I attended BB in 06 and 07 but couldn’t make it because of schedule conflicts this year. If you found yourself in a similar situation, then check out the very complete report here.

I’ve just started digging into this, but it looks like some of the deepest discussions came in the afternoon during the Mapping the Money panel, which included Ernest Wilson, Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California… and board member of the CPB. He chided public media for not keeping up with the pace of change. “If you don’t get this right pretty soon, the quality of democracy will decline and stagnate, and it will be our fault.” Strong stuff, leading to robust discussion.

I’ve always thought this conference was particularly provocative and invigorating; the other “public media” conferences belong exclusively to the wealthiest branch of public media, the radio and television stations that serve a well-educated and largely passive audience (in the case of television, a mostly diapered audience).

I’m happily a part of that elite public media segment and I like those other conferences (I’m a PRPD board member and we put on a pretty good conference ourselves), but as someone who is supposed to be making decisions about the future of public media, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that public media is much bigger than Public Radio and Public Television; that there are smart ways that we can all work together, if we’re willing to experiment thoughtfully; and that we bear the special burden of preserving democracy in a country where it’s under attack on many fronts.

Dennis Haarsager, NPR interim CEO, was among the speakers yesterday and AU’s Center for Social Media blog has an excerpt of his comments:

“We’re trying to envision a world in which everyone can be a producer, but thinking about how to visualize this new world can be a challenge. Haarsager said his organization is looking at thei work in layers, the top being the goal of “enhancing human understanding.” The next two layers that are considered, then, are “what we do and where we do it,” Haarsager said.

“I don’t know that there’s any one of us, even a national network, that’s going to be able to set an agenda for public media. We’ve now given voice to anyone that has an internet connection,” Haarsager said.

The bigger challenge is finding the voices out there and making sure they’re heard. “You can nominally distribute something by throwing it on YouTube, but making sure someone finds it requires techniques that are beyond the capabilities of many individual content producers. So there is still a role of an aggregator.”

– News from the Future of Public Media

I know a number of us were following the proceedings from afar yesterday on twitter. If you weren’t able to be there, here’s the main blog. There are some great demos there, related to the theme “Mapping Public Media.” I’ve not seen video of the sessions posted – perhaps I’ve missed it, or it’s not yet uploaded.

participatory culture is changing the nature and topology of ours. It’s ours in a different way. We can create works with strangers, with anonymous crowds, and in all the other ways we’re inventing. This is a very different sense of ours. And it’s not just that we can build Wikipedia or Flickr streams. We also get to make these works matter to one another: That we can surface and pass around the video or the prose so that it becomes a shared cultural object also changes the nature of the ours. 5. So, how does this new ours affect democracy? (And it’s more likely to affect democracy before it affects politics since those folks have a death grip on power.) How does this ours get turned into an us that operates politically? I dunno.

I like this idea of participatory culture strengthening the ties we have with other people – strangers or friends – and its potential to make us better citizens. Weinberger calls this his “failed talk” but it was actually quite good.

I don’t think BB has yet posted audio but Christin Roman has. Go here for a complete list (within the post) of audio available. Here for your enjoyment, the two presentations I enjoyed the most yesterday:

• Henry Jenkins
• John Palfrey

UPDATE: The effervescent Jenny Attiyah of Thoughtcast has posted interviews from Beyond Broadcast. At the moment, you can find conversations with Henry Jenkins and Bill Swersey. Check ‘em out!

Exploring the thread between participatory culture and participatory democracy. Mainstream media is interested in user-generated content, but it’s not likely to transform broadcast media. Their interest is a sign of thrashing around.

The excitement about democracy is that its ours. As we enter into this participatory age, with a new sense of “ours”, how does this new “ours” transform the “us” of politics.

A few notes:

Crumley: We’re becoming very sophisticated at the new literature – media. We’re beginning to understand it as a conversation. Perhaps concepts like “NewAssignment.net” are somewhat contrived because this kind of effort will happen virally. (my paraphrase)

Osder: We need to think through a system of rewards to encourage better contributions.

Crumley: Using user-generated content to draw in outside advertising, which benefits the host and not the content creators: User-generated content has the potential to be the advertisement. (again, my paraphrase)

This lecture was 15 minutes is length – a lot of information crammed into a small space, vut an excellent overview of the station of academic research into participatory culture. My notes follow:

Two recommended books: “Convergence Culture” and “The Wealth of Networks”

Does participatory culture lead to participatory democracy? We don’t know yet, there are lots of examples that show it can work.

Participatory Democracy – Pros: an open information environment, so people can make new networks. There are tools for individual activists, they can become a productivity tool for campaigners, and this attracts new participants. Cons – too much information, that could to old intermediaries emerging, we might confine ourselves to information that supports our views. Who can or does participate? Some states are fighting back with censorship and surveillance. Perhaps we should be shooting ahead to a “post-democratic” “global” order where multi-stakeholderism is the norm (Lovink, Rossiter). Refinements – Context matters a lot – what point are you starting from? Advanced democracy? Emerging democracy? It might also depends on what baseline you choose. For instance, is a little improvement better? Or should there be a transformation?

Economic Democracy – Emergence of a stronger middle class, which allows for the development of services in technological space. Vendor Relationship Management (Searls, Weinberger).

Semiotic Democracy – Control of cultural goods, meaning by many, and its link to participatory culture and democracy. It’s a spin on the original meaning of semiotic democracy. It might mean more YouTube and less Disney. Cons – how many actually participate and if it’s a small number, does that advance democracy?

Takeaways

The web now is about creativity, innovation. Much of what’s interesting is happening outside the United States. Big media companies are struggling to figure out the culture, trying to catch up. The legal and political battle for the future of the internet will have substantial implications for the way in which democracy evolves. But the outcome is not assured.

UPDATE: Before I get to the notes, this was undoubtedly the best presentation of the entire day, and one of the best of the entire week here. Jenkins’ work is brilliant and deserves more recognition. His book, “Convergence Culture”, is on my reading list.

NOTES:

What is the line that connects participatory culture to participatory democracy? How does popular culture intersect with democracy?

What is an ideal democracy?

• Participatory
• Active
• Open-ended
• Transparent
• Transformative

“Right now, democracy is a special event, every four years. But it needs to be a daily way of living.”

Convergence is a cultural, not a technological process. In a networked society, people are increasingly forming communities to pool information and work together to solve problems they couldn’t confront individually. We’re seeing a new form of participatory culture (Second Life) as citizens take media into their own hands. Interactivity this isn’t – that’s the property of technologies. Participation is a property of cultures. We’re acquiring skills now through our play, including our game play, which we will later apply toward more serious ends.
Participatory culture isn’t new – it’s existed for hundreds of years.

We need to support freedom of expression in all its forms. We need to fight the over-enforcement of copyright that threatens participatory culture. We need to engage popular culture – use opportunities to engage the issues as they’re raised by popular culture.

How do we know we’re succeeding? Mass media is trying to create fake grassroots media – they sense the power that comes from authentic citizen movements.

The Net Neutrality is an excellent example of participatory culture – the coalitions ranging across political lines, etc.

Audio and video streaming information is here.

We’re having some trouble with wifi inside the auditorium – something the tech people are furiously trying to fix before the start of the conference. (I’m in the blogosphere thanks to cell broadband.) I’ll be blogging throughout the morning into the early afternoon, barring any technical issues. Expect notes rather than highly competent analysis (do you ever expect that?).

More to come as we get started in the next several minutes.

Because of a minor issue (let’s call it Autosave), these notes are adapted from Jessica Duda’s excellent summary on the Beyond Broadcast blog. I summarize them here not to pass them off as my own but to have a record here of the sessions.

Diane Mermigas, The Hollywood Reporter

Both commercial and public media need to do the following:

• change their orientation and embrace interactivity
• understand how technology empowers the consumer
• redefine the concept of content
• deepen advertising and commerce
• reinvent business models
• view the process with an entrepreneurial spirit

Focus on the strength of public media – strong content

Public media needs an organized effort of producing content that is creative, independent, diverse, credible, and in-depth, with links to education and problem-solving. This will ensure public media’s survival and their ability to make money.

Media property rights are in flux. Currently, the web is a deliberate system with most online companies posting content through a filtering system and users consuming only what they specifically seek, which narrows their interests and creates an information vacuum. BBC, MTV are examples of the passive broadcast model of web delivery services; they could be more interactive – and more profitable.

The role of public media is thus to fill the void of the marketplace and monetize these ideas. Public media should learn from these models to create the services and interactivity:

• TiVo
• Ipod
• Open TV
• Visible World

Seek strategic partnerships

There are a variety of partnerships that public media should pursue. Serving as a content provider to other businesses can include providing local content, such as to Google. At the April 2006 National Association of Broadcasters conference, they discussed working with cable operators to obtain local advertisers as these operators have a local connection. Media companies with such partnerships have increased local advertising revenue growth by 30 percent in the past four years – as opposed to the usual three to four percent. Public media should do the same and align with consumer technology companies to expand digital delivery options.

There are also many unknowns, especially as old media financial targets and benchmarks are used to evaluate and set new media goals – without knowing how consumers will ultimately use the quickly-evolving technologies that will also affect new, unanticipated forms of expression, [such as Second Life.] Thus, making assumptions is challenging and focusing on the consumer is key. Overall, for every challenge, there are at least two opportunities.

Dan Nova, Highland Capital Partners

There is a problem of the “needle in a haystack” of online media companies/services. A new online firm is funded every day and they are all excited about the Web 2.0 world. Audience trends show that new outlets of public participatory media can grow exponentially as early as the first year, such as YouTube growing up to 6.5 million users and Technorati reaching 1.5 million users.

Low costs of participatory media and attractive business models

The old adage of “If you build it, they will come” has changed to “if they build it, they will come.” Participatory media presents many attractive low cost and high value content that in turn affect the criteria investors use to fund new participatory online sites.

Participatory media costs

• Low costs to attract participatory media
• Low customer acquisition costs
• Low customer retention costs
• Low marketing costs
• Low content development costs
• Low technology costs (open source)

Characteristics of quality content

• Easy to use
• Effective
• Entertaining
• Participatory

Acquisitions are increasing

Traditional media are being squeezed – being cash rich can be a liability. New media have had financial success, but the business models are moving quickly. Now, old media is competing with new media to buy new-new media.

How to evaluate participatory media websites through three main development stages

New opportunities

• Focus on the team
• Assess how the idea compares to the existing competition
• Review the development time and cost
• Don’t emphasize the business model specifics – it is premature
• Look at a valuation range of 0-5 million upfront

Mid-stage value drivers

The mid-stage of participatory media development is a tenuous time and is dangerous for investors as the valuation is based on the initial ‘buzz’ – not hard numbers of tried and true audiences.

Later stage companies

Assessing later stage companies, look for the same fundamentals as the new opportunities.

• Focus on the team
• Assess the revenue streams and sources
• Review the margins
• Confirm the financial sustainability
• Critically assess the business model – very important
• Assess where the biggest windows exist

Other characteristics of the successful later stage companies include: an “insane” customer focus, simple content presentation, huge market, active/missionary leaders, and constant improvement.

Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation

Business models discussed at this conference have largely been based on charity or advertising. In order to for them to be sustainable, public media must have a public purpose. The trends all show the revolution has arrived, especially as the two biggest commercial TV stations are putting their content on the web for free. Once measured by the household (radio, television), media consumption metrics are per the individual (internet, on demand); thus, changing the benchmarks and terms of media.

Changes in the public media audience – new creators

Public media should go to VOD on the internet as attention is the challenge – distribution is not the problem. Of course monetization is another problem for public media. Media cannot be a one-way company in a two-way world. The old media presented a push approach and treated the audience as mute. Now they can see the explosion of self-expression. The old media cannot ignore the public are creators, users, and speakers. The old media will try to make the public ‘feel’ as though we are interactive which may not be the case. A new way to assess media delivery is that old models are broadcast, cable TV, public TV and the new is “Independent Noncommercial TV” and the “networked individual.”

Much growth still needs to occur within the new media users as the current 40 million bloggers amount to less than one percent of the world population – public media need to reach the other 99 percent. At the same time, the internet, while useful, timely and convenient lacks public trust – to the extent local television ranks higher.

Recommendations for membership-based participatory media

One out of every two Americans are apart of member of a cooperative – namely credit unions which are a trust institutions. Information is also trust issue and we can use this concept of a membership-based, participatory organization to create our own credible content. The public should form and pay dues to media membership organizations to create their own local news so that the people can decide what is newsworthy. They should look for a base in civil society organizations and ask people to pay to join a group that allows them cooperatively provide their own content.

Ironically, civic society groups are pushing back on this idea – they believe the government should fund such public media. However, “you can’t speak to power on power’s nickel.” Professional journalists are also suspicious of citizen journalists and such membership organizations. Professionally-trained journalists should conduct the investigative work but media organizations should also have a space for citizen journalists to report other types of news and information.

Overall, the old media format is to report, edit, and control responses and have such [limiting] mottos as “All the news that is fit to print.” The media presented at this conference seek to break this top-down approach – from Google to Wikipedia. All of these models have different functions and are open and closed to varying degrees. If you give participants the chance to be a member and use more functions, the more they will be willing pay dues to have an impact influence beyond their community. We can have a chance to make that revolution.

Nesson delivered a brief and powerful address about the rhetorical space of the Internet, the central value of openness and the challenge posed by those who would curtail that openness. He spoke about universities and the mandate to create an “open commonwealth of knowledge.”

“Be confident. There is an optimistic future ahead. And the challenge is to be gentle to your enemies.”

Josh spoke about Chicago Public Radio’s plan to launch a second service next year. The service will be targeted to a new, younger demographic that doesn’t regularly listen to public radio now – a more web-savvy, non-traditional radio listener. Josh described the radio station as an outgrowth of the web site, rather than the other way around, and their plans to make user-generated content one of the centerpieces of the service – content modules that might include essays, discussions, and live or recorded music.

Todd Broadie is a part of the upcoming WYMS launch. The station plans to be heavily music-oriented, aimed at a younger demographic that doesn’t regularly listen to public radio now. Todd described their plans to insert user-generated content into the mix, with short-form news features, as well.

And Rhod Sharp of BBC 5 Live talked about the overnight show he hosts on 5 Live, BBC Radio’s News/Talk/Sports format; he and the show’s producers encourage listeners to submit podcasts, and they use portions of those podcasts on the show.

Our group felt that getting the best possible content from our audience will require:

• Encouraging, training, critiquing and commissioning them. This is a level of engagement, perhaps, that many of us haven’t fully factored into our calculations of the monetary and staff costs of such an initiative. But it’s clearly on the minds of Josh, Todd B., and Rhod, who described plans to offering training on storytelling, gathering natural sound, conducting interviews, and finding good equipment.
• Nudging your citizen content producers out of their bedrooms and dens and into the real world. That’s how they get to the issues in their community that are important and how they find other voices that can add to their stories.
• An extensive filtering system to find, fact-check, and rate all this content. Josh and his colleagues at Chicago Public Radio will have to mine existing content libraries like PRX, as well as process the stories filed by citizen producers, and the material generated by the station’s planned outreach into the community (ex. the StoryCorps booth concept). Everyone agreed that this is going to be very important to ensure an expected level of quality, although Rhod brought an interesting counterpoint to the discussion from his BBC perspective: NPR strives for a standard of perfection in audio production that’s unrealistic in this new kind of audience interaction. For instance, some engineers may reject mp3 audio for broadcast, but those standards will have to be reconsidered.

Should we pay them? Everyone rejected the idea of a general payment system, but thought that payment could be a part of commissioning work from citizen journalists. Rhod says the BBC constantly “trolls” for content, looking for people writing good blogs or making great podcasts and commissioning content from them.

Josh expressed a concern that others seemed to share: the “MySpace generation” doesn’t see public radio as a creative outlet; they can take their work elsewhere.

Brendan Greeley explained Radio Open Source’s approach to community media. The goal was to have the blog be the center, with the show as the outgrowth. Blogs are the new talk radio. Blogs make decisions – you decide what you want to talk about. A blog has motion – quick pace of topic to topic. The webpage is structured with comments posted under articles – so the listeners who want to comment aren’t pushed into a comment ghetto. We need to act like blogs – use permalinks; use Technorati; actually read blogs; act like you mean it; write fewer, more personal emails; don’t ask for links, ask for opinions; link out.

Tom Gerace of Gather: users create content, tag it, comment on it, etc. How to create value in this? You can transform your audience into a broad source network; apply editorial oversight: content selection and fact chekcing; guide the community engaged discussion around diverse and contemporary topics.

Rhea Mokund of Listenup.org: Listen Up is a network of youth media organizations, also funds them to produce content. This is designed to be a real world space for youth media. Site is largely curated by the young people who use the site.

Thomas Kriese of Omidyar talked about managing the community they’ve built.

Asked for the one piece of advice he would give to broadcasters, Gerace said, “Understand that you have to throw out what you know about your audience, and rebuild your understanding based on your audience interacting with each other rather than just with you.” Mokund’s advice was one word: “Intentionality.”

“The War Tapes” just won Best Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Bill Buzenberg spoke about Public Insight Journalism: “for every story, someone in our audience knows more than we do”, their use of “idea generators” like The Future of Small Towns. Those ideas become reports and series on-air, become comments online, become townhall meetings and symposia, and eventually generates more content. American Public Media has created the Center for Innovation in Journalism to offer Public Insight Journalism to public broadcasters around the country.

Terry Heaton said disruption is an opportunity for growth.

• Media is unbundled at the point of origin and rebundled at the point of consumption. (media is embracing the first part of this, but not the second.)
• Mediated people make their own media.

David Liroff spoke about WGBH’s new media and interactive efforts. “This is less about technology and more about engagement.”

We’re bad at predicting the future of technology; we have to understand that and the policy implications of it.

The inability to see the potential of commons-based media: we are blind to the opportunities this kind of media offers at every level; there has to be a balance between proprietary and open source. How open should it be? How closed? These questions apply from user-generated content to internet protocols.

We tend to undervalue the potential of openness.

We undervalue the costs of locking up content with extended copyright.

Why? Our understanding of “property” is still based on physical things.

The Internet is the story of an anomaly – the creation of an open structure when, if it had been created in the conventional sense, would probably never been as open – more like Mini-tel than the Internet.

Where is the balance of “open” and “control”? We need to be aware of our cognitive biases and how they shape our decision making.

Boyle: Leave as open as possible, as long as possible, so others can see possibilities that you can’t and make them real.