:Journalistopia

Hey Journalistopians, it’s been a long while, but I wanted to post the handouts and examples I’ll be sharing at this weekend’s Online News Association Parachute Training in Boca Raton, Fla. Feel free to use these in presentations, in the classroom, to line your birdcage — whatever tickles your fancy!

• Handout: Free Multimedia Tools List (Word | PDF)
• Slideshow: Shiny New Toys For Awesome News Sites (PowerPoint)
• Spreadsheet: Atlas Maps Upload Example (CSV)
• Photos: Dale Chihuly Exhibit PhotoPeach Example Images (Flickr)

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Hey folks, just wanted to post the handouts I’ll be giving out at the two FSNE multimedia workshops I’ll be leading this afternoon in Tampa. One session is on blogging and the other is on new online media tools. Here are the handouts, as well as my slideshow for the blogging session.

Slideshow Presentation: How to Blog Like a Rock Star

Document: Online Media Toolkit

Document: Blogger Toolkit

Document: Chris Brogans’s 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content – (Orignal post here)

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A group of online technology enthusiasts listens in on a presentation at BarCamp Orlando in 2007. The event is now in its third year. [Photo by Josh Hallett ]

In the next few months, yours truly’s calendar is jam-packed with all sorts of great online media and technology events in Florida –events you should really think about attending!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about 10 things online editors can do to save their jobs. Well, attending these kinds of events is Number 10 on the list. And best of all, most of these cost the princely sum of zero dollars.

If you know of any others, please drop me a comment. On to the list:

DrupalCamp Florida – Saturday, Feb. 7
Altamonte Springs, Fla. (just 10-15 minutes north of Orlando)
Cost: FREE
Central Florida is getting its first-ever DrupalCamp, a day-long series of presentations revolving around the free, open-source content management system that is changing the face of online media. Drupal is being used by major media sites such as The New York Observer, Morris Digital, the Miami Herald, as well as hundreds of thousands of small companies and hobbyists.

BarCamp Miami and WordCamp Miami – Sunday, Feb. 22
Coconut Grove, Fla. (near Miami, Fla.)
Cost: FREE
Happening in conjunction with FOWA, listed next
If there’s one thing journalists often lack, it’s an understanding and appreciation for Internet and tech culture. Well, you can get a big heap of it at BarCamp, a technology and online media “un-conference” distinguished by it having absolutely no schedule! The joy of BarCamp is that everyone is encouraged to make a presentation or lead a discussion. It’s totally open to everyone in the spirit of the day. The workshop schedule is set that very morning as participants sign up to lead discussions and give presentations. While BarCamp can get uber-geeky, it’s a great place to learn from other techies, meet innovators, share your knowledge with others and get some great ideas. BarCamp will also forever change your perspective on conferences.

BarCamp is partnering with WordCamp, a workshop similar in style to BarCamp but centering around WordPress, the insanely popular and powerful blogging platform that has become the tool of choice for many bloggers, including Journalistopia. Participants will sign up for presentations on everything from how to become a popular blogger to how to hack the code that powers WordPress

Future of Web Apps Conference – Monday, Feb. 23-24
Miami, Fla.
Cost: $395 (I know it’s pricey, but super early bird tickets were available for $100)
The Future of Web Apps Conference is THE premier web development event in the Southeast. FOWA will feature luminaries such as Winelibrary.TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, 37Signals’ Jason Fried and many more. I attended last year, and it was worth every minute. This event is geared toward web developers, so it can be techy, but I truly learned a great deal about how the web is changing at this event.

Megacon – Friday, Feb. 27-March 1
Orlando, Fla.
Cost: $22/day or $52 for 3 days. Plus $10 parking/day
Er, this is a comic book convention. But who cares if it’s not about online journalism! I’ll be there! Onward…

Florida Society of Newspaper Editors Multimedia Workshop – Saturday, March 21
Tampa, Fla.
Cost: TBA
FSNE is planning a low-cost multimedia workshop for the Tampa Bay area similar to the one they recently planned in Miami. The workshop is a great opportunity to learn about blogging, online ethics, data projects, Flash and much more. I’ll be there reprising the workshop I led in Miami on new online media tools. Mark your calendar!

BarCamp Orlando – Saturday, April 18
Orlando, Fla.
Cost: Free
Now in its third year, BarCamp Orlando is the Central Florida flavor of BarCamp, explained above under BarCamp Miami. The last two years were a great success, so I’ll hopefully see you there this year!

***

Now I’m wondering when I’ll get to spend time with my lovely wife. At least she got in some great crossword puzzle time the last time I dragged her to BarCamp. (Such a good sport. Love you, dear!)

See you in Miami, Orlando or Tampa!

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The winners of the 2008 Online News Association Awards have been announced at the association’s annual conference. Visit the list of award winners here.

From the ONA’s press release:

(WASHINGTON, D.C. Sept. 13)– Elpais.com and Soitu.es, both based in Spain, won the inaugural General Excellence awards for non-English language sites in the 2008 Online Journalism Awards.

The Oregonian took the honors for Online Video Presentation in the other new category in the ninth annual Online Journalism Awards. WashingtonPost.com won the third year of the Knight Public Service prize.

Army Times, the Las Vegas Sun and CNN won the awards in the English language General Excellence categories. The Gannett Foundation sponsored all five General Excellence Awards for this year, adding a $1,000 cash prize for each winner.

Visit the list of winners and a slideshow of the awards ceremony here.

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If you’ve been waiting to see who’s coming to BlogOrlando this year before you decide to make the trip, well wait no further! The schedule is now posted and features some of the smartest blogging minds around — all for the fabulous price of nil.

The unconference, which is now in its third year, features expert speakers who tackle blogging from various perspectives, be it community organizing, public relations or software engineering. BlogOrlando’s main day will be held Saturday, Sept. 27 at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. not far from downtown Orlando. There will be other receptions and events going on as well (see the schedule).

If you check out the attendee list, you’ll see folks are coming from all over Central Florida, Tampa/St. Pete and South Florida, as well as from the rest of the country. Last year, more than 250 people attended and got tips on how to integrate blogs in the newsroom, podcasting, blog design and how to organize community blogs. Did I mention all this doesn’t cost you a penny for registration?

I’ll see you there!

[BlogOrlando official site]

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Want to see the best online information design the news industry is producing? Then you might want to tune into the SND Update Blog for the next few days as SND highlights entries from their worldwide Best of Multimedia Design competition.

There’s more awesome design here than you can shake a t-square at, so make sure to take a look!

Check out the entries from:

Entertainment/Lifestyle Off Deadline (The category with the most entries)
Breaking News (Most of the entries here seem to allow advance time to produce, but really nice work nevertheless.)
Lifestyle On Deadline (Only one survivor here)
Non-Breaking News
Sports Off Deadline

[More at the SND Update Blog]

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Quick announcement: Registration for the previously mentioned BlogOrlando is now open! Registration for the Sept. 25-27 conference is free and open to anyone. Registration page is here.

Registration was maxed out for last year’s conference, so act quickly. Yours truly is helping with some of the planning this year, so I can genuinely say there’s going to be some great stuff this year for both beginners and seasoned bloggers alike. If you’re a media professional in Florida interested in increasing your potential online, BlogOrlando is most definitely worth a day trip to Central Florida.

See you there!

[BlogOrlando registration page]

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It’s baaaaaaack! BlogOrlando, the awesome unconference on all things bloggy will be back this year Thursday, Sept. 25 to Saturday, Sept. 27. Last year, registration was maxed out with more than 300 attendees, many of which were journalists from Florida’s largest newspapers, including the Tampa Tribune, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and more.

BlogOrlando is a great and FREE way to get smart about blogging and learn from the people who are out in the trenches. There will be discussions on everything from blog technology to community building to journalism practices. Be excited!

To follow updates on BlogOrlando, visit the BlogOrlando site. See you there!

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The National Writers Workshop is an excellent way to be inspired and get fantastic advice from some of the industry’s best scribes — all for a price that won’t break the training budget. I’ve attended the workshop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. for the last three years, and it never fails to inspire me to become a better writer. The team that puts this together really does a fantastic job every year.

The beautiful Hyatt Pier 66 overlooks the Atlantic Ocean in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Early bird registration is $100 for the Sept. 20-21 workshop ends Monday, June 9. You get one free registration if you purchase three registrations at the professional rate before Aug. 15. Student/teacher registration is $60, and there will be an internship fair on Sunday. Details at www.sun-sentinel.com/writers

Here’s the nutshell:

National Writers’ Workshop 2008
Hyatt Pier 66
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Sept. 20-21

Speakers at the workshop include:
Dave Barry, best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, The Miami Herald
Gene Weingarten, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and feature writer at The Washington Post
Laurel Touby, founder and CEO of MediaBistro.com
Diana Henriques, investigative reporter, The New York Times
Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle, authors of Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports
andeep Junnarker, interactive journalism professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
Jacqui Banaszynski, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and writing coach. Knight Chair in Editing, University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Questions? Email Gail Bulfin at gbulfinATsun-sentinel.com.

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Head on over to the conference site for South by Southwest (SXSW) for free video from the media and entertainment conference. You’ll want to particularly peruse the Interactive Coverage. And yes, the much-maligned Zuckerberg/Lacy interview is there too.

I wasn’t one of the fortunate souls who made it out to Texas for the conference, so if you have any specific recommendations on what to watch, do share in the comments.

And to think I just got Netflix this weekend, and I’ll be spending a couple of hours watching tiny pixelated videos of guys talking about media nerd stuff…

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Just got an e-mail letting me know that audio from the Future of Web Apps Miami conference is available. Woot!

For us online news types, these talks are a great chance to get exposed to what’s happening in web technology and to think about how we can apply it to our situation.

These were the talks I thought were the best IMHO:

Cal Henderson from Flickr talks about the software development process and gives boatloads of excellent advice you need to hear if you’re developing applications.

Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV talks about the importance of passion in growing a community (this one really applies to news sites).

Kevin Marks from Google talks about Google’s OpenSocial and the future of social networking.

Blaine Cook from Twitter talks about the future of Twitter and its architecture.

Leah Culver from Pownce talks about opening your web app to the masses (something news sites need to get better at, without jeopardizing their revenue that is..)

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Kathy Sierra talked about creating passionate users earlier today, but Gary Vaynerchuk talked about creating passionate OWNERS.

Vaynerchuk, host of the popular Wine Library TV online video show, worked his way into the hearts of the crowd here at the Future of Web Apps conference by sharing his passion for his community (and boozing us up with a little wine passed out to the crowd).

You should pay close attention to what he has to say if you operate a news site. Vaynerchuk is not a computer expert (“I built a 15 million-dollar liquor store on Control C and Control V”); he’s a wine expert. And he’s passionate, passionate, passionate about his community:

“I fly all over the country just to drink wine with people.”

“You’ve got to have the DNA of your community.”

“There needs to be a face to your company. You have to take care of those people until your bleeding out of your f***ing g****mn face.”

“You need to love your community more than you love yourself.”

“You’ve got to have someone in the trenches. Someone people can touch.”

I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say that perhaps doesn’t sound like your ombudsman — if your news operation even has one any more, that is. Some news sites have hired “community managers,” usually to manage message boards and community-contibuted content.  But is that person a visible presence on the site? Have people seen his face? Does the person have public conversations with readers? Does that person really love where he works?

And most important of all, are you making an effort to brand that person as being a community resource, or is he just another mysterious byline? Do people know this person exists? Vaynerchuk said it best:

“You always hear ‘content is king’. The fact of the matter is marketing and branding is the queen, and we know who runs the household.”

If people can’t name your community manager, if they can’t relate to that person or get an e-mail returned quickly –then really, what’s the point?

It’s become increasingly clear that tomorrow’s web is going to be shaped by openness — OpenID, open standards, open business practices, etc. Consequently, your news site is going to need someone reliable to whom people can go for answers.

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