From A Voice in the Wilderness To The Wisdom of Crowds:  Citizen Journalism, Nonprofit Organizations, and Social Change.  Session description

These powerful should not be ceded to the mass media and have more power to the people in the room.  Let's take citizen journalism to the next level, putting the tools in the hands of people to tell their stories.

Dan Gilmor:  Overview of Citizen Journalism

Preface:  This stuff is made to order for you. 

30,000 foot view of the citizen journalism movement.

Presented a video clip of the Tsunami
Talking about a democratized media - we can all participate.  Both the production and the tools that are in the hands of people who want to use them in the developed world and cheaper and powerful everyday.

Our friends at phone and cable industry trying to take it away.

It stems from a Read-Write Web. 
Ethan's live blog of his remarks, for example.

Podcasting.  Did you know that pengaon is doing podcasting.

Vlogging:  Showed Rocketboom.

Convergence of old media to new media to we media.
The grassroots becomes the norm, not the exception.

It comes down to a lecture to a conversation.

The first rule of a conversation is that you have to listen.

It is a skill that needs to be established.

Secrets are getting harder to keep.  The privacy implications are troubling, but things that should not being done are getting out.

What is true?  Accuracy.  Test.  Need better tools

Finding ways to work with communities - important for nonprofits.

Asking people what they know.   Example of the BBC.  Any natural disaster, there is a move to ask.  Even if we asked people, they will do it anyway.  Showed a mobile phone camera image from London bombings.

They have done it before.  The citizen witness with a camera.  Showed a home photo of JFK getting shot.  One guy with one camera in Dallas.  Tommorrow, there would be 1,000 people shooting pictures and cameras connected to digital networks.  It would be triangulated.

Tools/Toys:  Satellite phone.   Self-Assembling News room - people who don't know each other.  Creating an aggregate  -- Global Voices, Wikipedia, Mashups.

Mixing Media:  Younger folks are mashing media together.  This is a future direction.  Showed a vlog of Bush and Blair singing song.  Mashing media is mashing various things together.

Nano Publishing:  making a living selling ads on their blogs.

Communities of Geography:  Site in vermont - doing a better job than local newspaper about what is going on.

Communities of Internet:  travel sites like tripadvisor.com.

Too Much Information:  How do we sort it out.  Tools are coming along - like technorati.  Sorting it out - taking technology and politics and finding the conversation around specific stories.  The Daily me - you can assemble your own news sources.  Daily We - people help each other find the information.  Voting is not sufficient.  Need to add reputation.  We're getting closer.

Community Voting/Ratings.   Moderating comments on blogs.

CItizen Media to CItizen Activism:  Media can help people become activists in their communities.   BBC project Action Network.   Tools for people to do community campaigns and reporting on the active ones.  First campaign - take away funding from BBC.

Need to bring this into things we care about on a daily basis.

His project: http://www.citimedia.org

Hong Eun Taek:  OhmyNews

Told the story of his project.  Every Citizen is a reporter.    "Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them in writing and share with others."   Driving force for social change.

Founded in Feb. 2000 - number of citizenreporters explodes from 727 to 42,000.  Certain events were catalysts.  Whenever there is an election, for example.

Digital divide alongsideagein Korea - changed the direction of news.  Information via print and tv news.  Now Internet news. 

OhmyNews Japan will be launching in a month.  And, can it happen on the global stage?

Ended with an invitation to participate on their site.  It has an english language version.  Showed different sections of the site.

Ethan Zuckerman: Global Perspective.  HIs talk is posted here.

I am not a journalists.  I don't play one on TV.  I'm a geek and activist.  How does the citizen journalism movement fit in with advocacy.

Hao Wu case study (see Ethan's notes). Lesson Learned:  Don't speak.  Point.  It has to do with the ability of making your voices heard.  It is getting easier for people to express themsevles.  As advocates, we put in ourselves in the position of speaking on behalf.  It's the wrong strategy.  It is important to point and get out of the way. 

How not to do it (Live 8).   Encouraged people to tag live 8 using technorati.   They did not know about the African blogosphere - critical, activist - kenyan and nigerian blogs.   Wonderful 100 comment long threads - we're trying help you.   If you wanted to help us, maybe you could have asked us first.   Saying that you are gonna save Africa.   Technorati seperated the threads.  A fascinating lesson .. people have access to these tools.  People will tell you -- sometimes it is shut the hell up.

The character of the net have changed radically in the next decade.  It took 36 years to get 1 billion getting on and the next 1 billion lessn than 6 years.   The next billion?  China, India, Brazila, Africa, - will get online in huge numbers.

Shift now in Internet use intent - now to create content.  Users are publishers.  Next billion authors.  If we assume that people will speak for themselves, we should focus on:

Access to publishing tools
Knowledge to use them
Translation and context of what people say
Amplication

Global Voices is an edited aggregator for blogs around the world.

Access to tools isn't as much of a problem as you think.  People are finding ways to use the tools.

The main barrier is to use the tools without getting in trouble.  How do you allow people to speak about political issues in a repressive society. 

There are huge chunks of blogosphere that aren't in English.  One most of the most important things is translation.

Contextualize the content. Understand why it is important and it comes from the blogger in that country.

We work hard to make our authors famous - we try to get them into the BCC or NY Times.  The amplification effect is when we are at our best.  We have not desire to put mainstream journalists out of business.

There are lots of NGO's discovering that blogging is the best alternative to a printing press.  African blogs, Witness.  Human Rights Watch - doesn't blog.  I blog for human rights campaign.  They want to share direct documents that help people understand the situation.l  Shared a series of crayon drawings from Darfur. 

The expression doesn't have to be high tech - the drawing is most profound - made by using crayons.

The whole word of doing advocacy is changing.