Some take-aways from the Public Media Conference
After the close of this year’s Public Media Conference, a few of the more immediately apparent observations and take-aways:
- IMA put on one hell of a conference. There was a high caliber roster of presenters from both inside and outside the system. What’s especially notable is the number of outside presenters - Doc Searls, Jeremy Allaire, Sue Gardner, Michael Rosenblum, Doug Kaye, Dave Winer, and Tom Gerace, among others. In a time of convergence, the world outside public media can teach us a lot. And it did, this week.
- Andy Carvin knows a lot of stuff. In fact, if you hold the conference schedule at arms length and squint, you’d think that he and Brendan Greeley hosted all the sessions. With Carvin, Greeley, Jake Shapiro, Julia Schrenkler, and others, we have a strong home team for social media. And that’s the real point of this observation - IMA made a heavy investment in social media at this year’s conference. It’s the right choice because it should be part of our future.
- We’ve accomplished little or nothing since last year on a number of important fronts. Mark Fuerst led that chorus this week. He’s been frustrated for months, and I’m sure he’s not the only one. A year ago at IMA, we talked about things like federated search and a consolidated digital distribution system. At New Realities last year, we pledged to make them happen. This year, we’re back again talking about them. The DDC did a lot of work over the summer, leading to a report, but as Tim Eby rightly noted in a session, “So you killed a tree. What did you accomplish beyond that?”
- No action, but some incubation. More people are nodding their heads in the sessions this year. More people get it.
- Our broadcast presence is not the same as our online presence. This is somewhat obvious, but I mention it because I’ve said a lot over the past year about how our online presence must be as rich as our on-air presence. This is true because it creates the potential for significant service to our audiences. But this doesn’t mean that online is simply an extension of on-air; that’s only the starting point. Our on-air world is broadcast; our online world is a conversation. Our presence online should start with broadcast and build into new territory, new collaborations, new creations. What defines what we do and how we do it? Our values and our mission.
- Public Media professionals need get a clue about the web. I understand that many of our listeners/viewers are still trying to grasp what blogs, podcasts, rss, etc., are. But these are the new tools of our trade, and not understanding them at some basic level is like not understanding AM and FM.
Todd… Thanks for the comments about the web not being the same as broadcast. You’re right — it seems so obvious, yet we take it for granted. As a technologist, but not a broadcaster, I’ve been going on the assumption that broadcast people intrinsically can see the difference. But they don’t. The focus on social media at IMA this year helped illustrate just how different the web is.
Old-line broadcasters need to dig in and figure this web medium out, first as users, then as experimenters and designers and implementers. We need to change our missions — right down to mission statements and maybe even our nonprofit bylaws. Then the serious on-the-ground changes must begin.
Separately, I just wanted to add that for all the good things at IMA this year (and there were a lot of them), it seems that a piece of this puzzle has been missed. My own concerns now center on what must happen at the small-market and mid-market stations out there (like mine). From where I sit, it appears our smaller public radio and TV players are entering a period of sustained decline in terms of relevancy and service impact for the communities they serve. In turn, the revenue is declining as well. I suspect a wave of collapses and consolidations and partnerships is coming.
[...] Some take-aways from the Public Media Conference “Public Media professionals need get a clue about the web. I understand that many of our listeners/viewers are still trying to grasp what blogs, podcasts, rss, etc., are. But these are the new tools of our trade, and not understanding them at some basic l (tags: mundt ima beyondbroadcast publicmedia socialmedia publicradio) [...]
Funny - I was just about to say the same thing about you.