Ecosystem

Using the tagging technique in Final Cut Pro described here, I was able to come up with a number of major themes from the interviews that I conducted with 13 leaders of the new media movement at the Personal Democracy Forum.

* Internet revolution was in the Demand Side and not just the Supply Side.
* Audience are not just consumers, they're now producers
* Audiences can now supply their own demand.
* Audience wants more choice and control
* Markets are conversations
* Journalism is becoming more of a conversation than a lecture.

I was able to get the word out about The Echo Chamber to a lot of people who have "social capital" in the blogosphere. My primary audience was the panelist participants, but I also found myself in many engaging conversations with people in the hallways and parties.

I was able to met a lot of great people out at SxSW, and I'm still digesting all of the different panels and post-conference Activist Technology discussion that I was invited to attend. It was a day-long gathering of activist digerati designed to build community and bridge the gap between Activists and Technologists.

I took a ton of written notes throughout the week, and I am trying to figure out the most efficient and quickest way to manage this knowledge for myself -- as well as disseminate it if possible. I'm hoping to go over my notes, make some audio recordings, and then some do some blog posts about it.

I must have pitched The Echo Chamber Project over 50 times over the last week at the SxSW Interactive Conference. I learned something new each time that I talked to someone about it because either new questions were asked or I adapted how I was speaking based upon the verbal and non-verbal feedback that I was receiving from them.

It is A LOT easier to pitch my project to people face-to-face, and by the end of the week I was able to convey the scope and relevance of my project relatively quickly and to many different people.

Here's the latest version of my pitch, and I'm sure that it'll continue to evolve over time:

I've decided at the last moment to make the trip out to the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, TX. I've attended the film and interactive conference back in 2001, but this time I'm going to be focusing exclusively on connecting and learning with the Interactive participants.

I think that we're near a tipping point with the citizen journalism movement, and I want to come out and see what insights I can gain and provide to others.

Below is the pitch that I've been sending out to various conference participants. It's essentially three different pitches with increasing levels of detail. My hope would be that if they are interested in the hook, then they'll read the other two pitches.

Today I got two links from some of the leaders of the New Media movement -- Rebecca MacKinnon & David Weinberger. Here's how it happened. Last week, I had a chance to bounce some of my ideas about citizen journalism with Rebecca MacKinnon at the Online Social Networking conference. We went back and forth, and I got her attention. I wanted to follow up with her this past Wednesday, but she got swamped with other things including a conference at the Nieman Foudnation called "Whose News?"

The Echo Chamber Project has hit the radar screens of some of the leaders of the New Media movement. Rebecca MacKinnon posted a link to my New Media Ecosystem and Dave Weinberger picks it up.

Here's an e-mail that I just sent to Rebecca.

Thanks Rebecca.

I orginally wanted to get my ideas to the people at this conference through you speaking to them, but I know that it'll get to them through these two blog posts.

Not only that, but these blog posts will trickle down to everyone else who is concerned about New Media issues.

The New Media Ecosystem that I propose here is pretty abstract, but to me this model is a lot closer to being real than theoretical. I'm going to do the best that I can to succinctly convey how close I am to actually applying this ecosystem to the post-production of my documentary.

This model will be applicable to the for large mainstream news organizations as well as for other hyperlocal and national citizen journalist outlets. But it can also be implemented for the collaborative post-production process for my investigative documentary. Before this theory can be applied on a larger scale, there needs to be a "proof-of-concept" with The Echo Chamber.

I refined my vision of the new media ecosystem at the Online Social Networking Conference 2005, and the following flowchart ties together a lot of my thoughts.

I've written probably close to 8,000 words about this chart across over 40 different posts at OSN2005. I hope to synthesize and summarize these posts as soon as I receive permission from some of the other participants to include their insights and questions.

Below are some additional notes about the chart.

I refined my vision of the new media ecosystem at the Online Social Networking Conference 2005, and the following flowchart ties together a lot of my thoughts.

I've written probably close to 8,000 words about this chart across over 40 different posts at OSN2005. I hope to synthesize and summarize these posts as soon as I receive permission from some of the other participants to include their insights and questions.

Below are some additional notes about the chart.

[UPDATE: I added more context to this post after receiving links from Rebecca MacKinnon and David Weinberger.]