A Personal Update
April 19, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Today’s post has two different themes, 1) a change in blog format and 2) my job search.
I wanted to start out by saying that I’ve changed the way things work on here a little. After getting several emails, I re-evaluated having my Twitter updates archive to my blog. I’ve decided that there isn’t very much value derived from having those posts reposted here.
This blog and my Tweets fill very different needs and have very different value. I have decided that while having a searchable archive of my Tweets here was nice for me, it really wasn’t providing very much value to you, my valued readers. I’ve disabled the cross-posting of Tweets on this blog until a better solution crops up.
In the meantime, be sure to Follow me on Twitter. About two weeks ago I hit 300 followers on Twitter and am now proud to be followed by nearly 350 people. Thank you so much for your support and I hope that you enjoy the insight and knowledge that I share with the community.
On another personal note, you may have noticed that my blogging has been inconsistent as of late. This is a short-term situation and I hope to resume normal daily posting very soon. As you know, I’ve been actively seeking full-time employment, and looking is nearly a full-time job. Normally I would be writing daily and scheduling posts a day or two ahead of schedule about ideas, thoughts, and conversations happening. However, I don’t want to jeopardize any of the opportunities coming down the pipe.
I’ve already had to make some tough decisions, and there will be no shortage of more difficult decisions for at least the next several weeks. As I make those decisions and finalize plans, I will post some information from the numerous conversations I’ve been having with wonderful people across the country on the future of information and knowledge distribution (formerly known as the news business).
If you haven’t already, I’d like to invite you to subscribe to my blog via email by using the form in the right-side column or by adding my RSS feed to your feed reader.
Are Podcasts Dead?
April 7, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
In case you didn’t know, I’ll be in Las Vegas Sunday-Wednesday for the NAB conference (National Association of Broadcasters). The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism is sponsoring my trip so that I can present Contributr to the masses. (Let’s hope Contributr is ready, more on that tomorrow!)
As I was looking through the available sessions trying to schedule myself into some I noticed a recurring theme, podcasting. Now I hate to rain on anybody’s parade but aren’t podcasts dead? Haven’t they been deemed not conversational enough?
I mean sure, we all are subscribed to a few in iTunes, but how often do you actually listen to one? Let alone actively look for more? I know I don’t. I’ve moved on, I’ve moved on to try to create and examine the semantic web. And podcasts just don’t fit into that strategy very well. They may not be static in location but they are certainly static in content. One you publish an episode to a podcast it just sits there… and people listen to it… but what else? What’s the extra step? … Well I just can’t seem to find it.
So you might imagine my disappointment when I am going through the NAB sessions schedule and see multiple sessions on podcasting each day, and only 2 or 3 sessions on ‘blogging’ total for the entire conference.
Is this where journalism is? Is this what the journalism folks think is hot? Haven’t they found Twitter, haven’t they found Facebook, haven’t they found that conversations are the latest and greatest things to hit the web?
Apparently not, and in my conversations with Jen Reeves it seems that the ‘industry’ is doomed to be 5-years behind as she puts it. Here I am creating wikis, blogging daily, coming up with user generated content solutions, enhancing new-media workflows, and creating conversations around my own life and here is the Journalism Industry just now trying to figure out podcasting.
There’s disconnect somewhere. That disconnect is what is holding back journalism and the news media in general, they’re not in touch with what consumers are using technology for.
As all of my recent blog posts do, I’ll link this one to my current job-search. There are quite a few journalism web content editor and producer jobs out there. Frankly, they’re almost a dime a dozen, news organizations realize they need to staff “the web” so staff “the web” they do. But where is the innovation? Where is the commitment?
Part of the struggle I have faced in my job search is that there’s plenty of work to be had out there, but very few newsrooms and very few news people “get it”. It takes more than just repurposing content from your printed newspaper or broadcast TV show onto the web anymore, that’s just not enough. People want to have conversations, they want to change, edit, manipulate, share, and copy your precious content. Are you willing to see what your public can do for you?
That’s the future of journalism. Don’t just talk to the public, let the public talk to you. If you “get it” email, call, IM, or @jdcoffman me. I’m listening, are you?
Convergence of the Future
March 19, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
News makers keep talking about backpack journalists and having reporters be good at everything. Now we all know that’s just not possible, but it hasn’t stopped the visionaries from proclaiming convergence journalism the future of news.
Convergence of the media is already happening of course, and convergence is the future. No longer is a television station just a television station. Or a radio station, just a radio station. I’ve been interviewing with news organizations trying to find a full-time gig after graduation and I recently met with a newspaper editor from a small-market.
He said something to the effect that “I’m not just running a newspaper, I’m also a TV station, Radio station, podcaster, blogger, information resource, and that’s on top of the seven printed products my newsroom produces”. This is what convergence is, its one media taking on and challenging the other media forms.
Back in the early days of my Journalism School experience they taught about how the Internet wasn’t the end-all of media, much to the contrary each individual media had its own benefits. Well, yes that’s true in part, each form of media (broadcast, print, online, social, etc) does have distinct advantages and disadvantages, but that’s the great thing about the Internet, it allows each of those media to succeed and distribute their product in an open-market of consumers and viewers.
The Internet brings all of those competing old-media technologies and pardon the cliche, it creates synergies between them. No longer is a newspaper just a newspaper, but instead its a radio station, tv station, web site, and a community in and of itself.
This is the Real future of convergence journalism, a combined news product that reaches all people equally and in multiple formats. We’re already doing this in many cases but news makers haven’t taken it far enough yet.
Convergence journalism to me is all about taking advantage of the things that make a particular medium what it is. Television is immensely visual for instance, but a 30 minute newscast can’t begin to touch the detail a 1,500 word article in a major newspaper can. The power of the Internet changes all that.
The power of the Internet creates an open marketplace of ideas from which news consumers can ingest and even create their own news and information resources. One of the goals for my Contributr project is just that, make the communication between the public and a news organization easy for both parties so that both are more likely to interact and create even better news for the communities (and the world) that they serve.
If you’re interested in hearing more of my ideas on the future of journalism and the things that can be right now, subscribe to my RSS feed right here and always get the latest blog posts.
As always, comments are always open on this blog (although the first time you post I may have to approve it to make sure you’re not a spam robot) so join the conversation!
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-03-16
March 16, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Dinner= creamy tomato soup and cornbread. yummy stuff to promote some more programming tonight! #
- Good morning Twitterville! I’ve got 2500+ unread noticed in my feed reader, I think I might tackle some today. #
- Time to write some blog posts, I ran out of pre-fab posts last week so time to refresh and finish old drafts #
- @danieljohnsonjr go You! #
- Looking at some LOLcatz from icanhascheeseburger.com while lunching #
- You better subscribe to my RSS feed if you haven’t already. This week I take on the Journalism topics I’ve got in draft #
- Reserving parking for my Houston trip next week #
- Well I hate to see KU win like that
# - Fixing dinner: For the week! (Fiesta Meat Loaf, mashed potatoes, fresh steamed greenbeans, etc) #
- What’s the one big thing you would change about THE NEWS? #
- @t any suggestions for future convention personal marketing? #
Online Reputation Management for Individuals
March 6, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Online Reputation Management for Individuals: “”
(Via Online Marketing Blog.)
I’m a big proponent of online and personal branding, it’s one of those topics that you can talk on and on about, but not really accomplish much. If you’re new to the personal branding and online personality management arena, check out the blog post that I’m linking to up at the top of this post.
It covers a lot of the basic issues as to why you need to manage your online persona, and how to do it using free or mostly-free tools. It doesn’t take much, but doing just a little bit of in house ‘public relations’ on yourself is a good thing.
Surveys are now saying that over 65% of HR personnel and recruiters use the Internet to search and find information about potential hire, and yes I’m talking about searching Facebook and Google for you to see what you’re like.
I participate in a lot of social networking and other online sites where personal information about me is public, and much of that participation is planned and choreographed by me.
That’s not to say it isn’t true, but that it is certainly meant to put me in the best possible light.
One thing that I did recently not directly related to my own personal brand was to go ahead and register the .com versions of my siblings names. They aren’t using them now, but I’d hate for them not to have the chance to take advantage in the future when someone else grabs their NAME.com. Just something to think about!
Pie In The Sky - Where We Are Now
February 18, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Where We Are Now
The pulse of the Internet is in a constant flux and we in the new and social media fields are no different. As the first post in my Pie In The Sky series I thought I’d provide you with some links and resources to get familiar with the latest advances and information having to do with web hosting.
While we can talk about Cloud computing, grid hosting, etc, the foundation of the Internet is being threatened right now by what’s called Net Neutrality. Now I have my opinions and ideas about it, but I don’t feel confident enough in my own knowledge so I give you some links to learn more. And you DO need to learn more about Net Neutrality
- Wikipedia Net Neutrality Page and US Network Neutrality
- Save The Internet: fighting for Internet Freedom
Of course the topic of the Pie In The Sky series is cloud computing/hosting. Here’s some quick links to more information about cloud hosting:
- An Outline of how Cloud Computing Should Work - (by Jonathan Coffman)
- Wikipedia entry on Cloud Computing
Cloud or Utility computing is still in its infancy at this point but all signs lead to heavy adoption in the coming years. The technology behind stringing a bunch of servers together to share the load of processing billions of web pages at the same time keeps getting better, more reliable, and less expensive.
Perhaps the biggest success story of them all when it comes to cloud hosting is Google, they use tens (hundreds?) of thousands of commodity web servers to serve up the most popular site on the web to people of every country.
While many would love to hear Google offer such a service (and they may), we do have a few options right now. In fact, this site is hosted by MediaTemple on their (gs) GridService platform. It works quite well actually, my site is stored in a large Storage Area Network device and lots of servers have access to it at any given time. This allows my site to remain live and speedy in the event of a flood of readers coming all at once.
I’ll look at more of these services in the coming week but here are the major cloud/utility hosting providers right now:
- Amazon EC2/S3 is perhaps the most widely known and popular, they have fully adopted the utility computing but face problems with availability, speed, and a general lack of usability by all but the most experienced web developers.
- MediaTemple is the least expensive provider I’ve encountered and they provide a great grid hosting service.
- 3Tera offers enterprise level application hosting across a grid of servers.
- SoftLayer while not a ‘grid’ or ‘cloud’ hosting provider does offer many dedicated server options and load balancers so you could create your own Pie In the Sky. I’ve had servers with them in the past and they are my all-time favorite hosting company.
- ServePath offers grids of servers although I have no experience with them.
- Concentric also offers load balanced clustered servers for cloud computing
Stay tuned throughout the week for my blog series Pie In The Sky - Cloud Computing and the future of web hosting!
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Pie In The Sky is a weeklong blog series by Jonathan Coffman - Convergence Journalism Specialist and New-Media Evangelist examining the state of the web hosting business and the potential for cloud computing. Visit Jonathan’s blog all week for expert commentary, insight, and vision.
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Pie In the Sky - A Blog Series Examining the Future of Web Hosting
February 17, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
This week marks a major series of blog posts. All week I’ll be posting about my vision for the future of web hosting and the Internet itself. The series couldn’t come at a better time, web startups are everywhere again, personal computing and communication has been revolutionized, and creating connections between people, machines, and the world has never been easier.
Stay with me all week to get resources, tips, advice, vision, and more as I take a look at the Pie In The Sky, the future of web hosting.
The future is literally today as social networks and pervasive computing continue to dominate the online landscape just as we as a country continue to march toward an election season rife with technology issues that need to be taken care of.
Here’s a quick preview of some of the topics you’ll see throughout the week:
- Monday: Where we are now, the state of the Internet
- Tuesday: Major product launch and commentary
- Wednesday: Launch recap and review
- Thursday: Comparing cloud computing platforms
- Friday: Where the future of web hosting and the Internet lies
- Saturday: How Journalism, new-media, and social-media can take advantage of the future - Today.
In between major posts I’ll also be posting links and resources in micro-blog format to provide additional context, information, and commentary.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to my RSS feed to always have the latest content. Alternatively, you can also subscribe to my blog via email using the form in the far right column.
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Pie In The Sky is a weeklong blog series by Jonathan Coffman - Convergence Journalism Specialist and New-Media Evangelist examining the state of the web hosting business and the potential for cloud computing. Visit Jonathan’s blog all week for expert commentary, insight, and vision.
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Gannett Interviews
February 16, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Earlier in the week I attended two interview sessions with recruiting representatives from the Gannett company. I feel like they went really well and I must say that it’s comforting to know that ‘my job’ actually does exist now, when I began studying social and new media with a journalism concentration it was a little worrisome for my family not knowing whether or not I could get a job.
In speaking with the people from Gannett it’s pretty clear that they need people with skill sets similar to mine and the demand will only go up. Looking at the signup list for interviews from that day, there were fewer than 5 convergence journalism people, the rest were traditional media folk from television or newspaper.
It’s always nice to know that what you’ve worked so hard to achieve, an understanding and working professional knowledge of a field, may actually pay off in the form of a full-time position somewhere.
Of course it’s not wait and see if they call time, and hopefully they will. From the conversations I had with the recruiters it sounds like there are openings out there, and future openings that I would be qualified for and interested in.
Wish me luck and if you have any advice for me as I continue down the journey of my job search please let me know.
Make it a wonderful day and enjoy your weekend!
links for 2008-02-15
February 15, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
The Future of Contributr
February 6, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Contributr is a project that is near and dear to my heart, it’s an idea that I had several months ago and me and a team of 3 developers have been working on it since then.
Monday we presented our final product to a panel of journalism industry professionals, Adobe AIR specialists, and the good people at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. And I now have some bad new to report, Contributr didn’t win the big prize. So that presents us with some options and some ideas. I’m also interested in hearing what you have to say, so comment away.
Basically Contributr is this, it’s a solution to a problem that countless news organizations have, how to accept and process citizen journalism, otherwise known as user generated content. The workflows are complex, the technology is advanced, but with Contributr, those problems are minimized.
We created what I think is a great, and effective application. The company is setup as a Software as a service/ service as a service model which is gaining steam each day.
Furthermore, there have been multiple inquiries into the availability of Contributr for use in the ‘real world’ by large and small news organizations, something that I’m very excited about.
Here’s the issue now, we’re fairly confident that the Reynolds Institute is going to want to retain us to maintain and work on Contributr (they gave us a $5,000 development fund to work with over the last few months). But, here’s the kicker, since we didn’t win the contest, do they actually own Contributr?
From my knowledge of the law, I think it’s pretty clear-cut, despite their gift of $5,000 to further the development of Contributr, since we didn’t win the ‘contest’ I don’t think they have a claim to ownership.
Now of course, if their funding and support of Contributr is generous, we’d be happy to continue working with them, and would love the backing of such great people.
On the other hand, we’ve got a great product and one that we know for a fact there is demand for, so we could also probably do some tweaking, some redesign work and continue development on our own.
It’s a pretty complex situation but one I hope to resolve fairly quickly, we’ll be meeting with the Reynolds Institute to talk about further development and consulting opportunities in the next couple of weeks.
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