Talk:Journalism Jam New York

Participants

• 20 journalists
  • help w/ tool design, and mentor/shadow kid
• 5 artists/graphics/layout people
  • for tools, templates, layout, managing printing)
  • in the artists category, it would also be nice to have someone with a video camera
• 5 coders
  • to make / find / modify / upkeep software tools*
  • CMS/publishing software/journalism/open source experience
• 5 educators
  • to... uh... help with everything, but probably also to lead the documentation-howto effort at the end
• Kids
  • 2 layout, 2 photo, 1 video, 15 reporters
  • equal number of j-school kids
• 5 organizers – 1 full time, 4 volunteers

Recruitment

Developers

• I've informally talked with a number of student developers at Columbia who say that they're interested. We're having our first official FC club meeting of the year this Wednesday, so I should have a better grip of how many people can contribute their time then
• I am also trying to reach out to Columbia's media lab. their main guy is on vacation this week, but I'm going to try to set up a meeting with him. It'd be great if we could get some developers from over there to contribute time
• Dan made the excellent point that we really need to get the developers thinking about this project before the actual weekend. I'm going to suggest next Monday, September 10th as a time to get together. I'll send out a more official email then

Students

• Lauren's connection at columbia prep is asking her students whether or not they want to be involved in this project. It sounds like the kids are pretty enthusiastic, and once the school year begins we should have a better handle on just how many kids are going to sign up.
• Another good suggestion from Dan: on the Sunday when the kids come in, we need something for them to focus their reporting on. is there an event in the city or at columbia that high school students might want to report on? or is this something where they should bring their own reports / research and just plug into the software the day of?

Famous people etc...

• I think it would be a boost to the developers is some cool people or people from cool companies dropped by to say hi. Lauren, how did your connections at Google work out? Is there any interest in having someone pop in and say hi? Do people have any other connections that might be worthwhile? Eben Moglen might be good

Journalists

• this is another part of the project that we need to be moving on fast. we need a couple of professional journalists to actually help write the content of the program. do people have journalist contacts, people who might be interested in devoting a saturday afternoon to writing this in a group?

Administrative stuff

• I think we have a room lined up in one of the Columbia dorms. it's not pretty, but it's cozier than a classroom and will be a good workstation for the developers
• we need food for the people involved in the project. any thoughts about where we might get free bagels, sandwiches, coffee etc?

Software

Let's start brainstorming what tools student journalists need to make papers and get their voices online

ideas:

• an easy layout tool. students submit several articles, rate their importance, and the software will arrange the articles on a page
• blogging tools?
• this is something where it might be good to ask our old high school journalism teachers (if our schools had them) what they would have like to have had

Tentative Schedule

Friday Sept. 21

• morning: brunch with everyone. explain goals. possible speaker (Lauren? Tim Wu? Eben Moglen?)
• Split into break-out groups

  * Journalists - outline basics of how to write an article, review, etc
  * Coders - begin work

• late lunch with everyone - status update
• dinner - journalists leave. coders keep working
• late night party - subway dance party (Fred, is this something you might want to organize? possibly tie into one web day)

Saturday Sept. 22

• lunch - have initial product design. begin integrating the product of the journalists
• late afternoon - visit from someone cool (Google person?)
• have some working product by the end of the day

Sunday Sept. 23

• morning breakfast - coders and some journalists meet with the students
• demonstration of the product - developers show students how to use it
• students get to work
• re-group around dinner time to present the completed newspaper