The official BarCamp NewsInnovation flyer

Thanks to Brian James Kirk for the design. Download the PDF here. If you want some for your newsroom.business, drop me a line and I’ll happily mail a few.

Attendee Interview #3: Steven King of the Washington Post Web Ninjas

(From Left to Right) Steven King - Editor of Innovations, Dan Berko - Developer, Jesse Foltz - Interface Developer.

Who are you and what do you do?

Known as the Web Ninjas, our rapid development team strives to create and implement new technologies and innovations in a reusable and sustainable form. We have the freedom to try new things and are tasked with leading to the news room to new ways of telling stories. The collaborative effort among the team and with the newsroom is what makes our projects sucessful.

The Web Ninjas are all journalist and technologist combined. Our back end developer is Dan Berko, innovations developer, builds the databases, scripts and admin tools to run our projects. Jesse Foltz is our Interface developer and is responsible for the front end applications and the visual elements. As innovations editor, I work to integrate our projects with the rest of the organization and find editorial uses for emerging technology.

Why are you coming to BCNI Philly?

We are always looking for new ways to present news and information and we enjoy sharing ideas with different people working on similar problems. We hope to find and contribute ideas during BCNI Philly!

If you decide to present, what would it be about?
We would be happy to present TimeSpace and how it was developed or we can give a inside look at our current project that will launch just before the Camp.

Where can we find you online?

Check out specials.washingtonpost.com/timespace/world/
My personal blog is cujosbyte.com

And finally, finish this sentence: What the news industry really needs is ___

The news industry must change with the evolving media around it. We must present quality journalism in visual and interactive forms from various sources through every medium possible. A news website must be as engaging and as interactive as a video game or major social network that users can’t break away from. We must drop the egos and forget about awards and prestige.  We must give more attention to what the user wants while continuing to give them what is necessary. We must inject our content into the media landscape the rest of the world lives in.

Attendee Interview #2: Brandon J. Mendelson

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Brandon J. Mendelson, and I am the College Community Organizer for the 1 in 8 Foundation.

Why are you coming to BCNI Philly?

Because I am a blogger with the Albany Times Union and have about eight years or so of college media experience, so I thought I’d have something interesting to contribute to the discussion. More importantly though, I feel like I can learn so much more at BCNI Philly by listening to what the attendees have to say.

What do you plan on presenting?

Not sure yet. Probably something about using Twitter to save lives. We’re up to 47,000 followers right now and I’m only just now getting into a groove with our tour.

Where can we find you online?

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/BJMendelson
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/brandonmendelson
Web: http://www.thebrandonshow.com

Final question, and its an impossible task. With one word, finish this sentence: What the news industry really needs is ___.

What the news industry really needs is to drop the bullshit.

Newspapers are better than this than TV stations because newspapers need to evolve. TV stations are still recycling the same old stories every year with the same old editorial calendar, and that model just can’t sustain itself.

Now up: BCNI’s very own scheduling application.

The Annenburg Building at Temple University has four floors where presentations will be given. However, our big schedule board will only be in the building’s atrium. To solve this problem, Carl Leiby has kindly allowed BCNI Philadelphia to use his awesome scheduling application.

The application, which formats the schedule to be read on iPhones and mobile devices, was originally used during BarCamp Philadelphia. That means there will be no need to run up and down steps to check and see what presentation you would like to attend next.

The schedule is emtpy now, but feel free head on over to s.bcniphilly.com and poke around. And, if you are really ambitious, you can bookmark the address on your phone.

Attendee Interview #1: Ryan Sholin

Who are you and what do you do?

Hi, I’m Ryan Sholin and I do a lot of things. By day, I’m the Director of Community Site Publishing at GateHouse Media, which means I train journalists at small town and rural newspapers across the country how to get ahead of the curve online.

I’m also one of the founders of Wired Journalists, a social network for journalists looking for answers (and questions) about online news skills, tools, and ideas. And I’ve been blogging for about four years now at ryansholin.com, and my side project for the last eight months or so has been ReportingOn.com, a Knight News Challenge project.

Why are you coming to BCNI Philly?

Well I’ve been excited about the BCNI meetups happening all over the country. I think it’s a great chance to get some small groups together and spend a day or two sharing what we’ve been learning about online news for the past few years. I’d love to see demos of what’s working at news sites, and I’m psyched to talk a little bit about some of the projects I’ve been working on.

Which, I suppose, leads me to the next question … are you going to present?

Everybody has to present, right? Yes, I’d love to talk about ReportingOn — by the time the Philly meetup happens, I should have something new pretty ready to show off. And if not that, then I’ll definitely try to share some of what I’ve learned about community management from Wired Journalists.

Well everyone does have to present, but we will have roughly 54 slots so if more than 54 come, that might not be the case.

Sounds good - I hope everyone gets a chance to share something.

Where can we find you online?

The easiest way to find me is on Twitter, @ryansholin, but you can find links to most everywhere I publish and share at ryansholin.com.

Final question, and its an impossible task. With one word, finish this sentence: What the news industry really needs is ___.

Only one word?

Haha, I’ll give you 5.

How about: hard work. Which is to say, you can come up with all the brilliant ideas for news and revenue that might work all day long, but nothing works until you put your head down and build something new.

Open for business

BarCamp NewsInnovation is but a few short months away, but that doesnt mean we aren’t doing everything we can to make this event rock.

If you haven’t heard, BarCamp NewsInnovation is the brain child of a group of journalists and media-types who want to throw away all of the negativity surrouding the industry and just get together to create something interesting. On April 25th, journalists, editors, teachers, techies, photographers, chemical engineers, web designers, bakers, and welders (among others) will get together to discuss the news industry.

But this event is not your traditional conference where you are herded like sheep from one drawn out keynote to another. The schedule for BCNI is … there is no schedule. Any interested party can sign up to present. In fact if you come and don’t present, we might be slightly offended.

Keep an eye on this space for attendee interviews, after party information, and general media awesomeness.

Oh, and you should probably register, space is limited.