...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.
The presenter folks are working overtime to tweak/refine the scripts (as well as practice their deliveries).
ReplyDeleteCan some of the other team members work on the news org benefits/implementation by news org sections, as well as posting LOTS of feedback to the comments sections here.
WE ARE ONE WEEK AWAY!