Talk:Journalism Jam New York

Participants

• 5 journalists / additional j-school kids (saturday)
  • help w/ tool design, and mentor/shadow kid
  • Brendan is contacting the j-school
• 5 artists/graphics/layout people
  • for tools, templates, layout, managing printing)
  • Brendan will contact the CCNMTL people
  • 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 / journalists
  • to help the students use the software / guide them on how to write articles
  • Dan has a journalist for sunday, possibly also a photojournalist
• Kids
  • 2 layout, 2 photo, 10 reporters
• 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?
• what's the feasibility of getting t-shirts for those people involved?

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

pitch to coders

One Laptop Per Child is an organization that seeks to build $100 laptops for 5 million children in the developing world. As part of this project, OLPC is organizing a 'New York Journalism Jam' on Columbia's campus. The Jam will bring programmers, journalists, and students together for one weekend, September 21st through the 23rd to build tools for young journalists in developing countries. Broadly we hope to make two things at the Jam:

1) guides for primary school students on the basics of journalism: how to write a lede, where to find a source, how to write an editorial, etc. These guides will be written by professional and college journalists, but in a manner accessible to elementary schoolers.

2) software for students to publish their work. Depending on the interests and expertise of the programmers, this may help students format and arrange a paper for printing, or help them easily create a blog and upload content, or may be something wholly different.

We're excited to see the output of this Jam, and given the expertise and enthusiasm of the participants, we're sure it will be both interesting and useful.

We need programmers with experience in web development and python to help the weekend of the 21st. Your time commitment is totally up to you, but your work may well end up in the hands of millions of children around the world. To find out more about the project, and to see how you can help, visit http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ Journalism_Jam_New_York or email me at bcb2114@columbia.edu. Thanks, and we hope to have you involved.

pitch to high schoolers

One Laptop Per Child is an organization that seeks to build $100 laptops for 5 million children in the developing world. As part of this project, OLPC is organizing a 'New York Journalism Jam' on Columbia's campus. The Jam will bring programmers, journalists, and students together for one weekend, September 21st through the 23rd to build tools for young journalists in developing countries. Broadly we hope to make two things at the Jam:

1) guides for primary school students on the basics of journalism: how to write a lede, where to find a source, how to write an editorial, etc. These guides will be written by professional and college journalists, but in a manner accessible to elementary schoolers.

2) software for students to publish their work. Depending on the interests and expertise of the programmers, this may help students format and arrange a paper for printing, or help them easily create a blog and upload content, or may be something wholly different.

We're excited to see the output of this Jam, and given the expertise and enthusiasm of the participants, we're sure it will be both interesting and useful.

In addition to programmers and journalists to help design this content, we need students to test it out and give us feedback. As high school students, you'll be a little older than the people this product will be shipped to (elementary and middle school students). But you'll also have the experience to give us useful feedback that elementary kids just can't. Your work using this software to write your own articles will help us make a better product, and in turn help all the students that will someday use it.

pitch to journalists

One Laptop Per Child is an organization that seeks to build $100 laptops for 5 million children in the developing world. As part of this project, OLPC is organizing a 'New York Journalism Jam' on Columbia's campus. The Jam will bring programmers, journalists, and students together for one weekend, September 21st through the 23rd to build tools for young journalists in developing countries. Broadly we hope to make two things at the Jam:

1) guides for primary school students on the basics of journalism: how to write a lede, where to find a source, how to write an editorial, etc. These guides will be written by professional and college journalists, but in a manner accessible to elementary schoolers.

2) software for students to publish their work. Depending on the interests and expertise of the programmers, this may help students format and arrange a paper for printing, or help them easily create a blog and upload content, or may be something wholly different.

We're excited to see the output of this Jam, and given the expertise and enthusiasm of the participants, we're sure it will be both interesting and useful.

We need journalists to help write content for this project (e.g. guides for students on what a lede is, how to maintain a neutral tone, how to find a source, etc...) in a manner accessible to young students, and also to help guide local high school students (and aspiring journalists) at the end of the weekend as they test the software. If either of these opportunities interest you, please email me at bcb2114@columbia.edu. Your time commitment can be as small as an hour or as big as a weekend - your involvement is up to you. But we need your help. find out more by visiting http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journalism_Jam_New_York; we hope to hear from you

http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/wallach.html

Software

This section is to help the developers collaborate and prepare for the weekend.

Mission

• To create newspaper software for kids ages 6-12 to teach journalism and allow them to share stories locally and globally.

Feature Brainstorm

• Printable newspaper
• Tutorial (animated?)
• Layout templates
• Local online blog
• Global online blog
  • Digg
  • RSS

UI Ideas

• Keep it fun
• Keep it simple
• Tabbed Interface
  • "Write" tab
    • Wizard like interface for creating articles/editorials/reviews/etc
    • Inline instruction on journalism
  • "Look" tab for previewing as you type
  • "Photo" tab for taking / uploading / selecting clipart
• Layout
  • Make front page printable version 3 column landscape
  • Figure out how to continue articles on separate pages

Technical Ideas

• Use python for the desktop app
• Use HTML/CSS for layout
• Embed a browser into the desktop app