or anything

But our presentations will be in a room set up for 200 people.!!

I asked brandy whether they really expected that many or a more realistic number like 75. Probably there's just no way to know since this is the first time they've had something like this on the schedule.

IC folks - Brandy got a van so you guys are all going together - brandy and the dean and you three. That will be fun.

Good luck on the presentations in VT! Kick butt (just don't breathe germs on them - bad form