September 2009
6 posts
The internet is a wondrous anomaly, a technical and creative achievement grander than the Tower of Babel, an infinite tangle of knowledge, ideals, data, entertainment, beauty, trivia, terror, news, noise, hubris, despair. It’s a cultural blender, a mixmaster archive crammed with visions, twits and everyday things.
I’ve been thinking about the net, and its vastness, in anticipation of OneWebDay on...
OneWebDay: A toast to the net →
On 9/11: Bits, bells and bagpipes →
This week a New York museum dedicated to commemorating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, launched a web site and asked for submissions of amateur photos and videos shot that day. The museum, scheduled to open in three years, has already collected thousands.
The day is said by some to be the most heavily documented ever by amateurs - and whether it was or not is beside the point. It was in...
Hey big media, it’s time to invest →
Guest author Chris Seper is co-founder of MedCityNews, a health industry news startup. If you’d like to submit a guest post or become a regular contributor to We Media, contact: andrew AT wemedia DOT com.
Acquisition is part of the solution for “big media” companies to catch up in the era of new media. But they need to go further, including more investments in early-stage ventures.
Some recent...
August 2009
12 posts
Our friend Craig Newmark and his left-brain friends designed craigslist with the aesthetic panache of a spread sheet. From that perspective it is a success that would make an accountant blush: 47 million page views monthly in the U.S. alone, and revenues of $100 million annually from a small percentage of the site’s content that is not free.
But even the most dedicated admirer can see that...
A fine mess, reconsidered →
Getting things done →
Some people love to talk. All the better with wine and cheese.
Others are busy getting things done.
Between those two extremes you can ask yourself whether you’re stuck in an endless conversation, or if you and your business are focused on creation, innovation and achievement.
Here’s some of the latter. The winners of this year’s We Media investment challenge, SeeClickFix and The...
Honor among thieves: An invitation to Arianna →
Dear Arianna,
About 2000 years ago the philosopher Seneca said that “the best ideas are common property,” which is an old thought rediscovered as the fresh ethos of the Internet.
To be fair, the current state of being on the Web allows me to bring to the same sentence a Roman stoic with the Greek word addressing moral character. Fun, but too easy. Much like The Huffington Post’s recent offense...
SeeClickFix releases first iPhone App. →
SeeClickFix, a company that helps people report and track community needs like roads in need of repair, was one of the two winners in the 2009 PitchIt challenge. That’s our early-stage venture investment competition. We invested $25,000 to help the company get off the ground - and they have been working hard ever since building out the service, attracting a variety of media and government...
A good day to do big things →
Why we need editors and late night TV →
Vanity Fair put theirs on Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. If you value accuracy, clarity, spelling and good sentences, check out the work of people who wield smart pencils here.
If you prefer to watch and listen, William Shatner makes Palin a poet.
Share:
“Today is a good day to do big things,” Amanda said when was eight. It was so profound that I wrote it down and saved it. That was more than 20 years ago. She’s lived up to her words, but I seem to have let them slip over the years.
Today I was given two messages to once again heed the wisdom of my daughter: Can Do from Maira Kalman in her New York Times blog and Get Excited and Make Things from...
July 2009
20 posts
We’ve set the dates for next year’s We Media Miami Game Changers Conference. It’s March 9-11, 2010. We hope you’ll be there, contribute to the planning and dive into our annual innovation festival. For now: Mark your calendar, plan your budget and contact us if you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, hosting an exhibit, speaking, bringing a group, or organizing a workshop. The conference web...
One of the lingering myths repeated like a mantra by some professional journalists is that they are not only the best judges of what we should call journalism, but also the essential providers of the service. This “world revolves around us” drone earned a boost last week with publication of a study by Cornell University researchers that concluded virtually all news originates with mainstream...
We Media Miami 010 dates: March 9-11 →
News isn’t a river, it’s fog →
We’ve set the dates for next year’s We Media Miami Game Changers Conference. It’s March 9-11, 2010. We hope you’ll be there, contribute to the planning and dive into our annual innovation festival. For now: Mark your calendar, plan your budget and contact us if you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, hosting an exhibit, speaking, bringing a group, or organizing a workshop. The conference web...
Back in the September, I wrote that “one of the fundamental tasks of design and business is to stand between revolutions and life, to help people deal with change.” That was the premise of The Right Brain Rules, a strategic vision and a portfolio of assets for creating value into the future.
Allison Arieff goes beyond by proposing a national design policy. “Design touches all sectors of our...
One of the lingering myths repeated like a mantra by some professional journalists is that they are not only the best judges of what we should call journalism, but also the essential providers of the service. This “world revolves around us” drone earned a boost last week with publication of a study by Cornell University researchers that concluded virtually all news originates with mainstream...
Jonathan Harris is one of few designer/developers exploring new territories for stortytelling in the digital age. In The Whale Hunt, he gave us new ways to experience a story through creative interfaces of perspective, understanding and sensory engagement.
Jonathan is back with a new project, The Sputnik Obervatory, that documents contemporary culture through video interviews with leading...
These designs are not legal tender →
Sputnik: An observatory above the ordinary →
Back in the September, I wrote that “one of the fundamental tasks of design and business is to stand between revolutions and life, to help people deal with change.” That was the premise of The Right Brain Rules, a strategic vision and a portfolio of assets for creating value into the future.
Allison Arieff goes beyond by proposing a national design policy. “Design touches all sectors of our...
Jonathan Harris is one of few designer/developers exploring new territories for stortytelling in the digital age. In The Whale Hunt, he gave us new ways to experience a story through creative interfaces of perspective, understanding and sensory engagement.
Jonathan is back with a new project, The Sputnik Obervatory, that documents contemporary culture through video interviews with leading...
Live online: Avner Ronen and Betsy Morgan →
What every 15-year-old knows about media →
Today at Noon ET on the Naked Media show: Avner Ronen, CEO of media aggregation startup Boxee, and Betsy Morgan, former CEO of Huffington Post. Details here. Share:
Here’s what Mathew Robson, a a 15-year-old in the UK, wrote in a report for Morgan Stanley that has high-paid researchers, media execs and financial analysts wondering what they do for a living:
Radio: With online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio...
From Delhi to LA: Michael Jackson and me →
Sometimes all I can do is marvel at the spectacle of the connected experience.
My own private spectacle began a week ago with a glorious summer morning, when I walked from home to my office at Lake Anne Plaza in Reston, Virginia, a Washington, DC, suburb. A bit later a crowd of children in matching yellow T-shirts from assorted day camps gathered beneath my third-floor office window for a...
The Changing Face of News →
I don’t recall where I was when Buddy Holly died. But I’ll recall where I was when Michael Jackson died. I was on Twitter.
– One Twitterer by the name of toomarvelous
I will remember where I was when I heard the news about Michael Jackson because it came for me in an unexpected place in an unexpected way.
I was practicing on the putting green prior to a golf tournament when a playing partner, a...
June 2009
10 posts
What Makes A Brand Powerful? →
Over on my Fast Company Experts blog, I offered some thoughts on the new Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100 Study. Here is how my post begins:
Cone Inc released their “Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100” report yesterday - in which it valued (and ranked) the brands of some of America’s leading social, environmental and animal organizations. Not surprisingly, the report is already generating a lot of...
WeMedia is once again producing a regular podcast that features in-depth interviews with prominent media, technology, and social change figures, as well as distinguished experts on current affairs and news. Our goal is to help the WeMedia community understand the roots of the changes taking place in our society, hear from the thinkers and doers who are on the front lines, really understand the...
A Conversation with Chris McChesney, Franklin... →
WeMedia is once again producing a regular podcast that features in-depth interviews with prominent media, technology, and social change figures, as well as distinguished experts on current affairs and news. Our goal is to help the WeMedia community understand the roots of the changes taking place in our society, hear from the thinkers and doers who are on the front lines, really understand the...
A Conversation With Steve Wylie, Enterprise 2.0 →
Respectively submitted for your persusal: GM tanks. A plane falls out of the sky. The American president reaches out to the Muslim world. Newspapers slip-slide away. Every blogger has a better idea. Ashton Kutcher says he’s eclipsed CNN as media.
Surreal? Apocalyptic? Prescient? After forty days and forty nights of downpours, biblical storms, and consequential events where we move, we’re living...
Travel to another dimension to serve man →
Worth a read at Forbes.com: Knight Foundation Head Alberto Ibargüen is bankrolling dozens of experiments to save the news business. Can he rescue newspapers?
You may recall Knight was one of the winners of our We Media Game Changer Awards earlier this year, for reasons cited by Forbes: the foundation has pledged to invest $100 million to fund experiments in digital media focused on filling the...
Forbes Q&A: Alberto Ibargüen →
May 2009
36 posts
We haven’t recorded a podcast in a while — life gets in the way, you know — but we are back on track, effective immediately.
WeMedia conducts regular regular podcasts that feature in-depth interviews with prominent media, technology, and social change figures, as well as distinguished experts on current affairs and news. Our goal is to help the WeMedia community understand the roots of the...
Podcast: Melinda Wittstock from AskYourLawmaker →