Brian Reich

I had the privilege - once again - of being part CollabSpace (organized by Mark Glaser - @mediatwit), a hands-on workshop focused on “intrapreneurial” innovation.  Eight cutting-edge media projects were given an opportunity to present, field questions from a room full of really smart and creative entrepreneurs, journalists, publishers, technologists, designers, marketers, investors and major players in the tech and media scene in New York. Then, in the afternoon the crowd broke out into groups to help the media projects get past their challenges.

Links to more information about the projects is available here:

The big question today: How can established media and tech companies foster innovation from within large organizations?

My role was to help frame the most interesting issues and challenges facing the "intrapreneurs” and identify potential questions and opportunities that the working groups should prioritize during the afternoon session.

There were too many issues/questions/ideas collected to be fully considered during the workshops in the afternoon.  And as I read through everything, I started to think a lot of the issues/questions/ideas that were collected would be interesting, and potentially useful - to the "intrapreneurs” who presented, to others working on driving change inside a media company, and potentially others.

So, I pulled together my notes/questions for each group and have pasted them below. Let me know what you think.

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The Atlantic’s Story Modules

Q: Should we be talking about ‘home pages’ as something else (because of how they have changed)?

Q: If flexibility is optimal/desirable, is there really a baseline to test against? Why not think about each iteration of the home page as unique, evolutionary based on things you have learned?

Q: What else could you test (besides density and depth)?  What outcomes are you trying to drive - beyond time spent or number of articles read (circulation around the site, consumption of more stories, back and forth, etc)? What is the larger behavior you are trying to shape or change among your readers?

Q: Beyond placement, beyond viewability standards of ads, what could you be learning/testing - and how might it relate to the overall challenge of engaging your audience?  Are you testing things about the story consumption experience (and reflecting that in the guidance towards ad creation)?  

Q: Is there a way to look into the reading experience (across devices) and use that intelligence to reverse engineer the design of the home page experience? Beyond just A/B testing all the different elements -- what would the C tests be?

Q: Besides the ‘most popular stories’ module, which influences a lot of user behavior -- what else influences how people spend time on stories?

Q: How is A/B testing done in other sectors (retail, politics, etc) and how might that influence your thinking about what to test, what is possible?

BBC.com’s Home Page

Q: How could you organize home pages around the world differently - instead of by geography, could you have home pages for audience types, story types?  

Q: How could you switch the focus from being about BBC or the home page to being more tailored/customized to the user experience?

Q: Is it reasonable to assume the audience knows what its looking for?  How can you test not just response to what you present, but what triggers people to take certain actions?

Q: Could you test how the home page evolves throughout the day (or related to a story)?  If editors have the ability to curate the different sections throughout the day, can you test different approaches within each section so they can be compared?

Q: Could you test how the user’s life experience changes - and how that impacts the home page (e.g. instead of responsive design, responsive content/experience)?  How could the home page experience adapt not just to the platform, but to the context?

Q: Can you test based on your ‘imagination’ — crazy options, big ideas, new approaches that haven’t been proven yet to push the boundaries of what might be possible (then build in what is possible now)?

Q: Could you build a number of different home page formats/templates/structures that auto-populate with stories and constantly experiment with different approaches as the news cycle presents the opportunity (sort us like you would when you consider a full re-design initially)?

Q: What other consumer experiences could you explore/test and compare against - to see how you are comparing to existing consumer experiences?  If you want BBC to be someone’s table of contents, could you test how people consume books digitally? If you want BBC to be a storefront for certain media products, could you test and compare to Amazon/Seamless/StubHub, etc?

Q: Do you have a crazy idea list (vs. a what worked list)?  How can you keep the big questions that you can’t A/B test as part of your consideration in an ongoing way?

Thomson Reuters’ Convene app

Q: How do you learn from each event - and recognize the users who attend multiple events, the patterns that emerge from those repeat behaviors?

Q: Is there a way to commercialize the product WITHOUT selling it (and instead get the value of the data that is collected)?

Q: What other ‘platform’ models could you explore (other than subscription based, etc)?  What about something like Survey Monkey, how it became a data company?

Q: How might the app become a swiss-army knife for different types of events, instead of trying to create a single experience and have the events adapt to best utilize the app?

Q: How can you redefine the idea of events (instead of just having a tool that makes existing events better)?  How do you convince people to use the app in different events - when different industries don’t entirely understand how to use it? How can you teach people to use the app differently/better?  

Q: How can you integrate what Thompson/Reuters is known for (editorial) into the app/event experience… to help customers using the app integrate content to produce a better event?

Climate Desk

Q: What are the new, most interesting ways that different brands/organizations are getting people to spend time, and how can those be adapted to support a discussion about climate change?

Q: What are the connections between climate change and other aspects of life that can be used to provide context, access to new/different audiences?

Q: Is it time that the coverage of climate change needs to change (example: deep.ly) - not just presented differently, but approached totally differently?  

Q: In addition to syndicating the coverage, could you collaborate on ideas for how to cover/produce stories differently?  Could you collaborate not only on stories but on planning and problem solving (so you take full advantage of

Q: Who else should you bring on as partners - who are not just media sources (e.g. Purpose)? What others areas of expertise could you bring in through partnership (event organizing, audience expertise, etc)?

Q: What is the next big thing… beyond charts, interactive, graphs, video production?  What are the different partners doing uniquely well that you could help to scale for others across the network (so instead of doing the things that everyone wants, take the things that only one person can do and making it possible for everyone to do them)?

Q: Can you dedicate resources just to cross-partner communications (knowledge sharing) - not leave it too much to chance?  

Q: Can you take the idea of ‘partnership’ or ‘collaboration’ to the next level?  Is there an opportunity (or benefit) to creating a truly shared brand - a ‘super friends’ for this topic, not just a back-end efficiency?  Could you create a data consortium - a shared resources that tracks all the data, the audience, etc. and get an even deeper sense of what is working/not working.

AP’s Deaf Access News

Q: Do you need to redefine the standards for access to news (so people understand what is appropriate and not appropriate)?  Do you need to think beyond adapting news to serve the deaf audience - make the conversation bigger?

Q: Is there research available - mainstream understanding - about how the deaf audience accesses news, and its issues? Is there research into deaf audiences use of social platforms (twitter, Facebook, etc) and how they connect to news?

Q: How do you make this the next big challenge in news - not just adapting the existing platforms to deaf audiences, but truly building the new framework?

Q: Who are the news innovation partners that you could tap - schools, technology companies, etc?  Who are the other partners (IDEO, etc) to help solve these challenges?

Q: Could the focus of the project be on identifying the solutions, in ways that can be integrated by news organizations - making the cultural, business, and other case for embracing this (and then also conceivably create the syndication model for supporting it across all platforms)?

Q: Who else could you tap to funding (beyond nonprofit, beyond CSR, etc)?  How do you make this into a full business (or an initiative of a fully functioning media business - e.g. NYTimes, CNN, etc)?  Who would fund news innovation ideas (e.g. Case Foundation)?

Google News Lab

Q: What is the BIG, FUTURE of news - the things that nobody is thinking about, the solutions that only Google could try to address?  How can Google dramatically change the news business (not just help journalists do things, because they don’t know what to ask for necessarily)?

Q: How can Google help tell us what people will be curious about next — instead of just making responsive journalism more efficient, how can we predict trends?

Q: Are there models for collaborative news gathering/production (e.g. how we used to do election exit polling, results) that Google can learn from?  Beyond discover-ability of news, what needs to be organized/codified (e.g. legal rules for use of images, sharing protocols)?  How should Google be involved in the shaping of these systems/processes - vs. expecting an outside group to establish them?

Q: How do you move beyond trailing indicators (e.g. Google Trends)?  How do you predict (or shape) editorial priorities?  What data could be utilized? What ownership of the editorial efforts could be shared by news organizations, along with Google, so there is more than just one perspective/approach (Storyful) involved?

Q: Are there plans to create rules for copyright, stock image, data use? Does it need to be part of Google’s work to ensure it happens? Is it necessary to have in place for news organizations to want to participate (or are they ok with third party managing that)?  Is it in Google’s best interest business-wise to take responsibility for that work?

Q: How do you improve 360-degree tracking to determine/learn more about how news is consumed/shared? What can Google study that would create intelligence that would help news organizations (and in doing so, increase their likelihood of wanting to use Google news content in their work)?  Example: Participant Productions study on viral social change films.

Q: Do you need an editorial team, a curation effort? What are the limits of the algorithms that Google might build in terms of creating news, or the tools you might make available?

UNHCR’s The Hive

NOTE: I work on this project so I did not summarize/challenge the presenter in the same ways as with the other projects.

POV’s Web VR Starter Kit

Q: How do you get people who don’t understand VR to embrace it (and make the whole conversation a bit more mainstream to reach more people)?  How do you create more ‘consumer’ demand (which will then drive media adoption, etc)?

Q: What don’t people understand yet about VR, or are wrong about (afraid of) that POV could help to address?

Q: Could POV help to inspire/encourage people to use this in certain ways — issue the challenges for others to pick up, start to expand the audience for who is participating?  

Q: What are the pilot projects/examples that you could create - across different sectors - that would help people to understand and contextualize this?

Q: Should POV take a broader role in positioning VR - outside of the deeply knowledgeable crowd, to help build/create some consumer demand?

For anyone in the interactive, creative, film, cause, technology, media, education, music, marketing, entertainment or startup space, the annual South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival is (still) a must-attend event.  It is one of the most exciting gatherings of smart, passionate people – amateur and professional alike – who are looking at ways media and technology are changing society (and how to build, grow, sustain, shape and re-shape whatever that society will look like in the future).

This year at SXSW, I will be working on a variety of things.  Here is a quick rundown:

1) Can Media Save Us From Disaster? I will be co-convening a Core Conversation about how to re-think our approach to disaster preparedness and management.  Here is the description:

Disasters are not “won” in the moment. The before (preparedness) and after (recovery) that are the most important times when an emergency situation arises - not to mention the most ripe for disruption and innovation.  Instead of spending so much energy focusing on ‘managing’ disasters (reacting, responding, surviving) - we should be looking at how to improve the ways we prepare, learn from, and rebuild when bad things happen. And the key to that conversation - media.  Media is a resilience infrastructure. It makes us smarter as individuals, more connected as communities and groups. This session will focus on how we can better use media to train and mobilize individuals to prepare for disaster, and the role that media can play in rebuilding faster and better.

Full session information here.

2) Disaster Dialogues. Disaster Dialogues is a project I have launched to help prompt some new thinking about our approach to disaster preparedness. There are huge gaps in how we think about disaster preparedness, particularly by individuals — including the information we collect and share, the tools we use to connect and communicate, the steps we take to educate and support people to insure they take the necessary steps to be ready when disaster strikes. 

While at SXSW, I will be interviewing people about the specific challenges related to disaster preparedness, and then publishing the output of those conversations.  I have also launched a short survey - and would welcome your thoughts and ideas on this topic. 

3) Innovate for Good. I am honored to be part of a session hosted by the UN Foundation entitled #2030NOW: Innovations for the World We Want.  Here is the session description:

Innovate for Good: How Technology & Innovation is Advancing Humanity: This session is built around the knowledge that in an ever-changing world, entrepreneurs, non-profits and companies are using their creativity to develop new ways to impact the world and help the greater good. This conversation will introduce a range of voices from across industries to discuss innovation in issues ranging from refugees & cookstoves to energy access & tech accessibility.

I will be participating in the session in my capacity as Project Director for the Hive, a skunk-works type initiative powered by USA for UNHCR that is designed to transform how people in the United States are engaged and mobilized on issues relating to refugees.

Full session details are here.

4) SXGoodGuys. I have teamed up with Liba Rubenstein to launch SXGoodGuys - powered by Tumblr.  This is a modest attempt to kick-start this much-needed conversation about how to address serious issues in our society differently.  Here is a brief overview:

SXSW's original goal was "to create an event that would act as a tool for creative people and the companies they work with to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas." As it's grown exponentially to serve musicians, filmmakers, technologists, marketers, and their fans, it's become increasingly difficult to actually bring diverse communities/disciplines/industries together and cross-pollinate. Nowhere is this more true than in the social good space; as SXSW has responded to demand and begun to program official social good content (http://sxsw.com/sxgood), the philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, non-profits, and policymakers are pretty much keeping to themselves. And yet no space could benefit more from the cross-pollination of ideas, experience and expertise that is represented at SXSW than social good.  Our hope is to help direct people who are not already part of the social good discussion to get involved, and to encourage those deeply invested in social good to do more to take advantage of everything else that SXSW offers in terms of expertise and ideas.

The project can be accessed here.

5). Solutions for Survival. I am helping to organize a special 'solutions session' that will bring together a diverse mix of the smartest, most creative social entrepreneurs from different areas of expertise and perspective to discuss and develop specific, actionable ideas and solutions for some pressing challenges related to refugees.  Below is some background information:

Many of our fellow Americans are blind to the issues facing refugees. We are uncertain how to help. We don’t appreciate the importance of the issue - or the meaningful role we can play. And too often, we allow marketing to glamorize tragedy in the name of creating relevancy, and we become overloaded with images and stories reminding us of dire straits around the world - and easily de-sensitized to the point of inaction.

These issues deserve greater awareness. But more importantly, we must re-imagine the idea of engagement and advocacy to get people to act.

How do we break through to audiences in the United States? How do we get one of the most urgent challenges facing humanity – refugees – and make it relevant to today’s millennial, boomer, donor, academic, reporter, celebrity… everyday American?

Want to join us to spitball, learn and solve the world’s problems? The event details are here. 

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Last week, I helped to lead a PBS MediaShift organized Collab/Space event in Washington, DC.  This was the third time I have participated in this kind of event (here are my notes from the events in NYC and Chicago) - and like the other events, this one offered a group of entrepreneurial types an opportunity to present their ideas/projects and field questions from an audience filled with fellow entrepreneurs, media veterans, and other smart folks.

The format of the event is simple: Each of the projects is given five minutes to present their idea and then ten minutes to answer questions from the audience.  The afternoon is spent working in groups to address various project-related challenges.

If you are interested, you can read more about the eight projects who were the focus of the event, or check out some of the coverage of the event.

My role during the CollabSpace is to process everyone’s input and then pose questions/offer feedback on different ideas or priorities that these entrepreneurial types should consider addressing.  My questions/notes/suggestions form the basis of our afternoon workshop sessions - but also hopefully just spur thinking among everyone involved about ways to move the entire conversation forward.

The DC event focused on open data and government accountability - which made for a very different set of presentations and challenges than the previous events in NYC and Chicago (which were focused on intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial projects respective). I have pulled together my questions/notes for each of the projects below, which admittedly might make more sense if you were in attendance at the event. Still, I am sharing them in hopes it helps the entrepreneurial folks who participated in the event, as well as others who are trying to build a media company, or engage an audiences in a meaningful way, or want to see the promise of open data realized, whether its around government accountability or any other sort of projects, think about things a little differently.

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions or ideas to add.

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Code for America’s Streetmix

Q: What is the challenge in connecting average citizens and planners - and how does the project need to help educate or think through the urban development process in cities more broadly to help improve adoption?

Q: How else could the tool be applied (resilience/disaster preparedness, infrastructure, transportation/subways)?  How do you make this extra relevant to specific audiences (who might also pay to use or support the tool)?

Q: How do you increase participation/use of the tool - who do you target with your marketing/outreach to get the greatest response? Are there groups (e.g. Cities of Service, US Conference of Mayors) that you could partner with to help get more cities to adopt it?

Q: How important is it for people to know how neighborhoods are planned, how urban designers work for the tool to be successful? Does this have mass potential for people to get more involved in planning - or is it designed to serve the already initiated?

Q: How do you translate general requests from people (e.g. SeeClickFix information) into this process?  What other projects or sources of input could help to enhance the user experience and get more people to utilize the tool?

Q: Is there a plan to transfer people who use the tool into other areas of urban planning (or advocacy, or similar) to help ensure that plans get implemented?

Q: How could you develop a revenue model for this (Kickstarter, sponsorship/underwriting) so that it survived on its own? Who would be prospective sponsors - foundations, VCs, etc?

Q: Are there offline elements of this that could be used for teaching and influencing the public discourse?  Is there a way to convert this into an educational tool that could be used in urban planning in colleges/universities - to improve the next generation of city planners?

Q: Do you have a theory of change? What steps follow the use of the tool in terms of implementing the changes that are needed in the cities/communities?

Q: Is there a private application of the tool to help developers with their planning efforts (e.g. Vulcan in Seattle or Zappos/Vegas redevelopment effort)?

Q: Is there a resiliency planning/disaster preparedness application for the tool - to help make it even more relevant to the most pressing challenges facing cities/communities today?

Q: What are additional product development ideas as part of this (e.g. before/after stimulation)?  What features (e.g. analysis of choices) could be integrated to help enhance the learning value of the tool?

Q: How do you bridge the gap between the citizen organized ideas and the city officials, to facilitate a better conversation? How do you effectively harness the crowd (given their lack of knowledge), and enhance the way government approaches these challenges at the same time?

Q: How do you enhance the editorial use of the tool - to help influence thinking or shift thinking on issues (e.g. get Curbed or Zillow to use)?

Q: How do you expand user participation, and especially get the less connected communities and citizens to participate (example: twitter-only sign-in is a problem)?

Q: What are the outcomes that you want to see - and how do you prioritize them (e.g. increase in civic participation, e.g. more bike lanes)?

Development Seed/WHO’s Ebola Data Portal

Q: How can you take the lessons learned from this project and share them/apply them to the larger issue of information sharing around emergencies, epidemics, etc?  Is there a model for sharing information that can also be applied to other epidemics (or disasters)? Can the larger approach to information sharing be enhanced through this approach?

Q: What editorial elements, or curation, or similar do you need to add to help non-data analysts appreciate this tool? Beyond just making the data easier to consume, what else could you integrate to help people utilize the tool (e.g. narrative/story generator, connection to operationally-focused efforts, etc)?

Q: Is there a citizen access point for this data, so people can become informed - without having to go through a media filter?

Q: Is there a ‘push’ model for the tool - email newsletters, widgets, etc - that will distribute this information to different audiences, through partners, etc?  How can you expand access and interest in this tool/data for people with related, but not the same interests as WHO?

Q: How do you ensure that the data tracking/presentation being done by Google and others is done collaboratively -- and that we don’t create competing uses?

Q: What organizations do you need to take this tool to beyond the WHO (so that everyone starts to embrace the same standard/approach)?  How do you manage/centralize/organize future product development and innovation on this tool over time?

Q: Is there a way to make the PDF that this system creates with the situation reports more tailor-able for different audiences?

Q: What are the priority audiences (response audience - policy makers at the head of a development agency, people who are using the data on their own to come up with things)? How do you keep them engaged?  Who are the other audiences that should be made aware of this tool - to improve its effectiveness, increase its usage?

Q: Is there a way to measure the impact of this tool/data?  Do you have specific outcomes related to the application of the data, not just the use of the tool?

Q: What other data sources would you want to include?  Is there a way to adapt this tool for specific use in the United States, to pre-empt any potential panic situation from mis-information?  Can you use this tool to model the future and set expectations?

Q: Are there problems that you have identified with how information is shared, how organizations collaborate, that you could report out to help NGOs, government, etc. to learn how to change their internal processes to maximize these tools in the future?

Q: Who are partners that you could work with (e.g. Ushahidi to tap into their mobile real-time data collection effort)?  Ebola.deeply

Q: What types of data do you need to collect that would enhance this? What additional information, what layers would you want to explore to enhance this - specifically?

Q: Could you adapt this tool to be a learning, post-game analysis support tool as well - so that its not about real-time management of the situation?

Q: What kind of marketing/promotion is needed to increase adoption of the tool - and both help enhance the utility, but also potentially improve the product/innovation idea?

Q: How do you influence the long-game?  How do you get more organizations to share their information in an operational way, in real-time? What role can you play in breaking down those barriers (educating, framing, doing the outreach, etc)?

FiscalNote

Q:  How can you connect to media/provide context, to help make these issues more relevant?  What types of information (e.g. news articles, interested advocacy groups, etc) could you put next to the bill tracking to give the user even greater value?

Q: What other products or services could be created to develop a revenue stream?  Could you push information out (email newsletter, trend reports, etc)? Could you integrate advertising or sponsorships as part of the tool?  Is there an editorial layer/curation that is needed to help identify the most important issues - to influence/shape which things people are paying attention to?

Q: How can you impact how organizations do their work -- give them tools so they can have a more successful impact on the political process? How would you measure those outcomes (better lobbying efforts, higher citizen involvement)?

Q: What will make companies, nonprofits, trade associations, etc. care? How do you need to frame and PUSH the information out so that they don’t have to go searching as much?

Q: Are you connected to coverage/media of these issues and candidates - or is the tool able to integrate with other tracking tools (social media monitors, Google news, etc)?

Q: Do you have ambitions to improve the legislative process, the societal outcomes - or just make it easier to manage the process for insiders? Is there a way to do both?

Q: How do you establish standards for how bills are categorized, so that there can be better alignment of data?

Q: Could you produce reports, trend analysis, summaries, etc. (the way CQ produces guides)?

Q: Is there a connection to the organizing/advocacy piece of the process -- advocacy, lobbying, citizen action?

Q: User experience - legislative tool tips… how do you use that information to get more people involved in the democratic process, improve citizen and other participation among citizens?

Q: How could you increase participation among state legislative staffers?  How could you get more news organizations to use the tool as well?

Gannett Digital’s Harvest of Change

Q: How should Gannett get involved in shaping how Oculus Rift/VR evolves?  What do media/news organizations need to do to ensure that these tools can support news in the future?

Q: What do we need to better understand about gaming, so we can translate it into news? How do we make news storytelling more compelling through games, not just transform media organizations into game companies?  How can we attract the “gamers” to this new news platform (so it doesn’t become a competition for attention w/ Call of Duty)?

Q: Can you (and how) use the different pieces that went into the development of the project to enhance the current news products?  What could you test/experiment with in the next six months?

Q: Does any issue translate to this kind of presentation - or is it just for certain issues? How can you apply the lessons to all sorts of serious issues (or non-serious issues) to improve consumption of news/information broadly?  

Q: Why not do a rodeo or roller coaster, to help increase adoption (and open the door to more serious projects)?

Q: How quickly will mass adoption of Oculus Rift happen - and is there anything that Gannett should do to help with that, shape it?

Q: Part of what makes games so compelling is that they are user driven, almost without boundaries… can you create news stories that don’t have boundaries, or do they have to present a narrative?

Q:  How can you scale this kind of interactivity, so that you can do some part of EVERY story with this kind of approach?

Q: How can you help shape people's understanding of presenting information? What do you have to abandon in terms of historical thinking?

Q: What other product elements (from gaming) would help to enhance the experience (e.g. avatars)?  

Q: Why not do more to enhance journalism instead of trying to put journalism into the game environment?

Q: What is your goal for this (beyond experimentation)? Is there a road map? Are you trying to get other media organizations to do this (and you will offer that as a service)? What outcomes do you need to see for Gannett to justify continuing this investment?  How do you harvest the learnings from this to drive innovation in other elements of the news operation - not just all in one place?

Q: What is the ladder of engagement for news/information? How do you shape the habits of news consumers long-term so that you get 10 year-olds committed to reading/buying news in the future (and not just become a game company)?

MapStory

Q: Do you need to redefine storytelling for people to fully embrace MapStory? How do you make MapStory more than just a successful tool - so that it achieves some larger transformational/educational goals?

Q: What is the marketing strategy; can you explain why this work is important and who the potential customer base for it is?  Are there audiences you should prioritize so that you can get greater adoption and interest - which opens up other opportunities in the future?

Q: How can you be sustainable - why not be for-profit?  Or how could you think more like a traditional startup (product focused, rapid prototyping) - and potentially attract interest (and funding) from more than just traditional philanthropic partners?

Q: Beyond measuring the “quality of evidence collected and shared that helps ordinary people make better sense of their changing world” how do you measure success/outcomes?  How do you adapt metrics to different individual stories or topics?

Q: What is your knowledge process/ladder of engagement? How does a more informed public help? What types of behaviors do you know people will take, or do you want people to take?

Q: Is there an editorial/explanatory/context layer that you need to add to help people maximize the tool?

Q: What other products could you create to PUSH narratives/stories out to help increase adoption (e.g. trends newsletter, blog, reports, trainings, etc)?  How else might you generate revenue through insights, cross-pollinating data sources across different projects (meta view of the data)?

Q: Do you need to re-define the idea of storytelling in the digital age - and if so, what role do you play in framing the conversation/shaping how people think?

Q: How do you ensure mass adoption (or consumption) of the stories/narratives -- so that they aren’t just learning projects?  How do you get less-connected communities to participate?

Q: Should you identify topics that are of particularly importance and recruit people to participate?  Should you prioritize certain things you know are going to be most important -- and thus most interesting to potential funders, etc?

Q: How do you teach people to be critical, to provide good feedback?  What do you need to teach people to do to fully embrace this?  How do you define good (and how do you mainstream that definition so it becomes a standard)?

Q: What are the rules that you need to create, the standards that you need to set to encourage participation? What can you learn from other tools/platforms and community projects that you can apply going forward?  What else do you need to learn?

Q: Innovation for penetration? How can you re-shape how people think about using maps and learning, without compromising marketability?

Q: How do you increase adoption? Can you make them embeddable? Widgets?  Who are the people you want to share more openly (media, corporate, educational institutions, etc) - and what are the technical/non-technical requirements to move that along?  What are the top features/products that you need to build in order to get faster/larger adoption (even if they are not core to the product)?

Sunlight Foundation’s Open Civic Data Project

Q: What marketplace do you want to see or create so that more startups and organizations embrace it?  What 5-10 tools would you like someone to build, or issues to prioritize so that the impact of open data was appreciated by more people, faster?

Q: Who are the key partners that you need to get on-board and turn into evangelists -- can you list some examples?  Who isn’t traditionally part of the open data conversation that if you were to get them on board would help change the whole dynamic and interest other players?

Q:  How can you frame the conversation about open data? Who are the key influencers and how can you get them to think about the long-term future of open data, so they understand what happens when this is successful?

Q: What would happen if you liberate all government data? What’s the long-term vision and what, if any, influence do you want to have in shaping how people think about that?

Q: What behaviors need to shift beyond just accessing data -- and who is responsible for that? What markets do you need to create, support, encourage to bring about change?

Q: What is your theory of change/behavioral model? How do you want people to use the data - and what do we still need to figure out so that we can get better outcomes?  Does open data on its own create a better process, or are there other steps?

Q: Do we need to create/identify new/additional points of connection with government - to re-brand participation so that more people will participate?

Q: Is there an organizational model for accelerating this process of collecting data? Is there a proposal that you could put together to say “if we had $X we could get this done in 18 months?”  What would allow this to happen - without wide option/understanding, but just force it through?

Q: How do you scale this conversation, so people outside of the good government discussion are interested in participating? How do you make this a project that ‘normal’ people want to join as well?  

Q: What is the marketplace for open data? Can you create a more aggressive incubator model that encourages startups or other groups to solve specific problems (less open ended)?

Q: Who are the best partners that you want to get?  What types of organizations (or specific organizations) do you want/need to embrace open data and civic tech in order for this conversation to become that much more mainstream?

Q: Is there a business model where you sell insights, recruit programmers, help organizations to take full advantage of the data that you collect?  

Q: Can you build a solutions component into this - to project where people should focus their attention?

Washington Post’s Crime

Q: Is there a product or products (technology, data licensing, editorial, training/insight) that can be developed -- what would people pay for?  

Q: Is there a marketing/editorial strategy to raise the profile of this to help build momentum?  What types of public pressure/interest would help to break down barriers and build support for what you are trying to do?

Q: What other data or services could you utilize to create context?  What other issues (population movements, real estate transactions, etc) would you want to overlay to enhance the analysis of the crime data?

Q: How do you survive when other crime focused sites have failed (to gain traction, to get funding)?  What have you learned about tracking, and presenting, information about crimes from these other sites?

Q: How could you make crime reports a tool that every jurisdiction/paper could use (so that it doesn’t have to rely on just one newspaper to support)?  Could you build this as a service that you could offer to other jurisdictions (beyond Washington and surrounding areas)?

Q: What can you learn from Ushahidi (or similar) about crowd-sourced data entry of crime data?  Are there ways to build an army of contributors to help break down some of the data barriers or distribute the responsibility of human interaction?

Q: Is there any type of existing database tool (e.g. Salesforce) that has figured out some of this problem for a different industry that you could learn from/borrow?  Are there other agencies who are trying to do something similar - but for different reasons - that could be explored as partners?

Q: Do you need to establish the standards for data tracking (and influence the agencies in how they do it) in order for this to work?  Is there value/benefit to helping these agencies do a better job that would incentivize them to participate?

Q: Is there a marketing strategy/way to raise the profile of this project to help apply public pressure or interest in this projects?

Q: Is there a ‘Data as a service’ model where you could spit out trends and narratives that other media organizations, civic groups, etc. could take on - even if the Washington Post doesn’t?

U.S. News & World Report’s Presidential Campaign Tracker

Q:  Is there a product or industry spin-off for this? How could this become its own brand (e.g. the next 538/Nate Silver)? How could you PUSH out this information so that it becomes part of the regular conversation?

Q: What other data sources could be tracked and integrated/analyzed along with the visits (e.g. (miles traveled, modes of transport, fundraising data, surrogates, types of events, etc)?  Who could you partner with to get that data?

Q: Is there a way to actively collaborate with other news organizations (e.g. the exit polling coalition) so that other organizations could contribute to the tracker, or benefit from the tracker?  For example, Mark Knoller tracks travel and other activities already for the President… how do you tap into that (or coordinate with him)?  Is there historical data that you can compare - to gain additional context?

Q: What other applications of this tracking could you explore (e.g. tracking Congressional visits and who funds them)?

A lot happened in Tuesday's midterm elections. Republicans took control of the Senate and expanded their hold on the House. They also captured some of the most closely contested and important governors’ races across the nation, while voters at the state level approved ballot measures legalizing marijuana, expanding background checks on gun purchases and increasing the minimum wage while rejecting measures that would have effectively outlawed abortion as well as measures that required labeling of certain genetically modified foods.

Political pundits and Wednesday-morning quarterbacks will spend hours and hours arguing about the meaning behind the results and whether President Obama should change his strategy (or his staff, or his policy positions) heading into the final two years of his presidency in response to the results. Of course, by the end of week (if it hasn't happened already) the conversation will also shift entirely to the impact the midterms will have on the candidates who plan to run for President in 2016.

While I enjoy a good political discussion as much as the next person, I am much more interested in breaking down the game film from this most recent election cycle to learn more about how different campaigns were organized, what decisions were made about where to invest money, who and how to target certain voters and the like. I am anxious to figure out how we might apply the strategic and tactical lessons from the 2014 midterm elections to future political campaigns (as well as marketing, engagement and other efforts more broadly) to generally improve the way politics is done. 

I don't know what to think yet... but I do have a lot of questions. A few to start with:

Q: What was the role of big data in this campaign? How good was the data modeling that campaigns were using?  How effective is micro-targeting when it comes to targeting voters (for persuasion in particular) and how did that change how campaigns spent their funds (on TV ads, digital, grassroots efforts) and time?

Q: How accurate was polling (and exit polling) this cycle? How are pollsters changing their approach to capture the audiences that is only reachable on a mobile phone or online - to ensure different segments of the population are being tracked properly?

Q: How did candidates/campaigns use social media - and Facebook in particular this cycle (NOTE: I was quoted in this Washington Post article a few weeks back on this topic)? How were voters using social media this cycle?  Did Facebook's "I Voted" sticker/experiment have any impact on turnout or interest in the election?  And does the use of social media by, and for, political campaigns apply to the broader organizing efforts around serious issues and causes?

Q: Millennial turnout this year (estimated at roughly 21%) was about the same as in previous midterm elections. Do candidates/political parties understand how to engage and motivate young people to vote, or get involved in politics? Does the interest that millennials seem to have towards addressing serious issues and supporting causes translate to politics and elections - and if so, how?

Q: How was technology used to support Get-Out-The-Vote activities - and what does that tell us about how to mobilize consumers, volunteers, or generally influence people's offline behaviors?

Q: How did independent groups (e.g. Tom Steyer's environmental PAC effort, others) use digital - effectively or not effectively - to market to voters? Did the campaigns supporting/opposing ballot measures do anything of note in the digital/social realm?

Q: How can we increase participation - by engaging casual fans of politics, or those who are interested in particular issues but not particularly enamored with how political campaigns are waged? Would the midterms benefit from a re-brand?  Can we translate what we know about how to engage consumers - online and offline - be applied to getting people more engaged in the democratic process?

Q: Were there any new innovations from this election cycle - in terms of the use of digital, social, or similar - that brand/product marketers apply to selling products and services?

Q: What will the preparations for the 2016 cycle look like from a digital/social standpoint? What signs should we be looking for with potential candidates - key hires, new sites or tools being built, etc?

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A few weeks ago, I helped to lead a PBS MediaShift organized Collab/Space event in Chicago.  The event offered nine entrepreneurs - media startups of varying kinds - an opportunity to present their ideas/projects and field questions from an audience filled with fellow entrepreneurs, media veterans, and other smart folks.

Each of the nine startups is given five minutes to present their idea/project and then ten minutes to answer questions.  Here is an overview of the nine entrepreneurs who were the focus of the event. The afternoon is spent working with the entrepreneurs in groups to address various project-related challenges.

Here is the Storify of the event.

My role during the CollabSpace is to process everyone's input and then pose questions/offer feedback on different ideas or priorities that these startups should consider addressing.  My questions/notes/suggestions form the basis of our afternoon workshop sessions - but also hopefully just spur thinking among everyone involved about ways to move the entire conversation forward.

I have pulled together my questions/notes for each of the startups below - I am sharing them in hopes it helps those entrepreneurs, and anyone else trying to build a media company, or engage an audiences in a meaningful way - think about things a little differently.

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions or ideas to add.

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CONTEXTLY Q: Are the current definitions/classifications of 'high value' readers sufficient/accurate? Q: Do publishers understand the problem of engagement with audiences (or are they trying to move audience to what publishers are already comfortable with)? Q: What else do we need to know about audience behavior (beyond media consumption) to transform loyalty? Q: Do publishers understand how to monetize loyalty? Q: Is there enough content coming of publishers to feed engagement/loyalty?  Is there a way for multiple media companies to share content (and data about their respective audiences) - so they can also share the context (e.g. open vs. closed systems)? Q: How does the element of human curation scale (particularly when media companies are cutting back) while also maintaining quality? Q: Could you partner and provide context with non-media companies/publishers (e.g. Major League Baseball, GE, J-Crew, etc) with the same success? Q: How does the tool/system get smarter based on user behavior and data (so that the same stories don't continue to pop up after they have been read, or ignored)? Q: How do you position the tool (and its value) to help get bigger clients... and transform into something even larger? What is your ambition beyond just building a successful business? Q: Are there trends/data that you can gather and share/promote, or sell to help shape the way the industry things about context? ----- DATA VISUAL Q: Does 'easy' and 'good' happen for everyone?  What knowledge/perspective do customers need to have in order to take full advantage of the tool? Q: Is there a risk that visuals are a fad? How do you continue to evolve how people think about visualization so you can shape the industry, not just capitalize on the interest as it is presented? Q: Do customers know how to monetize visuals (directly or indirectly)? Is that important for customers to understand so that they appreciate the value of visualization - and not just see the cost of the tool and its impact on their bottom line? Q: Are there major client target groups (beyond media) that you would see the tool being valuable to as well (e.g. if every company is a media company, how could Data Visual help a retailer, or auto company, to present information differently)? Q:  Can you teach old-school journalists to appreciate, and embrace, data visualization (or is the success of the tool dependent on more data-oriented people entering journalism)?  How much training/education and support is required for someone to take full advantage of the tool and create great visualizations? Q: What other advisers/partners could you work with (beyond media) to expand your thinking and perspective?  What other industries have shifted their methods of engaging consumers -- and emphasized visuals -- that people in media could learn from? Q: Is there a scale opportunity for the company in helping customers to make larger, more complex graphics? Is there a risk that the expectations get too high for what basic graphics can achieve? Q: Is there a service component (and business opportunity) for consulting, providing support to people on creating better graphics? Q: How does maintaining customer loyalty play into long-term vision/plan for the company? Do you have to go beyond a strong transactional connection to customers to succeed?

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OUTLET MEDIA

Q: Is there an opportunity to show/consume what is important, not just what is most current?  Can you track behaviors and actions around themes/topics and not just specific events (that everyone else is already looking at, responding to)? Q: In addition to focusing on limited time, is it possible to use the same aggregation to get people go deeper into topics/issues?

Q: Is there a way to act as a service where news organizations could request user-generated coverage of topics (or explore topics to see if something would be popular if covered)?  Could you help to shape the news, instead of just providing content?

Q: How do you address credibility, rights/permissions (and monetization) to make publishers comfortable?

Q: How do you avoid the firehose problem (best vs. first) - and end up elevating bad, or inaccurate user-generated coverage of an event or happening? Q: How might you use the data/aggregation to create trend reports (both for marketing the tool, as well as potentially to monetize directly by selling to customers)?  Is there a way to add 'meaning' to the real-time aggregation?

Q: How do you define/explain the value of this curation (compared to Beats by Dre, or YouTube)? Q: Can you create a validation system for contributions so that customers can sort for diversity, geographic location?

Q: Is there something especially valuable that news organizations want/need to crowdsource that you could aggregate - beyond photos? Quotes? Opinions? Ideas?

Q: How do you create communities (around topics, experts, etc) that can build credibility and reflect the profile of what news organizations want/need?

Q: Can you offer the same thing for non-news organizations (e.g. Major League Baseball, GE, J-Crew)? Q: How can you define/shape the idea of quality in terms of the use of user-generated content? Can you maximize diversity (racial, ethnic, economic status, etc), geographic location, expertise? 

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PARSE.LY

Q: How do you get publishers to focus on new audiences (not just optimizing for existing/known audiences)?  What other data (shopping, voting, locations, etc) do you need to consider along with media consumption?  Q: How do you teach publishers to think like retailers -- predicting and/or shaping behaviors, instead of just responding to existing signals?

Q: How do you roadmap/define the monetizable behaviors to what publishers need?  X = subscription? Y = loyalty? Q: How do you create a shared understanding - and usage - between the business/marketing side of the operation and the editorial (so that they don't fight each other and undermine the value of the tool)?

Q: How do you sync up online and offline (print) data, to get a more complete pictures (magazines vs. web vs. social)?

Q: Can you answer the 'why' question so publishers don't just read the data, then chase a signal? How can you add 'meaning' to the analysis? Q: Is there a global trend/white label serve opportunity to a) build a better database for media - one that includes more than just individual company data, and b) explain the larger behavioral trends of consumers so media can plan accordingly? Q: What should publishers be tracking that they aren't currently tracking (and/or what is required for people to get really good data)? What are the unknown unknowns?

Q: How do you integrate qualitative data with quantitative data - to show depth, or impact/influence on an issue or business (e.g. sold more stuff)?

Q: What new/different media consumptions behaviors need to be defined, better understood -- so people can expand their view of data?  What other things should we be measuring that we aren't currently (particularly with a goal of moving away from measuring activity only)? Q: Is there a Parse.ly central nervous system that small publishers could tap into in aggregate?  Could Parse.ly become (or include) a think tank or data intelligence operation, and make connections with existing data from non-media sources?  What other trends/factors could you provide (e.g. weather)? Q: What skills/testing approaches and actionable suggestions could you make to help influence actions? How do you connect the analysis to measurable changes in behavior, or critical actions being taken?

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PORTA BIERTA MEDIA

Q: Is there a model where you license the approach for other languages - beyond Spanish?

Q: Are there connections between media and financial activity that you need to make (e.g. Mint.com, banks, etc)?

Q: Are you consumer focused or should you consider being industry focused (e.g. what Skift does for Travel) -- or even take a 'train the trainer' type approach to influence the actions companies take.

Q: What is your theory of change (e.g. Introduction - Awareness - Framing - Understanding - Engagement - Action)? How does your content result in your desired outcomes?

Q: Do you build a destination or do you build a source of good content and push/syndicate that content to organizations that have access to the audience already? Q: Do you think people want this information? How do you relate this need to the most pressing challenges individuals/families already face? How do you make it relevant without undermining the quality and focus of your content?

Q: Do you build a media platform or an educational tool (or can the same thing accomplish both)?  Centralized vs. distributed? Think tank vs. publishers?

Q: Who are good models/guides for how this might be accomplished (e.g. Marketplace or American Public Media?  What non-media models might be useful to look at  (e.g. Story of Stuff)?

Q: Are there moments of opportunity that are more important than others in this conversation (e.g. at the grocery store vs. school vs. home vs. hearing from peers)?  Does a model exist for teaching behavior change around financial literacy that you could build the media around?

Q: How do you create the demand for this? How do you build curiosity - either among target consumers, or partners?

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REALIZING INNOVATION

Q: How can you define (or re-define) innovation in terms that help media? Do startups need to do a better job framing innovation to relate to need (e.g. problem solving), and what role can you play in that framing? Q: Can you aggregate the creative briefs you prepare to help identify friends, and market need to inform investors and entrepreneurs?

Q: How do you get 100% among startups (not just those who opt in to participate)? How do you become THE clearinghouse for startup matching? How do you become the Better Business Bureau for startups?

Q: Could you build an advisory board network (to pair people with expertise, but not necessarily dollars to invest)?  What about creating a speakers bureau - to ensure that a more diverse group of people participate in tech, marketing, other conferences and discuss media-related issues? Q: How might you adjust your model (instead of being a non-profit, what could you do to maximize revenue) -- by selling data, providing more direct matchmaking support between investors and entrepreneurs? Q: How could you use the data that you collect on startups to identify areas of need for individual startups to then address? Could you use your data from the creative briefs/profiles to identify what investors respond to most when reviewing a startup, and help guide entrepreneurs to focus accordingly? Q: Is there a theory of change/model of success that you use (or could create) to help determine whether a startup is successful?  A grading standard?

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SILICON HILL NEWS Q: How do you apply your local focus to other emerging markets (e.g. Pittsburgh, Omaha, Oklahoma City, etc) - where there is similar need/opportunity?

Q: How do you learn from and/or compare with and/or feed into other startup/tech-focused media (e.g. Re: Code, The Information, PandoDaily, VentureBeat, etc)? How do you become the local voice that allows them to go deeper into coverage without expanding their operations?

Q: What other new media focused sites could you learn from (e.g. Gawker, 120 Sports, Vox, etc)? Q: What is the product or coverage opportunities -- print, long-form, weekly editorial focus -- that prevents you from becoming just another local tech blog (that could be replicated by a more well-financed competitor)?  What can be truly unique about your focus - so that there is something only you can create (because of local connections, or editorial bent)? Q: What other ways could you make money (events, salons, briefings, news-as-a-service)?

Q: How do you monetize gossip without undermining your brand? How do become TMZ without becoming TMZ?  Q: How do you grow and not lose the local, smart, connected feel that you have established?  Alternatively, how could you become super exclusive w/access (e.g. Clinton Global Initiative)

Q: What types of actions could your newsletter drive?  What data analysis/influencer trend shaping role could you play? 

Q: What won't you do?

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SOCIAL LIFE CHICAGO

Q: How do you serve a broad audience (e.g. 23-40 year olds) with a single approach? How could you break down the audience into smaller groups (and not just around age, but maybe status in life -- single vs. in a relationship vs. married vs. with kids)?

Q: How much do you know about what young people do with information after they consume it? How do you shape your content/experiences (online and offline) to encourage sharing? Q: How do you become king/queen-maker, not just someone who covers what is happening? What is truly unique about your approach (Q&A, Long-format, images, data, etc) that will make people want to share exclusively with you? Q: What niche(s) aren't being covered within your area of focus? How do you create a new approach, or a spin/improvement on existing approaches to differentiate yourself (e.g. Humans of New York, Skimm, Gawker, etc)? Q: How do you establish an editorial voice that remains authentic to the audience you are service - especially as you grow?  How do you maintain an edge/personality? Q: What angle of philanthropy isn't being covered? What focus could you take (e.g. what organizations need board members) that nobody else is taking -- and that aligns with what your audience wants/needs? Q: What is your 'big bang' idea or moment? What makes you a must-read for everyone?  What won't anyone else do - that will help to put you on the map (and catapult you to next level)?

Q: What sub-editions/focus areas could you 'own' and go deeper on as part of your coverage (instead of rolling everything up into one main editorial efforts?  Finance? Arts? Real Estate? Philanthropy? Sports? How could you look at building a network/empire - with the right voice, etc - rather than just a single site?

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SOLAR POWER REPORT

Q: How do you reach every likely solar customer (100%)? How do you create new potential customers for solar? Q: Could you provide an industry-focused voice (like what Skift is doing for travel) -- and try to change the industry, instead of focusing on the consumers? Q: What about a print/offline component - a kit, or other support materials? How do you extend the conversation beyond just being a source for research, to ensure a greater amount of influence on purchase decisions and other behaviors? Q: Could you build/foster a community around solar - and facilitate conversation and collaboration among consumers, instead of just providing editorial coverage? Q: Is there a customer service component - a live chat, help line (e.g. the Butterball Hotline) for solar consumers?

Q: Why not have a bias? Why not be Curbed for solar, and give the coverage of the work more of an edge, a voice?  How do you strike a tone that resonates/stands out among consumers (e.g. humor, cynicism)? Is there value in trying to make this conversation have more mainstream appeal to people who are not already self-interested and self-motivated in pursuing solar power options? Q: Where/when does the 'solar moment' happen and how do you capitalize? What are the behaviors that consumers need to take (to move from not-interested to considering to committed to taking actions) and how do you organize around that journey? Q: Are there different formats (video, curated reads, etc) that will help to make the solar power conversation even more compelling? How do you aggregate information in new ways, to make the entire conversation more accessible? Q: Who are the partners that could do your marketing (e.g. you become embedded media service vs. independent journalism entity)? What co-opetition options exist that would allow you to do strong editorial work, without having to also build a following on your own? Q: What other models are worth exploring - TheKnot, BabyCenter, etc? Q: How could you take a truly local focus - capitalizing on the markets where the highest concentration of likely solar consumers already exist, or where the value of solar energy is greatest? Where are those areas of density,and how might you localize your coverage/voice to maximize interest and impact?

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Print media - newspapers, magazines, etc - are not dead. They aren't dying, either. The ways that people get/share information of all types are constantly changing and, yes, that includes how people engage with print media. But that's not how we talk about the role that print media plays in our lives.

You see, print works.

Print still plays a major role in content distribution and consumption.

The top 25 print magazines reach more adults and teens than the top 25 regularly scheduled prime time TV shows (and consumers spend a significant amount of time - 40 minutes on average - reading each print magazine issue).

And as Capitol New York wrote: a new survey by the Newspaper Association of America, which advocates on behalf of the industry, shows a) that "seventy-nine percent of adults had "taken action as a result of reading or seeing an ad in a print newspaper in the past 30 days and that print newspaper advertising is seen as "being believable and trustworthy."

All this serves as confirmation that print media is still an effective way to reach and influence consumers. Those same points, however, also make the print media industry look defensive.

People like print. Famous people like print ( Luke Wilson prefers print media to digital). Young people like print - not just people who grew up when print was the only option (a new study from Pew shows that some 88 percent of Americans younger than 30 said they read a book in the past year compared with 79 percent of those older than 30). Everyone engages with print media in some way, at some point, for some purpose.

We don't know enough about that engagement with print. We don't know exactly how the interaction that people have with print has changed, or how it will change further in the future.  All we know for sure is that people like print media for many different reasons.  And that's the focus we should be taking as we think about the future of (all) media. 

Print offers a different experience than digital media, just as reading is different than watching television or listening.  All different forms of media have some place in our lives.  Its reasonable to assume that people consume and share print media for the same reasons they consume and share any other form of media -- because they find that media valuable. It serves a need. It fulfills a promise. They find it entertaining. Their friend does it.

The how/when/why of newspapers and magazines has changed - but so has the how/when/why of everything else in our society.  So why do we keep trying to make the case for the value that we assigned to print in the past? Why can't we figure out the new how/when/why of print media?

We can.  But we have to start by asking some different questions...

Instead of focusing on how to make print media less expensive, can we figure out what makes print valuable - and why?

Instead of exploring ways to replace the print media experience with digital, can we consider how print media fits as part of people's overall engagement with media; what role it still plays in our lives - and why?

Instead of testing new and different ways to market/sell digital media, can we analyze why people do/don't buy a magazine or newspaper from a newsstand or at the airport (compared to just accessing the content online, or not getting it at all) and/or why they do/don't subscribe to a magazine or newspaper in print (compared to just accessing the content online, or not getting it at all)?

While so much attention is being paid to how digital forms of media transform how we get/share information, and the new ways they can be marketed, many in the media industry have seemingly resigned themselves to the idea that print no longer has value in a hyper-connected, fast moving, constantly changing world.  Are we are simply waiting for the last remaining magazines and newspapers to die off, to go digital only... and passing the time by clinging to whatever data point or survey result might suggest that the clock won't run out before a little more revenue is generated?  We can do better.

What if we stopped trying to defend the value of print, or re-hashing outdated arguments about how print can be used to influence consumer behavior (that largely serves to put print in competition with digital and other forms of media)? What if we set out to re-introduce print, and its value, in the digital age? What if we asked some of these new questions and set our sights on trying to define a new role (or roles) for print media in people's lives?

I am now an official member of New York State's Citizen Preparedness Corps. I even have the Certificate of Completion (auto-signed by both Governor Andrew Cuomo, as well as Jerome Hauer, the Commissioner of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services) to prove it.

I was awarded my Certificate of Completion for 'attendance and successful participation" in a roughly two-hour training session yesterday evening.  Upon completion of the training, I also received a free "Citizen Preparedness Corps Response Starter Kit" - a backpack filled with some basic disaster preparation supplies (Plastic drop cloth, light stick, D Batteries, First Aid Kit, Face mask, Safety goggles, AM/FM pocket radio w/batteries, packs of drinking water, food bars, a regular flashlight, emergency blanket, duct tape, work gloves, and a water bottle) and information from the City of New York Department of Emergency Management (among others) about the various steps that should take to be ready in the event of an emergency.

What I am not is... prepared.  In fact, aside from having new/additional materials in my possession, I am no more prepared for an emergency that I was before attending the training. I have not develop an emergency plan (contact information, evacuation details, etc) - for myself or my family.  I don't have a fully stocked emergency kit (which would allow us to make it on our own for 7-10 days without electricity, clean water, etc) or a 'GoPack' that I could grab if there was ever a need to evacuate quickly.  For the record, I have been planning to craft an emergency plan and stock our apartment with the appropriate supplies for a while. At various points over the past few years I have even made some progress towards this goal.  But as it stands right now, I am far from ready.  I am also not the only one. 

The Citizen Preparedness Corps has a goal of equipping 100,000 citizens in the State of New York with the tools they need to be ready and able to help their families and neighbors during emergencies - in other words, to become their own first responders. The program was launched by Governor Cuomo earlier this year - part of a series of efforts to improve how New Yorkers prepare for/respond to significant weather events (e.g. Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Lee, etc) and other emergencies (e.g. terrorist attacks, blackouts, etc).

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I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to disaster preparation - certainly when it comes to the set of recommended actions that individual citizens should take. I know I need a plan. I know the basic list of supplies that every house/apartment should have on hand. I also have experienced a number of emergency events (9/11, two earthquakes, hurricanes, a tornado, etc). Additionally, I have studied/analyzed how individuals and organizations prepare, manage and respond to disasters and worked with various groups to explore ways to improve preparation, management and response in the digital age.  And still... I haven't taken the necessary steps to be prepared.

A couple of thoughts...

1) The resources available to help people prepare for emergencies are only moderately helpful. The guidance on how to craft a plan, for example, are very generalized... they highlight best practices, encourage basic actions, list common items that you should have available... but they don't provide much/any direction on how to personalize that plan to your particular needs. Some of the most important questions are surprisingly challenging to answer - and not something you want to get wrong.  For example... how do I know the best location in my neighborhood to meet if there is a need to evacuate?  What specific types of canned foods should I stock, so that if forced to eat only non-perishable foods for a period of time, I can maximize my energy?

2) The approach to disaster preparedness is super analog.  Almost everyone carries a mobile device - phone, tablet, etc. Technology plays a critically important role in our lives, and has significant influence on how we get information, the actions we take, and more.  We are all connected in a variety of ways - and increasingly through social networks. But, the ways that individual citizens are asked to prepare/plan for disasters does not really reflect the realities of our society today.  In a critical situation,  clean water and first aid supplies are definitely more important than having a fully charged cell phone battery or a working internet connection... but those are also critical tools in people's lives, and an important part of how we communicate, get information and more. There are apps and other resources that will help deliver warnings or deliver information... but very little recognition of the role that technology now plays in our lives, or guidance on how to use our connections as part of our preparation or recovery.

The big focus of projects like the Citizen Preparedness Corps is to get the most basic of information to the largest number of people. On its own that will help to improve our ability as a society to manage and respond in the event of an emergency. And I have a lot of confidence in our civil response effort - government, the military, etc - to mobilize when something bad happens.  But I also know there is a lot more that should be done, and that would be possible if we considered different approaches to disaster preparedness.  This is an industry (if you will) that is in desperate need for disruption.

First of all, we rely way to heavily on individual motivation and capacity when it comes to preparedness... being 'ready' is not nearly as easy as people believe, and getting more citizens to take the necessary steps will require more than a series of community forums and free backpacks being handed out.  Second, there is a more significant, and more focused role for media - mainstream, digital, social, you name it - to play in preparedness, management and recovery of emergencies. We can do much more, and much better, than simply raising awareness.  Third, for all the new technology that is being applied to emergency response, there has been very little innovation in how individuals are trained and prepared - and so much opportunity to deliver better information as well as provide more support and facilitation in the planning process.  Oh... and don't even get me started on the role that businesses and the philanthropic sector can play - raising money is important, but its far from the only thing that these types of organizations can do. 

I have decided to appoint myself 'Entrepreneur In Residence" (EIR) for little m media.

The idea of an EIR is not new... venture capital firms, tech companies and others have been inviting startup-y minded folks into their ranks for years to help make sense of trends, cultivate new product ideas, and prioritize where and when to invest. More recently, media companies, non-profit organizations and various departments/agencies in government have embraced the idea as well, tapping successful entrepreneurs to help drive change within an organization or help solve specific problems.

There is a lot of debate about what exactly EIRs do... and while no two roles/programs are the same, you often hear about EIRs spending time meeting with startup teams, visiting incubators, convening futurists and other disruptive thinkers in discussion. Sometimes these EIRs have a specific agenda or focus, other times their mandate is simply to look for new and interesting things.

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In my 'day job' I am a strategist and writer for executive leaders at global brands, media companies, startups, nonprofits, political, and advocacy organizations.  As part of my work, I spend a lot of my time helping to frame, develop, launch and lead entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial efforts for clients, partners, and organizations that I support and want to help do exciting things.  I am also an entrepreneur (by choice, or maybe by default) -- I run my own operation and am constantly building, or helping build, different types of ventures. 

I certainly spend a lot of time and energy thinking about my own work...  what kinds of projects can I best support, what do the organizations that I work with need most, what do I believe needs to change about the world... and experimenting with different ideas and approaches.  But I know I could be more organized and focused.

And so... I have decided to give myself the title of "Entrepreneur In Residence" at my own company.  The idea is actually very simple... I am giving myself the assignment of driving more and better innovation within my work -- by working to make sense of trends, cultivate new product ideas, and prioritize where and when to invest my time, energy and funds.  Maybe the stuff I figure out will help transform my business offerings or approach to work.  Perhaps I will come up with new ideas for products and services that clients and partners will find useful. I might meet some new co-conspirators along the way.

My plan is to focus on four specific areas:

PRODUCTIVITY: How can I work smarter and be more effective? How can I better capture and make use of the experiences I have, the people that I meet, the ideas that I generate?  Are there productivity hacks that can improve my output, or systems that I can use to optimize the way I work?  Are there tools that I should be using, or that I should be developing - and what will it take to find, create, and make those changes?

CREATIVITY: How can I put myself in a position to generate the best, most creative ideas, or do the most compelling work - for myself and for my clients?  What else do I want to learn how to do, or get smarter about?  How can I take my work, in all its forms, and make it that much more 'creative'?

PRIORITIES: There are simply too many things I want to do... and like everyone else, I can do a better job prioritizing. That's not just in the context of my work, but also across the rest of my life. What data, or other inputs, should I be using to decide where to spend my time? How can I prioritize my efforts to maximize learning?

COMMUNICATION: So much of what I do relies on my ability to persuade, inspire, and connect with people.  What is changing about how we get/share information, and what influence does that have on my communication(s)? How can I improve my own communication(s) - and the support I provide to others?  What do I want to write/speak about, what messages do I think people need to hear?

I haven't figured out all the details.  Suggestions are welcome. If you have an area where you think I should focus, or a challenge to offer, please let me know. 

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of participating in a PBS MediaShift organized Collab/Space event. The event, which was hosted at the Ford Foundation headquarters, offered nine "intrapreneurs” an opportunity to present their media-related startup-y projects and field questions from the audience. The afternoon was spent working with the "intrapreneurs” in groups to address various project-related challenges.

NOTE: There is a terrific post on the PBS Media Shift site that summarizes all the presentations and ideas that were shared throughout the day.  Here is an excerpt from that post that briefly highlights the different projects that were presented:

> We heard from NPR about its Analytics Dashboard, a new tool for the newsroom which the social news desk was trying to get adopted around the company.

> Joseph Agoada of Ashoka spoke on its Coursebuilder, a massively open online course for teachers to teach them how to educate their students to facilitate change.

> Mike Dewar from the New York Times spoke on Streamtools, a graphical toolkit for dealing with streams of data and the difficulty he had getting it adopted.

> David Yanofsky of Quartz spoke about Chartbuilder, an open source tool for anyone to make charts easily. One challenge was making charts mobile-ready.

> From the Wall Street Journal came a presentation by David Biderman on their new CMS (content management system) application and the difficulties the developers had in getting it adopted beyond for the World Cup coverage.

> NY Daily News‘ Cyna Alderman presented their Innnovation Lab — whose goal is to bring startups under its wing, facilitate them and use their innovations at the Daily News itself. People at the Daily News do work on the Lab as 20% of their work time, and thus don’t always prioritize it.

> Vox‘s Scott Kellum presented their cardstacks explainers, and the challenge that Vox had in getting more people to share and view them.

> Facebook’s Jason White described the social network’s FBNewswire project (in collaboration with Storyful) and was hoping to create a better version for news publisers.

> Community radio station WFMU‘s general manager Ken Freedman presented their Audience Engine commenting system and told the audience how good he was at talking down trolls (he called himself a “troll whisperer”).

You can read more about the presented projects here.

My role was to help identify the most interesting issues and challenges facing the "intrapreneurs” and frame the questions and opportunities that the working groups should prioritize during the afternoon session. 

Even with only five minutes to present, and ten minutes of questions per project, there were too many issues/questions/ideas collected to be fully considered during the workshops in the afternoon.  Still, I think a lot of the issues/questions/ideas that were collected are interesting, and potentially useful - to the "intrapreneurs" who presented, to others working on driving change inside a media company, and potentially others. So, I pulled together my notes/questions for each group and have pasted them below.

Let me know what you think.

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NPR’s analytics dashboard Q: How do you pull multiple streams of data (make multiple calls) - from various sources - more effectively?  Do you build an internal data storage capacity? Is there benefit beyond NPR if you create a centralized data repository of some kind that many can easily access? Q: Who else might NPR talk with (e.g. Mashable) about predictive analytics, or comparative data sources? How might you establish benchmarks to compare coverage of certain topics (NPR Politics vs someone else's politics) to inform thinking?

Q: What outcomes would be a reflection of success (more adoption of data, deeper thinking, influence on coverage of certain issues)? What is the 'theory of change' for how this data improves news - beyond just making stories that will be consumed/shared by more people?

Q: Culture vs. Tools - how does one influence the other (or how can it)? Should the NPR/newsroom approach shape the technology, or should the technology help to re-organize the way the newsroom makes decisions? Q: Audio metrics - how do you integrate them into the dashboard? How do you increase the sophistication/availability of tracking of audio to create equivalent of data available for digital?

Ashoka & Google’s Course Builder: Empathy for Educators Q: Does Ashoka need to change/imrpve more than just the course offering (e.g. the entire online learning world) to realize success? Does the entier approach/culture of learning need to change?  What is their theory of change?

Q: How much is road map from minimum viable product to full course experience shaped by feedback, and how much is part of the original plan that is being validated? What is the focus of the testing?

Q: What other recruiting/teaching sources could be looked at for guidance (e.g. Boy Scouts)? Who else has accomplished what Ashoka is trying to accomplish in a different field?

Q: How do you turn non-changemakers into changemakers (teachers)? Can you teach someone a new approach, or do you have to build your teachers from the beginning?

Q: Are there other partners (beyond Google) to compare with, or get input from? Should Ashoka build build their own platform, or just develop the curriculum - and syndicate it?  What is the best way to teach (based on Ashoka's expertise, their organizational ego, the cost/business model options)?

Q: Outcomes vs. metrics... how do you know that completion of the course = desired behaviors? Is there a plan to study, a set of data/benchmarks to use to show the desired outcomes?

Q: How do you recruit more teachers? Who influences their decision - parents? colleagues? (Marketing) Q: Does the vision scale? Are there 6,000 schools that care as much as the original 60 schools that have participated?  Public schools vs. private schools? How does the target universe of schools compare to the profile of existing changemakers (or the desire to ensure that a diverse audience of kids is engaged)?

NY Times’ Streamtools Q: What helps people overcome the barrier to entry/starting? Framing? Education? What do they need to think about to get people to embrace this data stream?

Q: Why would anyone outside the NYTimes want to help make this better? Is this a public good vs. a business benefit, and what could the NyTimes spin off/incubate to help others with around the streams? Q: Is there an internal mechanism for gaining adoption (emerging from the R&D lab vs. the entire company)? How do you get 'normal people' to provide insights that could help to craft the tool and position it for success? Q: Are there products that the data can feed? Are there things to test or just ideas, requests that people have) - some way to make it real, understandable in context?  Does this connect to the original problem you were trying to solve? Is the vision being sold (and the 'imagination gap' being closed)?

Q: Is there a need to force some urgency to create some prioritization/attention? Is this definition of 'done' not correct?

Q: Does a culture of 'streaming' exist? Does one need to be developed/explained/cultivated - in order for adoption to follow? Q: Are there specific people/groups that could be approached to get help (Aaron P, others)? What patterns/insights/models would be useful to learn from?

Q: What interface considerations reflect different phases of use - internal vs. small. vs mainstream? Do you need multiple variations of the UI/IX to support different users and their experiences?

Quartz’s Chartbuilder Q: Is 'making a tool' the way to solve this problem (vs. teaching people better ways to think about data AND giving them a tool to make that work easier)? Q: Are there standards/protocols in place for good vs. bad charts? How to scale those standards - especially to places that might use the tool, but don't have the same appreciation for, or internal capabilities of the team at Quartz? Q: What usage prioritizes, presentation formats matter - how do you decide which audiences to serve, which devices to focus on, formats to create so that you don't end up trying to create a customized toolset?

Q: Should this kind of tool live inside, or be open source? Is there an argument to be made for going with a different model to optimize innovation (e.g. Open Source is too reliant on a potentially engaged community)? How does being independent, or funded change things? What would making this a full-time focus (even internally) change in terms of accelerating the path towards good charting (and how much would divorcing it from the connection to the newsroom at present hurt the effort)?

Q: How to make this a journalism intrapreneur project to benefit the entire industry vs. just Quartz? Is this a foundation for more/better charting across journalism (and is that something Vox is interested in cultivating beyond their own current advantage)? WSJ’s modern CMS Q: How do you build something new so that you don't end up waiting ten years to update it again (speed, culture process)?  How do you break through the bureaucracy? How do you use to the bureaucracy to your benefit?

Q: Why build things for different platforms (iOS, Android)? What can you learn by keeping them separate?

Q: Are there other highly bureaucratic organizations (e.g. federal government, IBM, etc) that have innovated successfully - and could be looked to as a model, or partner.

Q: How many other excuses (like the World Cup) could you identify as a way to experiment with, learn from, etc. - before you proceed with getting a project approved internally?

Q: Does the WSJ want to be like other news organizations, or does it want to focus on improving its current approach? Instead of looking at newer, digital-first journalism organizations, can embracing/defining/codifying your vision provide you with the focus to make a real difference? NY Daily News’ Innovation Lab Q: What about the model of successful incubators - outside of the media space - helps/doesn't help here, and how do you maximize those elements?  What models are best... techstars, Y Combinator, etc?

Q: Can you scale the lab (or the startups) with only the "20%" allocation of time?  How might more outside contributors be included in the process - and what that access to being part of the lab be worth?

Q: How do you maximize failures along with successes?

Q: How do you sustain the interest over time - beyond offering financial incentives (company stake for example), what benefits could be offered to get people excited to contribute?

Q: Internal (news room) vs. external... can you manage multiple tracks of innovation for the lab? Can you use the lab to build better technology, but also to help shape the larger journalism conversation?

Q: Getting word out... how to d you frame the opportunity/benefit of the lab (for startups, but also for other media organizations as potential partners)? Who should you target? What stage of a company's work (e.g. just ideas, pre-business plan) do you want to tap?

Vox Media’s Cardstacks Q: Are card stacks a product, a format, a type of content (all three, something else)? Does that matter in terms of helping people to understand their value? Do you need instructions to explain how card stacks are to be utilized by readers in order to shape the behavior that you want from the user? Q: How else might people access car stacks? Email newsletter? What push opportunities exist - generally (to build knowledge over time) or time/context specific (when the opportunity arises)? Q: What do the user habits of older users (the primary Vox audience) potentially do as to inform the future of card stacks? Are they designed for the audience Vox has, or for the audience Vox wants? Can the same approach to card stacks serve both?

Q: Editorial vs. "knowledge" - does the classification/framing of card stacks matter in terms of user adoption or expectation? Does Wikipedia compete - or provide learning/guidance?  Does the credibility of card stacks depend on the credibility of Vox (editorially, etc) or can it be considered separately?

Q: How do you distinguish cards from other stories? What might you try (color, placement, etc)? How will you know if card stacks are working - what measures exist to determine their effectiveness at informing audiences (e.g. audiences who read card stacks read more other content?)? 

Q: Do card stacks serve all audiences (and have you tested that) - in terms of perspectives/views on issues, or levels of interest/engagement in an issue (e.g. are card stacks for newbies, but not useful for people already more knowledgeable)?

Q: What is the timeline for producing card stacks - and how does planning allow for you to experiment with different approaches (e.g. obituaries can be more/less interactive depending on the amount of time that goes in to preparing for someone's death)?

Q: Where do cards fit in the Vox brand? Is knowledge one of the outcomes that Vox is trying to achieve? How does knowledge drive value for Vox - potentially open up audience opportunities, or generate revenue? Why do card stacks exist?

Facebook’s Newswire Q: Are there models for collaborative news gathering/production (e.g. how we used to do election exit polling, results) that Facebook can learn from?  Beyond discover-ability of news, what needs to be organized/codified (e.g. legal rules for use of images, sharing protocols)?  How should Facebook be involved in the shaping of these systems/processes - vs. expecting an outside group to establish them? Q: Can you make something like Facebook newswire bespoke/tailored/customized for the needs and interests of individual news organizations/users and still have it scale? Q: How do you mix/integrate with trends and other data that is available with limited (human) resources?  What would be game-changing priorities? How about Facebook as a Service (FAAS)?

Q: How do you predict (or shape) editorial priorities?  What data could be utilized? What ownership of the editorial efforts could be shared by news organizations, along with Facebook, so there is more than just one perspective/approach (Storyful) involved?

Q: Are there plan to create rules for copyright, stock image use? Does it need to be part of Facebook's work to ensure it happens? Is it necessary to have in place for news organizations to want to participate (or are they ok with third party managing that)?  Is it in Facebook's best interest business-wise to take responsibility for that work? Q: How do you improve 360-degree tracking to determine/learn more about how news is consumed/shared? What can Facebook study that would create intelligence that would help news organizations (and in doing so, increase their likelihood of wanting to use Facebook news content in their work)?  Example: Participant Productions study on viral social change films.

Q: Do you need an editorial team? What are the limits of the algorithm that Facebook might build in terms of creating news? How might the Public Insight Network, Public media community, etc help (creation, distribution, curation, etc)?

WFMU’s Audience Engine

  Q: Do you study patterns in discussion to understand more about audiences, help others understand the culture that you have created?  Is there research/data into what makes your community so committed (that others could learn from?)

Q: How can public benefit startups thrive in the same ways that "traditional" ones - and what input would be helpful?

Q: What side revenue might be possible by making expertise, or data, about audience and community engagement available?

Q: Is there a benefit to creating a community around On Demand programming (e.g. a different time window) - that would help in other areas as well?

Q: What else are you doing with the community to test engagement options? What is worth considering/exploring (gaining listeners for example)?

Earlier this year, as part of 2014 Appropriations Bill, Congress authorized the creation of The National Commission on Hunger.  The Commission, which is composed of ten members, is charged with developing a report on new strategies to solve the problem of hunger and food insecurity in America.  The commission will also examine ways to partner with the faith, nonprofit, and business community. (A more complete description of the Commission is available here.)

The first meeting of the Commission is next week, so I thought I would provide a few recommendations/ideas to help the group with their work.

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Dear Members of The National Commission on Hunger:

I am not an expert in the issue of hunger. I am not directly involved with any hunger services organizations (though I was a strategic adviser to Feeding America for several years).  But, I know hunger is a solvable issue. In fact, I think hunger may be one of the most solvable issues facing our society today - and at the same time I don't think we are getting anywhere closer to finding or creating or implementing solutions that will truly address hunger in a meaningful and measurable way.  I continue to be frustrated by the fact that we haven't made more progress.

Its not just the issue of hunger - so much of what is happening in the social good/social entrepreneurship space seems to me to be focused on the wrong things.  As I have said over and over again, we don’t need another, awareness campaign, we don’t need another app or contest or celebrity endorsement to raise awareness.  People know hunger is an issue. Important people. Normal people. People with means, and intelligence, and capacity to have great influence over how policy is shaped or solutions are developed - they know that hunger is a solvable problem. But we need those people to focus in the right ways. We need to make progress towards meeting our goals, delivering the kinds of outcomes that we know are possible - so we can start to have different conversations about how to solve hunger.

That was the big idea behind WeCanEndThis - a project that Scott Henderson (@ScottyHendo, CauseShift), Anne Mai Bertelsen (@AnneMai, Mai Strategies) and I launched in 2010 to spark innovation and a broader engagement in the movement to end hunger in America. Here is how we described the effort:

The project is designed to allow - and ensure - that a diverse group of individuals and organizations are working together, along with our cause partners (Feeding America, Share Our Strength, and Capital Area Food Bank of Texas) to help solve a major social issue. Over the next year, as WeCanEndThis moves forward, the effort to find new and different approaches to ending hunger will continue.

WeCanEndThis officially launched at SXSW and hunger was designated as the official cause of the festival, a first for the event. The big event for WeCanEndThis at SXSW was something we called the "CauseLab," a day long, multi-part, cross-discipline, brainstorming session. We invited lots of smart, innovative, collaborative minded thought leaders to help dream up to develop innovative solutions that address three central challenges: 

Building the Hunger Organization of the Future (and how that structure can create a hunger-free society)

Humanizing the data (and how we make hunger relevant, and top of mind, to people across the nation)

Advancing local activation (including how to make systemic changes in communities everywhere)

(This Q&A with Kari Saratovsky for the Case Foundation explains a lot of the thinking behind this approach)

The CauseLab was a huge success – the room was packed, the ideas were flying, and some different ways of thinking about how to address hunger in America started to emerge. Three potentially game-changing ideas for how the hunger community might re-consider the approach to this issue emerged from the discussion - and I think some parts of what were developed are relevant to your work.

Those big ideas included:

Hunger data consortium: In the years since we launched WeCanEndThis, 'big data' has become one of the most important and disruptive tools for solving complex problems. At the time, we talked about data being used to incentivize behavior - to help make people smarter about what choices to make and how to act.  The problem with an issue like hunger (and social issues more generally) is that the data that is available today, both to help organizations and individuals to understand the issue of hunger as well as explore potential solutions to the problem, is not sufficient, not standardized, and not being appropriately utilized. More and better data needs to be collected, shared, and put to work in the creation of solutions.  Our recommendation: create a data consortium that would specifically focus on increasing public access to high value datasets generated by, and for the use of, those who are looking to find ways to end hunger in America.  Create a centralized repository for data, create standards for how hunger is measured - and what metrics should be used to determine the impact of different efforts - and, most importantly, actively push that data out so all organizations working on the issue of hunger (or any related conversation) can be part of the same conversation.

Hunger Think Tank: Federal government agencies and nonprofit organizations, as well as individuals and communities nationwide are already leading innovative programs designed to end hunger in America – but the efforts are not sufficiently coordinated.  A hunger think tank would be responsible for centralizing and focusing efforts to address hunger in America, at all levels, to allow for the best and most effective approaches to be shared, and utilized by all organizations, and for new, innovative, and more effective solutions to be developed.  A clearinghouse of sorts. An incubator for promising ideas. A hunger think tank would help to increase awareness of solutions that are being pursued (not just the need for the issue to be addressed), expand access and strengthen advocacy efforts (by pro-actively creating partnerships and connections between groups that otherwise wouldn't know to work together) -- especially in ways that smaller community-based groups would benefit from, and would be able to marshal the collective energy and capacity of people from across the nation to develop new approaches to this issue that no single organization could do on its own.  We don't need more one-off efforts, or groups deciding who to work with based on their own individual interests.  We need a group that can create the collisions between different approaches to solving hunger that we know will spark the truly innovative and effective efforts to flourish.

A Trained Army: Ending hunger in America will require a comprehensive and coordinated effort in local communities nationwide – sustained over time.  It is unlikely that any organization would be able to able to recruit, train, and sustain the involvement of volunteers in that way.  Additional help – along with training, tools, and other support – will be needed.  We now live in an age where distributed action, facilitated by networked technologies, is possible. But, self-organized actions won't deliver the outcomes that are needed - to thrive, those types of 'movements' need guidance and training. Rather than having lots of small efforts, loosely connected, we should build citizen army to battle hunger.  Better yet, we should enlist returning veterans, those already trained in how to build community and infrastructure, and committed to the idea of serving the nation, to help lead and manage efforts to combat hunger across the country. We need to work towards a single goal, drawing on a universal playbook - and put a trained army of citizens on the task if we want to succeed.

These are just some basic concepts - initially conceived of during the discussions that were held during the CauseLab, and refined over time through discussions, research, experimentation, and more.  They are a starting place for the Commission when beginning to discuss and craft their report. They provide pieces of a framework that will allow for truly innovative and disruptive ideas to emerge and thrive.  But, importantly, they reflect a different way of thinking about this challenge - one that hasn't found its way into the heart of most efforts to solve hunger.

Beyond the ideas themselves... I hope the Commission can understand and embrace the need to do things differently.

Significant change is hard. The process can be difficult, loud, and messy.  Re-thinking everything - how we communicate, operate, engage, mobilize, measure, and even discuss/explain the issue of hunger, in hopes of significantly shifting the way we address this issue, will be very challenging. Not everyone recognizes the scope of the challenge or the need to approach the issue in a different way. Not every organization will feel comfortable shifting from their current way of doing things - which works well for the organization, but perhaps doesn't have the desired impact on the issue as a whole. Some people don't have the skills, the experience, or even the perspective to embrace this type of effort.  Others are entrenched in their beliefs, overly reliant on their past experiences, and unable to imagine an approach that isn't based on existing, and arguably outdated methods or theories.  And some people are just plain afraid to take on the powerful forces that stand in the way of change.

The Commission was not created to summarize what we already know about the issue of hunger - that is big, and gnarly, that it impacts everyone in this country, that it complicated to solve, that there are great organizations doing great work, etc.  I will be disappointed if your final recommendations fail to acknowledge the failures of the hunger community to date in solving this problem, and issuing a challenge/invitation to find, create, and aggressively pursue more innovative and disruptive solutions to this significant problem. 

The Commission was created to tell Congress, and the American people, what it will take to solve hunger. I will know that the Commission has delivered something that has the potential to change the way we work to solve hunger if/when it makes people angry.  When you make people angry, its a sign that you are moving in the right direction, and a challenge to push more and try harder.  Big, hard to imagine, difficult to implement, expensive - not to mention unpopular or controversial - ideas by themselves aren't solutions, but they are critical pieces to finding the answers and approaches that are needed if we are going to shift how we address hunger in America and succeed in this effort.  That is what I hope, and frankly expect, the Commission will deliver. 

I would be thrilled to have an opportunity to work with the members of the Commission to flesh out the ideas that were outlined above, to share more of what we learned from the WeCanEndThis project, to brainstorm new ideas, review existing plans, to add a voice from beyond the hunger community, to make introductions to smart people, or whatever would be helpful. 

Good luck... I can't wait to see what you come up with. And thank you for your commitment and hard work.

Do You Actually Know How to Engage a Millennial?

Let me give you a hint: the answer is no.

That's why Kari Saratovsky (@KDS) and I crafted a series of five strategic memos to help people across all industries think differently about the Millennial generation, and help accelerate a shift in the way we engage young people today.

Here are links to the five memos:

What Do We Really Know About Millennials? How Are Millennial Views Shaped? What Aren't Millennials Buying?

What Is The Best Way To Reach A Millennial?

Is There A Leadership Gap Among Millennials?

(And here is Kari's post introducing the project)

Why did we write five memos?  Well, the research, headlines and 'expert' opinions about Millennials all seem to agree: young people are coddled, protected, and constantly connected (in a bad way).  But they are wrong. What we know, and the way we think about how to communicate with and engage Millennials is, at best, incomplete.

All we know for sure is that Millennials have limited time, limited dollars and limited attention spans - but also huge future spending power, and a desire to do something interesting and important with their lives.  We also know that Millennials have different expectations for their involvement with brands, media, issues – and especially social causes - than any other generation.  We know this because so much of what has been communicated at Millennials is missing the mark.  Even when some brand or nonprofit has been smart (or lucky) enough to get Millennials to pay attention, converting that awareness into some meaningful, measurable action has proven to be even more difficult.  

So yes... Millennials are difficult to reach, and very challenging to successfully engage.  And that's exactly why we wrote these memos. We don't have all the answers. We do have some thoughts to help shift the way people are thinking about young people and what they want/need. 

The plenary session this morning at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (#13NTC) was all about failure – how you define it, what to learn from it, why it’s important, and the critical need for the nonprofit/social good/philanthropy community to do a better job embracing it.  I was privileged to sit on stage with Allyson Burns from the Case Foundation (@allieb37), Erin Shy from Sage Nonprofit (@ErinShy), Megan Kashner from Benevolent (@BenevolentNet)… and our host, moderator and fearless leader, Beth Kanter (@kanter)… and help to focus and drive the conversation.

I think everyone – on stage and in the audience – agrees that a) failing is an inevitable part of the important work required to change the world and address critical issues that challenge our society, b) that it is far more productive to look for ways to learn and adapt when things fall apart then it is to dwell on mistakes or cast blame, and c) that making the most of failing gets easier the more you do it and the more support you have in the process.  That’s a pretty big deal if you think about it – that a seemingly difficult, potentially uncomfortable conversation about people and organizations involved in the nonprofit/social change/philanthropy space needing to fail more, fail smarter, and fail better was not met with any obvious disagreement or anger.

But let me be clear: having consensus on the need to fail more, fail smarter, and fail better won’t do anything to change how we think, how we act, or the work we are doing to address serious issues that are challenging our society.  In fact, having agreement on those core points is probably a bad thing.  We will get lazy.  We will assume that our acknowledgement of the fruits of failure will organically result in a noticeably different way of operating. 

It won’t. 

Thinking about, talking about, understanding, even appreciating the value of failure won’t change anything.  We have to push beyond failing as some sort of amusing intellectual discussion and start to do things differently.  We need to force failure.

In my closing comment at the plenary I issued a simple challenge: start failing. Just do it. Just fucking do it.

You can fail big. You can fail small.  You can fail a lot. You can fail a little.  The key is to start failing.  And to keep failing – over and over and over again.  To fail all the time.  To force yourself, your organization, the people you work with, the community of people and groups working to address an issue or cause to fail.  To fail more. To fail smarter. To fail better.

I am challenging you to fail.  And if you aren’t willing – if you aren’t committed – then I want you to get out of the business. Do something else. Work on something different. The issues that we need to address are real.  The big challenges that are facing our society are serious and only growing and become more complex.  We need to be faster, smarter and better if we are going to succeed – and to do that we need to understand the role that failing plays in our work, and use our failing to do something amazing.

I also give you permission to fail.  It won’t be easy.  It can get messy.  Even the people who very confident in their ability to turn failing into awesomeness will tell you how failing can be exhausting and punishing.  But failing is important – necessary in fact – and we are long overdue in the nonprofit/social change/philanthropy community to start getting better at failing.  So, if you need a note from me to pass along to your boss or your board or your funder, I will write one for you.  If you need a pep talk when things get difficult and confusing, I will provide one.  If you need a tutorial on how to really make a mess of things, and come out stronger on the other side, I have plenty of personal and professional experiences to form a curriculum with.  But if you refuse to start failing, and really force things to happen, or you don’t take this challenge seriously, I want you to step aside.  I want you to find a different line of work.  If you aren’t going to enthusiastically use your ticket on the failure train, I want you to give your seat to someone else who is willing to step up and start to make things happen.

I fail all the time. I know it.  And I feel pretty confident in my ability to learn and adapt when I fail.  But I am just one person.  The benefits of my failing are limited – unless I fail in ways that others can benefit from.  I can do more to help others understand my mistakes, and what I learned from them.  We all can.  And when we do, it allows everyone else to focus their energy failing on different things.  To make new mistakes.  To get smarter. 

I challenge you.  I implore you.  I beg of you.  Start failing. Fail on your own.  Fail with others.  Fail in ways that we all will learn and benefit from. Do something. Anything. Just fucking do it.  And don’t look back.

The plenary session this morning at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (#13NTC) was all about failure – how you define it, what to learn from it, why it’s important, and the critical need for the nonprofit/social good/philanthropy community to do a better job embracing it. I was privileged to sit on stage with Allyson Burns from the Case Foundation (@allieb37), Erin Shy from Sage Nonprofit (@ErinShy), Megan Kashner from Benevolent (@BenevolentNet)… and our host, moderator and fearless leader, Beth Kanter (@kanter)… and help to focus and drive the conversation.

I think everyone – on stage and in the audience – agrees that a) failing is an inevitable part of the important work required to change the world and address critical issues that challenge our society, b) that it is far more productive to look for ways to learn and adapt when things fall apart then it is to dwell on mistakes or cast blame, and c) that making the most of failing gets easier the more you do it and the more support you have in the process. That’s a pretty big deal if you think about it – that a seemingly difficult, potentially uncomfortable conversation about people and organizations involved in the nonprofit/social change/philanthropy space needing to fail more, fail smarter, and fail better was not met with any obvious disagreement or anger.

But let me be clear: having consensus on the need to fail more, fail smarter, and fail better won’t do anything to change how we think, how we act, or the work we are doing to address serious issues that are challenging our society. In fact, having agreement on those core points is probably a bad thing. We will get lazy. We will assume that our acknowledgement of the fruits of failure will organically result in a noticeably different way of operating.

It won’t.

Thinking about, talking about, understanding, even appreciating the value of failure won’t change anything. We have to push beyond failing as some sort of amusing intellectual discussion and start to do things differently. We need to force failure.

In my closing comment at the plenary I issued a simple challenge: start failing. Just do it. Just fucking do it.

You can fail big. You can fail small. You can fail a lot. You can fail a little. The key is to start failing. And to keep failing – over and over and over again. To fail all the time. To force yourself, your organization, the people you work with, the community of people and groups working to address an issue or cause to fail. To fail more. To fail smarter. To fail better.

I am challenging you to fail. And if you aren’t willing – if you aren’t committed – then I want you to get out of the business. Do something else. Work on something different. The issues that we need to address are real. The big challenges that are facing our society are serious and only growing and become more complex. We need to be faster, smarter and better if we are going to succeed – and to do that we need to understand the role that failing plays in our work, and use our failing to do something amazing.

I also give you permission to fail. It won’t be easy. It can get messy. Even the people who very confident in their ability to turn failing into awesomeness will tell you how failing can be exhausting and punishing. But failing is important – necessary in fact – and we are long overdue in the nonprofit/social change/philanthropy community to start getting better at failing. So, if you need a note from me to pass along to your boss or your board or your funder, I will write one for you. If you need a pep talk when things get difficult and confusing, I will provide one. If you need a tutorial on how to really make a mess of things, and come out stronger on the other side, I have plenty of personal and professional experiences to form a curriculum with. But if you refuse to start failing, and really force things to happen, or you don’t take this challenge seriously, I want you to step aside. I want you to find a different line of work. If you aren’t going to enthusiastically use your ticket on the failure train, I want you to give your seat to someone else who is willing to step up and start to make things happen.

I fail all the time. I know it. And I feel pretty confident in my ability to learn and adapt when I fail. But I am just one person. The benefits of my failing are limited – unless I fail in ways that others can benefit from. I can do more to help others understand my mistakes, and what I learned from them. We all can. And when we do, it allows everyone else to focus their energy failing on different things. To make new mistakes. To get smarter.

I challenge you. I implore you. I beg of you. Start failing. Fail on your own. Fail with others. Fail in ways that we all will learn and benefit from. Do something. Anything. Just fucking do it. And don’t look back.

One of my favorite activities when attending the South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin (SXSW) is to eavesdrop on people's conversations. Don't look at me like that... I am not trying to invade anyone's privacy or commit an act of corporate espionage.  Rather, I am curious to learn what people are talking about, and how they talk. You can learn a lot about what is trending and where to focus your attention based on what you overhear someone say in between bites of a breakfast taco. 

With almost 27k people attending just the interactive festival (there are also film and music festivals running somewhat concurrently) there are a lot of conversations to choose from.  And yet, there is a surprising amount of overlap in the topics. The biggest topic of discussion is logistics -- how many people there are this year ('its so big and impersonal... I remember when it was still cool'), the challenges of finding a good panel discussion or party, and, of course, the weather.  Interesting, but not particularly enlightening stuff at the end of the day.  The second most popular topic tends to be which new apps or companies are gaining traction -- everyone wants to know, and be connected to, the next big thing.  And there are a lot of new apps and companies trying to gain traction here, including so many variations on the same names that its hard to keep them all straight.

If I get really lucky, I will hear some folks talking about what they do, and what works/doesn't work in their particular company or project.  In past years, those discussions about how people work have been dominated by one word: failure.  Everyone embraced the idea that failure was valuable, that it was important to learn from mistakes. There were panel discussions devoted to the topic.  There were flyers pasted all over town practically challenging people to fail -- and be proud of it.  Hashtags. Laptop stickers. T-shirts.  Failure was everywhere.  People were proud to fail.  But not this year.  I haven't heard the word failure mentioned yet.  Not by a panelist.  Not in conversation between two people over an organic smoothie.  Nothing.  Its almost like people have become afraid of failing - or even talk about it.

Is that possible?  Is it possible that failure is no longer a hot topic in the world of startups, designers, media and everything else being discussed here at SXSW?  I don't believe it.  Maybe there a different way of building and managing a successful enterprise that has replaced this concept altogether?  Or a new buzzword that has replaced failure -- a way of talking about the same concept but using a new set of vocabulary?

I can appreciate that nobody wants to fail.  It can be awkward, embarrassing, even painful to fail.  But failing is important - necessary in fact.  We learn from failure. Everybody knows that (I think).  And so... my fear is that if people aren't talking about failure, they aren't being curious.  They aren't as interested in learning as they have been in the past.  They aren't hungry to try new things, no matter the consequences.  If that's the case, then our ability to create more interesting things, solve more challenging problems, address more complex issues will diminish.  If we don't talk about failure, and we don't embrace it as we have in the past we won't get smarter.

I am sure there are people who are talking about failure... I just haven't found them yet.  I will keep listening in people's conversations and see what I can find out.  If you hear anything, let me know.

This post is about the missed opportunity of SXSW.

This is the ninth consecutive year that I have attended the South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin.  And the more it changes... the more it stays the same.

SXSW is a unique gathering of people who work in/around technology, design, media, film, music... and an increasing number of people associated with the worlds of philanthropy and social change/social good. I have attended all these years because SXSW, unlike almost any other big gathering (and by big I mean 25,000+ attendees), offers such a diverse and interesting mix interests and talents.  There is a just a wonderful opportunity to cross-pollinate thinking and partner on efforts related to addressing the serious issues that exist in the world today in meaningful, measurable ways here in Austin than anywhere else I visit/attend.  This is the ultimate playground for people trying to solve complex problems and have a meaningful, measurable impact on the world.

Unfortunately, it isn't happening. Very little is changing about SXSW - at least in terms of how the people who attend understand, appreciate, and get involved in the discussion about philanthropy and social good/social change. The potential that exists to dramatically change/improve the way we address serious issues simply isn't being realized.

What happened (or failed to happen)?  I don't really know.  When I first started attending SXSW, I could count on one hand the number of people -- like me -- those who were working in/around the philanthropy and social good/social change space who attended. There weren't very many people who focused on politics and government, media, or really anything beyond the world of tech startups or PR/creative/advertising agencies either.  But as SXSW has grown, others have realized how compelling this gathering could be, and our numbers have swelled.  People who care about and work on serious issues are still the minority, but our presence is recognized.  And at one point, maybe two or three years ago, (and especially when the earthquake/tsunami struck Japan in the middle of SXSW), philanthropy and social good/social change were one of the hottest topics of discussion around the whole event.

And yet, somehow, despite having thousands of attendees from the philanthropy and social good/social change space, as well as substantial interest among people in all other sectors (business, media, etc)... the conversation about how to address serious issues in a connected society hasn't really evolved.  Interest isn't enough.  The focus remains largely the same. The promise of these amazing conversations and interactions has not materialized. 

What is happening?  There are some panel discussions about the work of nonprofits and related groups -- but they are hosted by people from inside the social change/social good community, and they are being attended by people who are already inside the social change/social good community.  In other words, we are still talking mostly to ourselves. There are some discussions and projects featuring the best digital, creative and other thinkers about how to apply their expertise to addressing serious issues - but the focus is disproportionately trained on raising awareness and money (two things that everyone loves to talk about, though I would argue are neither the solution to a complex problem, nor the most interesting thing to try and achieve).  In other words, the focus of all that intellect and creativity is being misapplied.  And, worst of all, philanthropy and social change/social good efforts are being co-opted by big brands, small startups, and everyone else as part of a social responsibility strategy.  In many ways, the important work of philanthropy and social good/social change has become commoditized, and is being used as a marketing tactic, further undermining the potential for real, meaningful, measurable impact on the world.

Am I being unfair?  I don't think so. I acknowledge that there are many small, smart, innovative folks who are trying to change how we think about addressing serious issues... and using some new, and very cool ways of collecting and organizing data, deploying technology and more to solve problems.  I do everything I can to support and celebrate them.  Some of them are on display here at SXSW, and I am sure many others are walking around, trying to get noticed, or get help, and just haven't made it on to the radar yet.  But they are far from top of mind as they should be.  Meanwhile, I look around and I see a lot of the same people, having the same conversations, celebrating the same (false indicators of) success in advancing the causes that we care so deeply about -- and by doing so, failing to recognize just how limited their impact really is.  I watch as opportunities to dramatically re-think and re-imagine our approach to serious issues literally walk past each other without making any sort of connection.

A lot of people have criticized SXSW for becoming big and impersonal -- for losing its innovative spirit, for becoming so spread out and impersonal that it is hard to find quality panel discussions, make the right connections, or break through with a new idea or company.  I don't think that is the problem, at least not in this context.  In fact, the bigger SXSW grows, and the more people who attend, with all their different interests, and abilities, the more SXSW becomes an even greater opportunity to change the way we address serious issues. 

But change will only happen if we want it to.  It won't happen on its own.  The organizers won't figure out how to properly push a conversation about philanthropy and social good/social change without help.  The technology, design, media, and other communities won't magically show up and participate in a conversation about changing the world without being invited and challenged and pressed for better answers and ideas.  People will continue to pass in the hallways, fail to connect -- and leave events like SXSW without a different lens through which to view the challenges that exist in the world, and without projects and partnerships that have game-changing potential for the future of our society. 

None of the things we know are possible, and desperately want, will happen unless/until the philanthropy and social good/social change community really pushes to see these important topics more thoughtfully integrated. 

Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., was quoted in Politico's Playbook this morning talking about how corporations' view of D.C. has changed.  He said:

"People have lost kind of faith in the ability of government to provide solutions for their daily concerns. That's provided both a responsibility and opportunity for businesses and NGOs, to work together to get things done. It's opened up that space and created demand for it. So, the biggest difference is: You don't count on Washington to get things done anymore."

Dach knows what he is talking about.

Over the past seven years, he has been responsible for public policy, reputation management, corporate communications, philanthropy, government relations, plus the company's social responsibility and sustainability initiatives at Wal-Mart.  And over the past seven years, more than any other company on the planet I would argue, Wal-Mart has demonstrated its commitment to addressing serious issues - around climate change and the environment, hunger and obesity, and more.