Eric Ulken: March 2009 archive
Maybe what your news organization needs is a 'spontaneous bashing together of ideas'
March 18, 2009
[Editor's note: The past week roiled the journalism business, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went to online-only, the former Rocky Mountain News staff tried to revive the paper as an independent website and Clay Shirky painted a revolutionary picture for what is happening in the industry.Rather than take a hipshot off those headlines, though, we're going to be proactive on OJR this week, starting with this piece from Eric Ulken, who offers a roadmap for established news organizations to enliven their online efforts.]
In a nondescript training room in the BBC's White City building in West London, about 80 people are huddled around tables with placards bearing names like "Dr. Who" and "Top Gear" [BBC TV show titles], engaged in discussions on topics ranging from user-generated content to alternate-reality gaming.
The assembled thinkers and tinkerers represent many different arms of the British media behemoth, from radio news to Web production to technology. About the only things they have in common besides an employer are an interest in innovation and an eye to the future.
They're taking part in the second BeeBCamp, an "unconference" in the tradition of BarCamp (and partly inspired by the Guardian's GameCamp) that aims to bring together forward-thinking staffers and a few outsiders to talk about themes loosely related to the future of the BBC. [Disclosure: I was one of those outsiders, and, in the everybody-pitches-in spirit of the unconference, I talked about my work in data journalism at the L.A. Times.]
BeeBCamp, according to the BBC blog's write-up of the event, "is designed as a collective, spontaneous bashing together of ideas, with no set structure to the day." A whiteboard goes up first thing in the morning, and anybody who has an idea for a discussion or presentation claims a spot on the schedule. For example, one participant wrote: "We own twitter.com/bbc. What should we do with it?" (Some ideas here.) More...
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