Regular workout sessions do not appear to fully undo the effects of prolonged sitting. ‘‘There seem to be different pathways’’ involved in the beneficial physiological effects of exercising and the deleterious impacts of sitting, says Tatiana Warren, a graduate student in exercise science at the University of South Carolina and the lead author of the study of men who sat too much. ‘‘One does not undo the other,’’ she says.

[from Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens - Well Blog - NYTimes.com via Christopher Wink on Twitter.]

Although the study referenced in the article above specifically pertains to men, I wouldn’t doubt that the effects are similar for women too (but hey, I’m just guessing).

As a way of “ameliorating the dangers of inactivity”, the blog posts quotes Tatiana Warren, a graduate student in exercise science at the University of South Carolina and lead author of the study:

‘‘Look for ways to decrease physical inactivity,’’ Ms. Warren says, beyond 30-minute bouts of jogging or structured exercise. Stand up. Pace around your office. Get off the couch and grab a mop or change a light bulb the next time you watch ‘‘Dancing With the Stars.’’

Ms. Warren, I know you’re the expert here, but that sounds like terribly ineffective advice to me. It’s also advice tailored more toward people who watch TV than people who sit at their laptops all day, and the latter is probably more common and widespread, at least amongst my circles.

Here’s my take (as a person who spends way too much time sitting) on how I’ve been able to lose some of the extra pounds I’ve put on since graduating from college:

1. Invest in an fitness ball to replace your chair. This isn’t uniquely my idea. Tech Guy Leo Laporte has used a ball for years. All the guys in the Social Vibe office (where I sometimes work when I don’t work from home), do the same. Supposedly, sitting on one of these exercise balls all day burns about 350 calories, and has tons of other benefits like helping you build your core muscles (abs), helps with spine alignment (so you can say bye to your terrible, hunched-over-the-laptop posture), and strengthens your balance.
2. Keep lightweight dumbbells at your desk. There will be moments of your day when you’re sitting at your computer reading instead of typing. Your hands will be free, and if you see your weights sitting there, pick ‘em up and give ‘em a whirl. I have four-pound weights that I lift during morning conference calls and while reading my Google Reader. It also helps you maintain good information management if you set aside 10 minutes every few hours to read blog posts and lift weights — exercise both your mind and your body.
3. Stand sometimes. Whether this means siting your laptop at a tall kitchen counter if you work from home or buying a standing desk if you go into an office, have a place where you can work where you’ll be forced to stand up for a while. I have a tall kitchen nook that I stand at for a few hours a day. Life Hacker has advice on making a stand up desk for $20.

I don’t have any answers for burning calories while driving, which is especially relevant to Angelenos like myself who spend way too many hours in the car. But because I’d imagine any kind of car workout would probably be a safety hazard, I’ll refrain from asking for your suggestions.

The powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.

Tonight I stumbled upon a Harvard Business Review post about finding happiness in your life. I was intrigued by the fact that a long, insighful piece about happiness was in the HBR, of all places. Then I realized why:  How we feel about our business impacts how we feel about our personal lives, which in return effects how we perform in business, etc. Our personal lives are just as important to business performance as our business strategies.

From How Will You Measure Your Life?, six steps:

1. Create a Strategy for your life – “The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.”
2. Allocate your resources — ” If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.”
3. Create a culture — “Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.”
4. Avoid the “Marginal Costs” mistake — “If we knew the future would be exactly the same as the past, that approach would be fine. But if the future’s different—and it almost always is—then it’s the wrong thing to do.”
5. Remember the importance of humility — “Humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others.”
6. Choose the Right Yardstick – “Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.”

Overall, those six steps can be summed up as one important concept: Balance. From my limited experience as a working professional out of college, I can confidently say that the harder I focus on achieving balance in my life, the happier I am, the better my work output is, and the more valuable are my thought contributions and ideas.

How do you measure and achieve happiness? Would you agree that balance is the No. 1 determining factor?

That ends today thanks to Jason Fried and David Heinemeier. We’ll get to that in a sec.

But first, some background.

I used to pull nighters out of necessity. In college, I took 20 units every 10 weeks, worked as the online editor of the Mustang Daily, a 20 hour/week job as a graphic designer, interspersed with side projects like interning for CICM, contract designing with Spot.Us, freelancing for Stomping Ground Media, blah blah blah, etc. etc. Moving on.

My point: I would not have survived had I not pulled a few all nighters a week. (Caveat: for me, survival means being above average, better than mediocre. It means getting As, not Cs. But that’s besides the point).

Once you make a habit of that kind of workflow it’s hard to break. And I’ve figured out why: Sleeping now feels like slacking. Getting a full night’s sleep feels like I’m missing out on valuable work hours.

Fast forward

I’ve now been a college graduate for 168 days (that’s almost 6 months, sheesh). I’m no longer juggling six different things. I’m pouring my heart and soul into one job. I have no reason — aside from the occasional startup craziness — to pull multiple all nighters a week.

So why do I continue to do it? Out of habit. After years of bad sleeping patterns, I know I can squeeze at least 5-6 more hours of productive time out of my day, why waste it sleeping? I know my body can handle it.

But that’s an extremely naive viewpoint. Less sleep isn’t more productive. I know it’s obvious, but like a drug addict or something, I’ve been trying to convince myself that I am still productive (despite cautionary tales and interventions from colleagues and friends).

Enter: Jason Fried and his damn compelling logic

I’ve been listening to Rework, the book by 37Signals’ founders. (I’m listening to the book on audio to maximize productivity. Actually reading the book would not allow for multitasking. Maybe that ‘s the next bad habit to break).

The authors basically made me feel like a complete dumbass for ever pulling an all nighter post college. And they’re totally right. I’ve been enlightened. In summary:

• Quitting isn’t failing. If a task takes you longer than expected (thus forcing you to convince yourself its worth staying up all night), walk away before you waste more time.
• You’re not a better employee if you work 10x as long; you’re more valuable if you use your creativity to come up with solutions that require 1/10 of the effort. You can’t come up with those kinds of solutions if you haven’t slept.
• “People develop a masochistic sense of honor about sleep deprivation.” Guilty!
• Our culture celebrates workaholics, but we shouldn’t. Workaholics try to “fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them.”
• This part hurt most: “They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.”
• “Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done, it just means you work more.”
• If all you do is work, you’re not going to have sound judgements. Your values and decision making wind up skewed. You are no longer able to tell what’s worth the effort and what’s not.

So, I’m done being a hero. I’m going to start being more creative about how I can accomplish tasks efficiently. I’ll probably still pull all nighters when necessary, but no longer as a bad habit.

If you see me tweeting at 4 a.m. PST, feel free to call me out. And buy this book now, I insist.

Monday at TechCrunch Disrupt, Publish2 CEO Scott Karp announced the company’s newest product, the Publish2 News Exchange. The entire Publish2 team sat huddled around laptops throughout our various locations in the U.S., cheering him on through our backchannel IM conversation. It was a momentous day for which we’ve all been working very hard.

We placed in the top five for the startup battlefield competition (Congrats to the winner, Soluto), and have gained tremendous momentum in the past five days. From here, we’ll continue to sign up beta users, roll out a full launch, and revolutionize publishing as we know it.

Here’s a video of Scott’s presentation:

Everything you need to know about the News Exchange

• We’re calling it P2X for short.
• The goal of P2X is to disrupt the publishing business, notably the monopoly created by the Associated Press
• We’ve created an open marketplace for news content distribution
• Any content producers can contribute to the exchange — bloggers, independent/freelancers, and, of course, newspapers and other news organizations
• Content creators set the terms and rates
• We want to “Craigslist” the AP (i.e. take a multimillion dollar monopoly, downscale it and make it more efficient)
• There’s a “story ideas” feature that lets multiple newsorgs request reportage on the same budget item
• The platform integrates with print publishing systems through an automated FTP setup
• Although it seems counterintuitive for us to focus on print, but it’s vital because it’s the only way to disrupt the AP. We’re creating a bridge for newspapers now as a starting point for a better tomorrow. (Scott says — and I most certainly agree — that news brands will survive after the death of print)

What others are saying

These are just a few of my favorite tidbits from bloggers and tweeters around the web in response to the launch of P2x. This morning Ryan Sholin posted a far more comprehensive list of reactions.

[...] they are courageously pivoting into a new business model but based soundly (as far as I can tell) on the learnings and proximity they have had with publishers and journalists in the last few years. It doesn’t hurt that their CEO is a domain expert and that they have a strong advisory board. I believe in lean startup thinking but I don’t believe that pivoting blindly will usually lead to success -Darryl Siry

One feature of News Exchange that fell under the radar at TechCrunch is a story ideas database – basically an RFP for story assignments. Editors can post a request for coverage; other members can respond with an existing article or a commitment to write something. -Rob ORegan

The beauty of News Exchange is it opens the door to bring non-traditional content into traditional products. As with any new venture, particularly one that turns tradition on its head, there will be bumps, even moats, in the road. But the prospects of lively yet professional content from new voices are too much to ignore….AP can no longer stand on its laurels and take baby steps in re-inventing itself. That clock stopped ticking earlier today. Logan Molen

Because the News Exchange is still in beta and has yet to be rolled out, there are some missing features. The big one publishers will be concerned about is being able to track how your story is used by your subscribers. … However, Sholin said a form of analytics will come … The goal, he said, is to provide news orgs with data on how their content is used, and as News Exchange gets rolled out, Publish2 is going to play with different variation of analytics and reporting though it may require a manual effort from news orgs using the content. -Vadim Lavrusik

And this tweet from Ryan Sholin sums up what we have to look forward to over the next months:

ryansholin: My job right now is talking to brilliant journalists on the phone all day and show them cool new tools. I love my job.

Intrigued yet? If so, sign up for beta or email contact@publish2.com if you have questions.

More videos from TechCrunch Disrupt:

Today ZDNet published a post that suggested Apple’s process of rejecting apps is somehow “curation.” Dozens of people are retweeting that link, probably because it’s about Apple and because it contains the “curation” buzzword.

However, there’s a difference between curation and censorship, and I wouldn’t even call it a “fine line” that separates the two. They are different things.

What Apple does with its app store is not curation.

I’m not claiming that Apple necessarily censors, but their app approval process is closer to censorship than it is to curation. Here’s a list of apps that have been rejected in the past few months:

• Michael Wolffe’s app — supposedly for frequently criticizing Steve Jobs
• iSingle player — for being too politically charged (allowed users to call their reps about health care reform). Although an update shows it’s since been approved.
• Chess Wars — for the chat bubbles looking too much like the iPhone SMS chat bubbles
• Converterbot — for an icon looking too similar to Apple’s recent calls button

These are just a few examples, of course. But none of these examples have anything to do with Apple wanting its users to have a “high quality experience”  as Mr. Foremski suggested in his ZDNet post.  These examples show that Apple is self-interested and controlling. If Apple wanted its users to have a high-quality experience, they would have approved the Google Voice app, for example.

5/3/2010 Update: Here’s another example. This week Apple rejected a Programming Language for Kids app (hat tip to Greg Linch):

[...] it’s an indication of the challenges of working with products by companies like Apple, where one of the world’s great programming languages can’t run on one of the world’s most popular platforms.

Curation is about choosing the best of the best. Curation is about finding the signal in the noise. Apple does this by having a “featured” apps section on its homepage. That’s where curation should happen. If Apple let through all the apps which met the basic technical and aesthetic requirements (of which should also be made public, not based on random whims of the Apple team), then users and Apple could curate. That curation would manifest in the hand-picked “Featured” apps panel and the “Top 25″ page of the app store that is based on user ratings/downloads.

Furthermore, Mr. Foremski’s comparisons between Google and Apple are totally off.

In his ZDNet post, he implies that because Google doesn’t curate content, their process is somehow less valuable than Apple’s:

Comparing the two companies’ strategies, it can be seen that the Apple approach requires more work but earns Apple 50% more in revenue share. It also results in an excellent customer experience because Apple actively curates iPad/iPhone content.

Google doesn’t care if the Internet user comes across a spammy site carrying Google ads, it doesn’t care if an Android app is great or bad. That hands-off policy can also be seen with YouTube and the trouble it got into in Italy, where an Italian court convicted Google execs of publishing a video showing the abuse of a handicapped child.

Google does care. That’s why Google has an algorithm. Their algorithm strives to ensure that quality content makes its way to the top. Although the process is automated, Google still has an interest in quality. Then users can layer curation on top of the algorithm, say, using a tool like Publish2 (yes, I’m allowed to plug my own company).

And finally, my last gripe with this ZDNet piece is that he makes financial claims that aren’t backed:

And Apple’s approach has created tremendous value for its shareholders. If you bought AAPL stock on the same day Google went public you would be far richer today than buying GOOG. AAPL recently passed MSFT in terms of market capitalization.

Apple is creating more shareholder value than Google because of its active curation of its platforms.

Active curation creates value.

Really? Shareholder value is a direct result of “curation?” APPL stock is worth more than GOOG because they arbitrarily accept/reject apps? I’d like to see the proof of causation on that one.

The Apple approach can be seen elsewhere, such as on Facebook, where people choose which content to share, what to publish on their pages; it can be seen in Twitter where the content is hand selected by humans (mostly); it can be seen in people’s blogs; it can be seen on Techmeme where 6 editors choose the content.

Active curation creates value.

And where do users find that content from whence to begin curating? Google. Curation is valuable in these contexts because content is being curated collectively by our social circles. In the case of Facebook, content is curated by our friends and family. In the case of Twitter, content is curated by the professionals we follow. In these cases, we choose who we let into our circles because we trust them.

If we don’t like the way our social circle curates, we can unfollow them or defriend them. We can find new curators to balance out the biases. We, the users, have control of the curation, and that’s when it’s valuable– not when it’s some patched up game of business that happens behind closed doors.

My BCNI experience finished with a bang thanks to Major Highfield‘s roundtable discussion on news site design and mobile news design. For those of you who don’t know Major, the former newsie is now the mobile tech lead for ING Direct. His roundtable was an open discussion about what works and what doesn’t in current news design, and a look forward at new ideas and trends.

He identified the following most common types of design we see in news:

Column Design (NYT)

Very reminiscent of print design, “column”-based news sites have thin vertical modules. The most well-known example is the New York Times.

Grid view (CNN)

The grid news design has less emphasis on hierarchy and gives equal balance to story display. Although Major used CNN as the example, I’ve included Newser as a more ideal example of the grid layout.

Buckets (MSNBC)

Bucket designs group stories by topic beneath a main header.

Lists (Digg)

Timeline view or “river” view are also common terms for a list layout which is as it sounds: A list of headlines, like Digg.

Combo package (Toronto Star)

The Toronto Star combines these different possibilities by offering the user different modes of viewing news, although Major noted that this isn’t ideal UI. The Toronoto Star manages multiple layouts from which the users can choose their favorite:

Major said you should push out the best user experience and not force the user to choose. Based on the heavy emphasis the Star’s designers put on evidence-based design, I’d venture to guess that they’re collecting data about which display is used most often in preparation for something radical. But that’s just a guess.

Combining advertising with editorial design

Traditionally, display ads thrown into random columns and headers of news sites was the preferred advertising style online, as adapted from a print model. The new type of advertising comes in the form of embedded ads (i.e. ads displayed inline with the rest of the editorial content). We see this manifesting in LA Times’ decision to sell keyword ads within articles this week. A bad example of this can also be seen on CNN.com:

A good example of embedded advertising is in the free desktop version of Tweetie:

I think the reason CNN’s embedded ads fail is because CNN isn’t being honest with its customers. Tweetie clearly labels its ads as such and implements them elegantly into the design of the app. It also helps that the ads are very targeted at the user. CNN’s embedded ads try to look like editorial content and it’s deceitful. They’re also not very useful or pretty.

Takeaways

So the point of all this is that news sites still suck. One nugget that really stood out was in our conversation about news site navigation. We still categorize stories under sports, arts, news, opinion, etc. because this is how the print product was laid out. But is that what’s relevant to readers? I know that when I browse news, I don’t care about the topic. I care about the timeliness and its relevance to me, no matter what “section” it falls within. I don’t necessarily want to read about crime and sports, but if it’s happening within a three block radius of me, then I do care. So maybe instead of categorizing news sites into traditional categories, we can make the main navigational elements more relevant with categories like “time” and “location” (see the Spokesman Review for a great example of this).

One revelation that came about for me during this discussion (which might ironically deem this entire blog post irrelevant) is the fact that news design doesn’t matter at all when we’re all subscribing to news via RSS. Is there really any type of news site experience that will be more convenient and relevant? Am I ever going to want to visit 40 different sites each day, all of which are designed differently, and hunt down news that’s relevant to me within each of those sites? Or would I rather leave my Google Reader extension active in the browser, open in it in between tasks, quickly be presented with news I already know is relevant to me (distraction-free), and carry on with life? The latter is the news consumption pattern that fits best into my daily routine and allows me to consume the most news in the least amount of time. The fact that Google Reader’s social features push me the most relevant news being shared by the people I follow only increases its relevancy.

So maybe the question we should be asking ourselves as news designers isn’t how to make our sites better, but how to create an experience that surpasses that of the Google Reader experience. And maybe that’s the topic of another post. Stay tuned…

The site will focus on community news in Honolulu and charge a $20/month subscription fee to access content. There will be a few-dollar fee to even access the site because the founder, Pierre Omidyar, believes in a capitalist economy that won’t be sustainable if you give anything away for free from the start.

All Howard’s opinions were his only. He does not represent Peer News or the Civil Beat, although he was a consultant for them.

“Why is a Facebook beer worth more than your news story?” Howard asked in a recent blog post. People pay for fake gifts on Facebook, but won’t pay a dollar for a news story. This is a problem. We first have to answer it before moving on to charge for content.

The basic premises for adopting Civil Beat’s model:

1. It has to be an online newsorg that has no production costs
2. The news has to be a niche product, an “elite” niche
3. As a result, there’s a need for hyper-efficiency
4. There has to be a focus on technology (only 5 reporters, but two programmers).

What is the atomic unit of journalism?

An atomic unit was a “news article” in the past. But an atomic unit of journalism is going to change radically in the new era of journalism. News can’t be “articles” but a service. The Civil Beat is drastically changing the way they view the final product.

The atomic unit of journalism is tied to co-creation.  We see evidence of their mindset in the fact that the job title for their staff members is “reporter hosts”  (because reporters are servants in the process of gathering the news).

An important part of the news site is the living story. Although Google launched “living stories,” Howard noted that they were really like topic pages. Peer News wants to approach stories realistically. For example, if there’s a new zoning law, it’s based on something initiated 10 years prior. A traditional news aritcle throws in background information in a few grafs, but the living story doesn’t assume the reader will do his/her own background research. The living story is fully contextual.

Why he thinks it will work:

• Small staff is hyper-efficient on open source tools, so the production costs are drastically cut
• They’ll be reaching a unique, elite niche for which professionals like real estate agents will want to and be capable of paying

Some people in the audience were skeptical about the paywall. A few questions that were asked:

• How can a democratizing force also be sustainable financially? If you charge, is it still democratizing? Howard made the comparison to broccoli (deep, investigative, valuable stories) and curley fries (fluff, generic, cheap, reporting). We can’t babysit society and ensure that they’ll read what’s good for them, but we hope that they have strong enough judgment to know that it’s good for them.

Plugging into the already-existing blog network

Although the Civil Beat doesn’t intent to include advertising, Howard’s suggestion to them would be to connect with local blogs and build an ad network. The Civil Beat will cover elite topics, but not nightlife and food and entertainment, etc. If local blogs can fill that space and they can share advertising, everyone would profit.

The site will launch officially with full content May 4.

Spurred by his recent interest in computational thinking, the idea of his session is to balance larger view concepts and how they can be applied to the news process.

Before diving into the topic at hand, Greg asked the 50-person audience to arrange our seats into a circle. We each went around the room and introduced ourselves.

Warning: these notes are all over the place because this session was all over the place. There was no structure. It was brilliant.

Types of thinking we brainstormed

• Analytical
• Linear/non-linear
• Critical
• Curiosity
• Inductive – start with small point and expand
• Deductive – start with larger point and look for the smaller picture
• Computational
• Visual thinking
• Brainstorming/visioning
• Episodic
• Stream of consciousness
• Narrative
• Philosophical
• Conventional
• Relational

After brainstorming a list, we identified the top “best practice” thinking as analytical, critical, computational, visual and relational thinking to come up with definitions. The following are the definitions we created and our subsequent analysis of those forms of thinking. (I did not attach names to each person’s comment simply because I could not keep up with everyone shouting over each other )

Analytical thinking: Gathering data, scientific thinking, testing a hypothesis, evidence, context.

• How we can improve analytical thinking? We have the day-to-day, but we don’t step back.
• We shouldn’t be scared of finding  ”right answer” to questions
• To be better analytical thinkers we need continued “liberation” of journalists from the old way of thinking and the physical model (deadline structure, form of the workday)
• The process informs the way we think
• We’re being trained in the “AP” style of thinking, don’t draw conclusions, don’t put your own analysis into it — people aren’t interested in reading that anymore
• The comment that the AP should die was followed up by a comment that maybe we need a better AP
• Identifying questions sufficient to a full story – the need for immediacy can’t distract us from covering a story fully (answering all the questions, identifying a hypotehsis, etc.)
• Hypothesis, method:

Critical thinking: Questioning face value

Computational: Using computing and applying it to other areas. The computer scientists in the room defined computational thinking as using user interfaces as a way of solving human problems in the world. Greg described it as abstraction vs. automation

• Dan Berko of the New York Times said the data is not the end all of itself to tell a story. Data is just one source of information that can lead you to different conclusions
• Will Mitchell of Washington City Paper said that looking for relationships (domain modeling, for example) in any set of data is where he starts with any problem when building a system
• Mitchell also said to look for outliers, look for points in a set of data when the assumptions break down. One example is a “best of” issue of a newspaper that’s produced once a year. How do you map a print-based product into something usable online?
• When a political reporter comes to him (Mitchell) with a set of data he wants to analyze, he first looks for relationships within the data, answers relatively simple questions that need to be answered. From that it evolves into a process of finding trends (what he calls “domain knowledge”).
• Greg says there’s a need to find the balance between human thinking and computational thinking
• Before we can think computationally, we have to relate to each other as human beings first
• There are parallels: modeling vs. storyboarding, algorithms vs. editorial structure
• Similarities between object-oriented programming vs object-oriented journalism
• The point: there needs to be a middleground
• Educators say that students aren’t coming out of education with a new way of thinking. Worried that we’re not in school telling students its OK to melt the two ways of thinking — you can find these students with these kinds of thinking, not the ones in journalism programs.
• Independent thinking is important to journalism because education is institutional

(We didn’t get to jump into the following modes of thinking because we got so caught up on computational thinking:)

Visual thinking: Mapping, images, patterns, visceral

Narrative: Description, telling a story, inverted pyramid

Relational thinking: Linking, connecting

Their network currently has 85,000 sources among the 12 partners.

The problem The Insight Graph is trying to solve is how to quickly discover and access insights from diverse sources– beyond the “standard rolodex.” The solution takes form of what they call  the “audience insight repository” (i.e. a searchable database). The inquiry process for gathering information about sources looks like a form that feeds into a databse:

They want to give information access to the data so that it’s  a two-way process– the information doesn’t get locked into a database and lost forever, but becomes usable and collaborative. The two-way aspect comes in the form of users being able to log into a separate interface where they can see a history of the forms they’ve filled out and follow the trial of where their data was used.

The new challenges The Insight Graph is addressing:

• Share insights
• Better tools for sharing
• Sources can update profile – Through an interface called “myPin” sources can see which sources they’ve responded to, which of their submissions have been used on the web, and have the ability to follow individuals’ responses
• Sources determine access
• Instantly publish insights
• Create credibility systems – how do we know who is going to be reliable? The editors deciding?
• Create a better UX
• Integrate with existing sites

This is what the AIR (audience insight repository) looks like so far (prototype):

The dashboard lends itself to collaboration. Different newsrooms can access the info, leave comments on different inqueries, submit pitches, etc.

You can also drill down into the source database with multiple layers of filters, save those filters to “bins” and export them:

If this all seems too abstract, here here’s the system in action on MinnesotaPublicRadio.org:

At the bottom of some stories, there’s a “Your Voice” box that gives users the option of filling out the form  (“help us cover this story”).

Drew didn’t immediately have numbers about how many users stay engaged after the initial signup.

One important critique from an audience member:

cherylam: Can we expect community to share personal info when many won’t even identify selves in comments section? #bcniphilly

Other concerns brought up from audience members:

• How do you keep information up-to-date after the initial inquiry is submitted?
• How do you protect privacy?
• How will it eventually map to data within the CMS itself? – Daniel Bachhuber
• Will it be pluggable into other data tools? – Adam Hemphill

Eventually after AIR is fully-developed, there will be an API and it will be open source. This is good news.

If you want more info, contact dgeraets@mpr.org, @publicinsight or @mprinsight.

I wrote a post Tuesday about a new collaborative called The Climate Desk that is grabbing much attention in journalism circles.

Ad Age hailed it the “revolutionary” future of journalism. The CJR questioned whether it would work.

I believe that yes, it is, and yes, it will — but there are still some rough edges that need to be worked out.

Based on my current impressions of The Climate Desk, collaboration primarily takes place at two points in the editorial process:

1. Brainstorming
2. Distribution

That makes sense. Those are the easiest two points at which collaboration is possible. But those aren’t the most important points. What about all the in-between? Sharing sources, sharing data, reporting together, editing together.

If the collaborative model is going to scale for newsorgs, we need better tools for storing and sharing data.

If I work at newspaper x and I want to work with newspapers y and z about climate change, how would I go about sharing the data I’ve already collected?

If I wanted to find all the data about climate change based on coverage my newsorg has already done, the process would look like this:

• Do a Google site search of “climate change” at [mynewsorgsdomain].com
• Find the dates those articles about climate change were published
• Go back through some date-structured folder system on my newsorg’s server to find contact sheets, notes, drafts of said article
• Email those files to the other newsorgs collaborating to report on climate change
• Everyone shares their contacts, someone puts together a Google Spreadsheet to combine the data we found and make something functional out of it — an overall picture of sorts

This process isn’t ideal for finding and sharing data because it doesn’t structure that data in a way that would be more usable the next time the newsorg wants to collaborate around climate change. If we collaborate again in six months, I’d have to go back to that spreadsheet, copy the data that is useful for me, then start a new spreadsheet titled “Climate Change Resources Oct. 2010.”  It’d be redundant and inefficient.

This ties into Daniel Bachhuber‘s upcoming discussion for BCNI about knowledge management systems. He asks:

[...] what I mean by this is how news organizations manage all of the data they’re privy to that is either stored in structured format or could be stored in a structured format if they had the tools to do so.

I see two of topics that Andrew Spittle brainstormed as being directly related to collaboration:

• Cross-platform tracking of information
• Role of KMS in on-going coverage

If we can figure out how to store data in a way that’s transferrable across multiple platforms and in on-going coverage, collaboration not only becomes easier, but becomes the next logical step in knowledge management.

A few thoughts:

The structure can’t be owned by anyone. It has to be native to the web

There needs to be universal markup for certain kinds of data — markup that’s native to the web like HTML, but not owned by any one brand. I want to be able to tag something as <location =”12.9982348 14.23423423″>home</location> and have that data be transferrable to any maping platform, whether it be Google Maps or Mapquest. The same goes for time. I want to be able to tag something as <time =”15:32 PST”>time of the event</time> and then be able to filter all data on the web related to that exact minute.

If we have a standardized structure for all types of metadata, then we can begin to organize and reuse that information on a large-scale and in new ways.

A CMS that builds layers of data on top of each other

Crowd Fusion has always stuck with me as a good baseline for a knowledge management system. Crowd Fusion is the CMS built originally for tech product review sites on top of wiki, blogging, RSS and social networking tools. The creators understood that databases are good for information and blogs are good for news, but there’s no way of connecting all those pieces. My thoughts when I first discovered the CMS in Sept. 2009:

This CMS created by Brian Alvey reminds me a lot of the CoPress connection engine. The concept is dynamic, combining databases, blogs, RSS, social networks and wikis to give the user an all-in-one experience. I wish a newspaper had developed this software and I wish it was open source. I could see a new direction for newspaper websites. [Update: Apparently now there's an open source beta. Yay]

Built into the CMS are features for both data management and collaboration:

• Workflow
• Group feed reader
• Assignments
• Database
• Wiki
• Team-based permissions
• Applications that work on top of the data
• Topic-based user experience

More about it here (worth the watch, I promise):

I’d be interested to see a newsorg adopt the software and start to build more interactive applications on top of data generated from back-story research and interviews– plus combining it with user-generated content and collaborative reporting from multiple newsorgs.

Anyway, that’s all I have for now. Let’s continue this conversation at BCNI Philly, to which I am hopping on a plane at 10 p.m. PST and arrive in good ol’ Philadelphia at 6 a.m. for the 9 a.m. conference. Who needs that sleep thing, anyway?