Tag: reporting

Live Blogging/Social Reporting – a new digital skill.

New Optimist Forum Future Foods event 11th June 2012

Earlier this week Max, Nick and I went to the New Optimists Forum – Future Foods, We’re were there in a professional capacity Social Reporting from the evening to get an overview of the event online as it happened. This was Max’s first outing as a social reporter and talking to him afterwards reminded me how tiring I found it when I first started live blogging events. So I asked him afterwards what 3 tips we could have given him before we went into the session to make it easier.

These were his responses;

1. Don’t be complacent.

Max thought it was going to be easier than it actually was and didn’t expect to be quite so tired afterwards – It’s not an easy thing trying to record what is going on, keeping track of the sometimes multiple conversation and listening for a perfect sound bite to capture on camera.

2. Make sure your laptop is not too big.

Turning up with all the tools you’d need for a social reporting job as a *mobile” social reporter is easier if you have a lighter laptop. We had audio recorders, flip cameras, a stills camera and our laptops with us – spare batteries, spare chargers and a mi-fi – lugging that around can be tiring.

3. Don’t delete anything.

Max admitted afterwards that the thing he found hardest was listening and picking out the “best” bits. He said he would start writing something and then something else interested would start to be discussed so he’s scrap it and start again. He realised he could have just kept it all. He could have bullet pointed all interesting points and not worried about going into too much detail – if he’d wanted to elaborate further he could have grabbed the attendees for a video clip, getting them to reiterate the relevant points they’d made.

Social reporting is all about getting a flavour of an event, an overview of proceedings not precise minutes – it can be used at all kinds of events from large conferences to smaller neighbourhood meetings and everything in between.

It’s a skill we are employed to use often and it is also a skill we teach in our aptly named “Social Reporter Training” packages where we look at the tools to use and the “how to” of social reporting and while we already teach “Don’t delete anything” I think I’ll be adding the rest of Max’s tips  into the next session we host.

 

 

Stuff I've seen January 7th through to January 10th

These are my links for January 7th through January 10th:

  • Steadicam Smoothee for iphone 3gs – 'The Steadicam Smoothee™ is specifically designed and engineered to work with your Apple® iPhone 3Gs. Based on the same technology as the big $60,000 rigs used in Hollywood, it allows iPhone 3Gs owners to capture incredible video without the shakes normally associated with hand-held video shot on the go, right out of the box, the very first time.' via @edmore
  • Social workers start turning the tide over media coverage – Mad World – "Angered by inaccurate media reports in which Tracy Dawber, the community care worker charged in relation to the Little Ted's Nursery child pornography ring, was identified as a social worker, users of Community Care's CareSpace discussion forum wrote to both the BBC and the Daily Mirror asking them to correct their coverage."
  • Akvo blog » Blog Archive » Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR) – "it has become clear that sophisticated project prospecting, project reporting and monitoring tools are needed to be able to effectively scale up implementation efforts to handle many thousands of projects in parallel. Akvo will be developing these tools as Open Source software tools and will also be running an online service which anyone can use, without having to install and maintain these tools on their own servers."
  • A large pile – Viewing a problem – FixMyStreet – Another reason why I love www.fixmystreet.com: "It needs clearing away before it becomes an unofficial tip for the weak minded and indolent."
  • Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organizing – Good to see thoughtful journlaistic material making the case that bloggers have made for a while: "Nothing frustrates me more than watching journalists who've lost their newsroom jobs entering the blogosphere… with no clue as to what they should be doing online. Too few emerging online journalists understand that the function of news publishing has changed in the Internet era. Simply reporting the news, however you might define that, is no longer enough, not when you are publishing in such a competitive environment."