Livestreaming details for Twitter CEO Evan Williams' visit

Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO, will be speaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s journalism college tomorrow. His Q&A will be moderated by professor Rick Alloway, who had the magical ability to keep me engaged in his JOUR 101 lectures at 8:30 every morning back during my freshman year.

So it should be a good time.

Want to watch? Here how:

• Where: NewsNetNebraska.org
• When: 3 p.m. Central (1 p.m. Pacific and 4 p.m. Eastern)
• How to ask a question: We’ll be taking questions live from students in the audience and also via Twitter. Send yours to @UNL_CoJMC, our college’s account.

I’ll be helping with the @UNL_CoJMC account tomorrow, but I’ll also have my account (@emilyingram) open. (Thank you, Twhirl!) So you can expect plenty of updates throughout the day.

Speaking of the rest of the day, Evan is also speaking at the Raikes School of Computer Science and Management, too. I was not involved in the planning of that at all, but here is what I know about the livestream for that talk:

• Where: Raikes.unl.edu
  
• When: 1:30 p.m. Central (11:30 p.m. Pacific and 2:30 p.m. Eastern)

UNL’s press release about Ev’s visit has more information.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams is coming to UNL J-school

Next week will be – in a word – crazy.

On Wednesday, I’m giving what I hope will be a fun and lively talk on how student journalists should market themselves on the Web. As one of the few journalism and advertising double majors at UNL, I don’t understand why every student doesn’t have – at the very least – an online portfolio, resume and presence on social media.

Seriously.

And after Wednesday, you could know the basics of how to have all three.

The Wednesday event will also serve as sort of a crash course of sorts for what students need to know about the Web as they prepare for internships and the ever-tiring job hunt.

Plus, I promise to keep things fun.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this by any means, but I figure that I’ve done enough trial and error on the Web that I should have some talking points worth a listen.

However, my talk is but an opening act for the main event that will take place Friday.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams (@ev) will be on at the J-School, and the College of Journalism and Mass Communications has planned a laid-back Q&A event for 3 p.m. in Andersen Hall.

If you’re a UNL journalism student, you do not want to miss this. But for student journalists who don’t call the Cornhusker State home, you’re still in luck.

The college will be livestreaming the Q&A on its Web site, and I will be moderating questions via Twitter.

Have a question about Twitter, or how it relates to journalism, or something else entirely? Send it to me at @emilyingram.

So, in short: Mark your calendars!

How to Market Yourself on the Web

Wednesday, April 8 at 5 p.m. in Andersen Hall (Room 15)

Q&A with Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter

Friday, April 10 at 3 p.m. in Andersen Hall (Room 15)

ACES-UNL is on the Interwebs

Confession: I’m a nerd who spends her free time building Web sites.

Good, now that we have that out of the way, you can go check out ACES-UNL’s new Web site.

It’s still a work in progress, but I’m happy with what we have so far.

While you’re at it, go visit the national ACES group’s snazzy Web site for our national conference that is sneaking up on us.

Silicon Prairie News highlights Midwest entrepreneurs

To most of the country, Nebraska is the middle of nowhere.

We’re considered a wasteland between Chicago and Denver, the flat part of the country that is much better to fly over than drive through, the kind of place that produces produce, beef and little else.

To that I say: What a bunch of hooey.

• Archrival, a youth branding company based in Lincoln, has created campaigns for everything from Spam Singles to Red Bull to the National Collegiate Rock Paper Scissors Competition.
• Plenty of my friends ran their own ag-related businesses before they were out of high school. Yep, small towns can churn out self-employed 15-year-olds.
• You can buy pickled asparagus from Ely Farms, a specialty food company that won a national FFA award for entrepreneurship.
• Saddle Creek Records has blossomed into a powerful independent record label, and the label owners have even opened a nationally recognized music venue, The Slowdown.

Bottom line: People are doing cool things in Nebraska. You just may not know it.

Two entrepreneurs are trying to change that. Enter Jeff Slobotski (@jjsnyc) and Dusty Davidson (@dustyd), the duo behind Silicon Prairie News.

… A website dedicated to providing news and information about Omaha’s creative class which includes, but not limited to, entrepreneurs, innovator, investors, artists and visionaries.

Cool, huh?

When looking at the future of journalism and keep hearing “niche-markets-this and niche-markets-that,” it’s easy to get lost in the macro view.

The World-Herald’s readership base is so broad that the paper can’t focus solely on the Omaha entrepreneurship beat like a blog can.

And judging by their site’s traffic, plenty of readers are looking for the kind of information SPN provides.

And to top it all off, Davidson and Slobotski are truly connected to their readership. They’re planning BIG Omaha, a May conference that is set to reel in some major players from the entrepreneurship world.

The full schedule is available and includes folks from WordPress and Threadless, as well as Jason Fried of 37Signals and the always inspiring Gary Vaynerchuk.

So what’s my point?

Kudos to Jeff and Dusty for showing Nebraska’s young, budding entrepreneurs that they can make things happen right here in the Midwest and for nurturing that spirit of innovation through events like BIG Omaha.

Siftables: The smartest toy blocks you've ever seen

I normally stick to journalism- or media-related topics on this blog, but these were just too cool to not share.

Plus, I find innovative ideas – no matter what they deal with – inspire me to think outside the box.

Now join me in wishing you had a set of blocks like this when you were a kid:

Newsrooms: Divvy up Web duties

This week’s tally:

• Four audio slideshows (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Two videos (1, 2)
• One podcast (1)
• One new blog (1)
• An assortment of online photo galleries
• The creation of daytime, Web-only reporting shifts
• A smooth-going second week of copy editors handling Web duties

For us, this is a huge leap forward. What makes me especially excited is that the workload for these projects was spread out over the entire staff:

• News reporters worked day shifts
• Features reporters came in for their weekly Film Forum review show
• Sports reporters blogged
• Videographers shot and produced the Film Forum episode and a post-game wrap-up video
• Photographers shot and edited their slideshows
• Copy editors tossed out the shovelware precedent in favor of a new system incorporating outbound links, related story links and a Web-friendly mentality

Though our Web department is still set off on its own (not necessarily a good thing), we can’t do it all on our own. (Our Web staff includes just four people; our total staff is around 150. You do the math.)

Takeaways from this week:

• A multimedia series can keep momentum up.
  Our audio slideshows were each paired with a features section story. (Props to Matt Buxton, our photo chief and deputy editor, for organizing the visual side of this series.)
• Your “rationalizations” can be your worst enemy.
  I put off integrating Web and print editing duties for longer than I should have as Web editor, arguing that it just wasn’t the right time, the right CMS, the right something or another. Our copy desk has done superbly in their new roles, and they probably would have been just fine had they been given them a couple weeks earlier.
• Web-first daytime reporting can be a tough sell.
  I’m having trouble filling my 10 shifts for day reporters. This could be for a variety of reasons: scheduling conflicts with class, not enough pay, not understanding the value of Web skills. I’m sincerely hoping the culprit is a combination of the first two and not the third. Either way, I’ll keep on recruiting.

A question: What recruitment/motivation techniques have worked well for reporters specifically at your news organization?

Douglas Rushkoff blows the roof off what you thought you knew

First off, don’t judge this video by its neon title slide. I promise it’s amazingly good and is unlike probably anything else you’ve run across lately on your RSS reader.

The official blurb about this keynote address:

Professor Douglas Rushkoff, Professor of Communications, NYU, provides insights into latest research on the transformative nature of the internet on the economic and social dynamics of consumers and users, and their commercial implications – vital information for regulators, industry and investors as they seek to remain relevant in this new ecology.

My translation:

Everything you think you know about how the Internet, economy and media intersect is wrong. Rushkoff explains what’s really going on.

(via Joey Baker over at CoPress)

It’s a long video and is pretty intense, but I assure you it’s well worth your time and brain strain.

CoPress and the problem of turnover at college news outlets

As I’ve risen through the ranks at the Daily Nebraskan, I’ve come to realize one major problem that is inherent in any college news organization: You will have a complete staff turnover roughly every four years. And, in most cases, turnover in top positions occurs at the end of each semester or academic year.

What that means is by the time you’ve settled into your new job and identified problems, you have only a short time to come up with a solution and get it implemented. That is if you can even figure out what that solution should be.

So how do we stop this frustrating cycle?

We share out knowledge and resources. And we do that through groups like CoPress.

What is CoPress?

If you’ve never heard of CoPress, stop right now and go poke around their site.

The guys behind CoPress are some of the most forward-thinking young journalists I’ve come across. Like most journalists today, they want to find a way to make news organizations sustainable online.

The difference is they are specifically focused on college news outlets and they’re working hard to provide resources to those who need them.

And believe me, we need all the help we can get.

A need for collaboration

The group’s recently redesigned site includes a message board that I hope will grow into a one-stop shop for tips from fellow student editors.

Last week’s discussion on the forum centered on how student news outlets need to collaborate. I could rework my original post, but I like how I said it the first time. In short, we need:

Notice the changes to EmilyIngram.com?

I’ve been working to keep my site’s content fresh and to make the design more reader-friendly. So in case you wondered what’s changed in the past week, here’s a rundown:

• Updated my portfolio page to include some audio and mapping projects I’ve worked on this past month
• Changed theme to Typebased by Woo Themes
• Fixed the error in the PHP code for the new theme.
  • I’m about 60 pages into a PHP how-to book, and I’m glad I’ve already got some use out of it. If you have no programming background but have looked at your WordPress source code some, I’d be willing to be you could understand this book. I’d recommend it for those looking to learn.
• Upgraded back-end system to WordPress 2.7 without any problems

That’s it. As far as work goes, we’re still pushing our Web-first mindset, and I’ll keep blogging about the obstacles and successes along the way.

If your student news organization is in the same boat, stay tuned for more tips on what has – and hasn’t – worked for us.

Copy editors take on Web duties: Lessons from Day 1

The Daily Nebraskan has joined countless papers around the country and integrated its Web and copy editing duties. Tonight was the debut of our new copyflow, and while we hit a couple bumps, it’s been relatively easy.

In keeping with my desire for more collaboration among student news outlets, I figured I’d give you the lowdown on what’s changed and the few tidbits of wisdom I’ve picked up on so far.

A comparison

Then: A Web department staffer would copy and paste all the stories from InCopy to into our CMS each night. It was pure shovelware: No outbound links, no related stories listed at the end of the story, no Web-first mindset.

Now: Copy editors who edit the stories also upload them to the Web, allowing us to make time for adding hyperlinks and related story boxes. Plus, stories get posted hours earlier than before.

My two cents

Make a step-by-step guide complete with screen caps

The more detailed, the better. If you’ve worked in WordPress or another CMS before, learning a new system can be easy-peasy. But I’m guessing this will be a first for more than a few of your staff members, so make things as painless as possible.

If you’re working in College Publisher 5 (like us), you realize the system has plenty of tabs and buttons. It’s usually easier to show rather than just describe them.

I’ll admit, It’s not exactly fun to put a detailed guide together, but multiple staff members have told me they like to have ours on hand as a reference. One who’d never worked on our site even used it as his only guide to upload a story while I was in class and no one else was around to help him. The copy editors who I’ve trained keep it in front of them as they upload stories, too, so it looks like it’s getting used.

Be flexible – and let others know what’s going on

I made a flub by not letting all the other section heads know that the copy desk would be taking on a few more duties tonight. A seemingly impatient editor can really frazzle a copy editor’s nerves, so ask your section heads to be understanding as your desk gets the hang of things.

Getting people to show up can be half the battle

Scheduling a training session with 10 people is never easy, and I had a less than 50 percent attendance rate at our first one. However, I did a second session later that day, meaning I only have a few editors left to meet with. Plan in advance and advertise the mandatory meeting like crazy.

Stress that this will be a resume-building experience

That’s no lie, either. A recent post by Mindy McAdams (@macloo)and a year-old classic post by Greg Linch (@greglinch) both highlight the need for journalists to have a diverse skillset. And if you’ve worked in one CMS, it’s much easier to learn another. If it’s between you and another internship applicant, you never know when your Web skills might just give you the edge. That rationale can be a good morale-booster if your staff feels a little hesitant or overwhelmed.

Nothing will ever go off without a hitch – and that’s A-OK

When you alter your newsroom’s copy flow, try to avoid any foreseeable problems, but realize some will pop up nevertheless. Each night will be a learning process, so relax and enjoy the adventure.

An unexpected perk

You might get better headlines out of the switcharoo

I’ve struggled to help copy editors see how Web headlines differ from print headlines. It seemed my handouts and e-mails weren’t doing the trick. So I was pleasantly surprised that the headlines on the site tonight were much more in line with what Web headlines should be. And I didn’t do any in-depth training on it, either.

I did give them a short list of pointers:

1. Be specific and use keywords.
2. Kill the cute stuff. (Search engines don’t grasp puns, plays on words, etc.)
3. Be clear and concise.

But I’ve given this same advice before and haven’t seen nearly as same results. My working theory is that copy editors take more ownership of their Web headlines when they’re the ones putting them on the stories. Whatever the reason, I’m psyched to see more SEO-friendly Web headlines on DailyNebraskan.com.

(P.S. Thanks to Lauren Rabaino (@laurenmichell) and CICM (@CICM) for their suggestions on Web-headline handouts. I ended up borrowing these bits from Journerdism’s slideshow.)

So how about you? Do you have any tips from when your news organization consolidated editing duties? Did I fail to answer a question you had about our new workflow? Comment away!