Citizen Media

David Geller, John Battelle, Dan Gillmor on Today’s Citizen Media

Debate by what chris meant by Citizen Media

battelele – a media guy, speaks for the authors
value with voice and pov
enjoy media – his space, Wired Magazine, BigPub, BoingBoing

His new project – search book, shows how his blog is an example of writing a book and blogging the process, thought he would only have a few people watching – ended up with a passionate audience that can aid in things you are doing – mentions how Dan Gilmore saw the same thing with his book.

Things Battelle has done recently:
boingboing – bring ads into site w/o destroying it
havent had to sell one ad – part of the conversation, endemic – the advertisers came to him

Citizen Media –
content owned by the people making it

federated media (Battelle’s new company, which includes boinboing I think) – puts this into practice

Dave
sharing info between people groups and systems within an organization
how do we make a company communicate?
area waiting to explode
easiest way to communicate within an organization
replace internet toold

Dan Gilmore
epiphany 1

anyone who does anything in media, your audience knows more than you do collectively
take adv of that = better work and better information from the ground up

epiphiany 2

dave winer showing gilmore EDIT THIS PAGE (90s?)
web has become as writable and it is readable
media and citizens to do what you understand, the ability to be creators/pubs is a major transformation

grassroots media – bayosphere (Dan’s new company) – about tech economy and SF Bay Area
Citizens start tell each other what they know
vibrant sharing of what we know amongst each other

We are only at the beginning of this transformation
a lot to solve before we get anywhere with it

how do we find the good stuff????? – we will have to creat biz models around it – not entirely clear what those things are (thats half the fun)

Joh Battelle – what is the def of citizen media?

undervalued – things being created in this room and without
high quality conversations
how are the marketers involved (not interrupted)
how to do this as a full time passion – figure out that model

Dave

representing the business side – the tools to help customers merge email and synd models effectively
easier to use pub tools and models throughout
everyone was building their own tools
steep learnign curve

What we are familiar with is enabling – spreading thru the masses

Dan Gilmore-
vast majority of blogs, 90+%, and particularly written for the family and close friends, the value per reader must be higher than the val/reader of boingboing
(Value is relative to the person consuming – and I hate that word – the content)
doesnt like the word amateur in this context – its about personal passion
bizmodel for stuff in the middle like community theater – there is no business model except for the tool makers

new media dev – still hazy in how it shakes out from biz and journalizm
listen to us (the crowd, the citizens) as much as everythign else
citizen journalism pledge and the imp of being balanced

Crowd asks Dan Gilmore about the standards pledge for Bayosphere – he goes on to discuss how they put up an idea for the ‘rules’ – and the users took it, ripped it , remixed it, added their own thru a wiki

pledge asks that people who sign must confirm they will do their best to be balanced
people agreed to be honorable
sean bonner – ona wiki – not telling us what to do
we live in a world with a limit to time – cant read every post on slashdot
role for synthesis –

Big takeaway – in this new world the aritcle isnt the end of the conversation – its the middle

Joh Battelle
2002 – course with 2000 students – how to do journalism in a blog setting
if you can describe community morays and doc them you can make something
comes to concensus around these topics
liberating info (sharing) is a driving force in life

people in local communities have a lot to tell each other whats going on, but papers cant do the in-depth job
ability to tell each other what they know is important – still not that easy
we are early in helping people do these things – first amendment is for everyone not just the designated press

Joh Battelle – press has that railroad disease of forgetting what biz they are in

we created these vehicles where we thought we knew what we were doing
debate having in this community – attaching a biz model to the content
if you are going to get these people to liberate information – need to fig a way to pay the bills
(my whole argument of value for value)

Keep believing some point this will change

Critical mass is what we need – create a show without network deals, or a contract or a service (only a matter of time)

whats the value of an open conversation?
model can change culture – starts with creatives changing the culture first
commonsense copyright and patent law (this is an evolution)
permission from them to quote from what they do