Your readers/viewers might not want to see a data table full of figures – so you can use tools like Many Eyes Wikified to visualise them….

Highlight of the day at News:Rewired (at least as far as I’m concerned) was the data mashing session with the OU’s Tony Hirst and Francis Irving from My Society.

I’ve been looking at how to mash data, picking up ideas which have led me to start looking at Access, JSON, Python and Django (depending on what day of the week it is and the latest thing to fly across my social networks).

One of the great things was how the worked as a pair – Tony on how to do in-browser mashing using datasets (like Guardian datasets), get them into a Google Docs spreadsheet in a machine-readable format and then use Yahoo Pipes to clean, create your own bespoke search tools and then export the results to other tools such as Google Maps.

Sounds scary – well the language of IT can sound like that. But pleasantly for most people (after the initial shock of being an a room with two knowledgable people, and Tony introducing himself as a lecturer in telematics) this is something doable by people with a brain rather than hard core tech skills.

Lots of similarity to some of the visualisations created by CAR, but this was open and networked tools rather than closed in Excel/Access stuff. Okay, that means that other people can see your raw data and could potentially get the story – but as Tony pointed out over a beer, it will improve your network by attracting experts. A good return on investment as it builds your reputation – not all editors may understand that important lesson though.

Not every journalist is going to want to do this, but we don’t all do the same things at the moment anyway. But again, as people found with journalism and technology-related skills, if you are getting it then you could be ahead of the game.

If you are interested, look at the presentation posted by Tony.

Check out the buzz from News:Rewired

If you are interested in the raw material from News:rewired, then have a look at journalism.co.uk’s News:Rewired buzz page

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That may sound like a contradiction – but it isn’t. There can’t be a one size fits all solution to the changes in the media world (whether that be mainstream, hyperlocal or personal news environments).

On one hand we had a classic us vs them, journalists vs (dirty term of at least one session) citizen journalism. On the other the idea of journalism=(0r at least should/must=)entrepreneurism compare to a pair of entrepreneurial journalists who operate in some very old school media ways while being innovative at the same way (that will be the SoGlos team).

There was legal advice that equalled “this ain’t the Wild West and the law still applies” and some excellent advice on how to get into datamashing.

What was a pleasure was being in the same place as people who care, are thinking and sharing. (and a personal pleasure to see members of my network whom I know and get a chance to chat to and others I’ve never met face to face).

I’ll be blogging and link sharing to other people’s blogs as I wend my way from London back to Cardiff.

And then I travel 200 odd miles to meet a hyperlocal journalist who is operating in my home city too – Llandaff News. Small world etc.

Nuff said (at least for a short while).

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• news:rewired Crowdsourcing (onemanandhisblog.com)

Malcolm has done a nice little look at the experiments going on in Johnston Press and what that means for the customer – importantly from the value for money point of view.

He says:

Sadly, a quick glance at paywalls shows that publishers – and Johnston Press in particular – need to massively improve the way they promote the benefits of subscribing …

Well worth a read

See what happens now

Been reading a lot about Communities of Practice recently and thinking I’m not quite looking at the right thing – particularly as Wenger and Lave are talking about communities within the same organisation. But one thing that has struck me in what I have been reading is this quote:

It is life itself that is the main learning event. Schools, classrooms, and training sessions still have a role to play in this vision, but they have to be in the service of the learning that happens in the world.

Etiene Wenger

Some of the most useful things I’ve picked up in my life haven’t been in the classroom, but from outside it. – from teachers, colleagues and former colleagues, friends and passing acquaintances. This kind of informal learning is vital to what we do.

So what happens when we want to learn about our job – or practice as I suppose I should be saying – but we are already tapping our in-house communities?

The answer is, obviously, turn outside. Once we’d have to go to conferences or union/local professional body meetings.

In the age of online networks we become part of an online or virtual community.

Question of semantics

But can what I’m looking at be considered a community – even in the online sense?

Community often invokes the idea of relationships – Gemeinschaft is one definition used. But some of the interactions I’m interested in happen between people who will probably never ever meet each other.

One argument is this could be a community of interest, or again community of practice – but what I’m thinking doesn’t fit in with what I’ve been reading of Wenger and Lave’s work.

Brown and Duguid, on the other hand, suggest that what is happening here is a network of practice.

In their book The Social Life of  Information they define networks of practice as:

networks that link people to others whom they may never get to know, but who work on similar practices.

Ok, now I feel I’m getting somewhere. They go on to add that networks of practice:

• Share practice and knowledge
• Usually have indirect links
• Members don’t interact with one another directly to any significant degree

They further say:
Collectively such social systems don’t take action and produce little knowledge. They can, though, share information relating to the members’ common practices quite efficiently.

Brown and Duguid believe that new information technologies “are well suited to support, develop and even strengthen… networks of practice. The growing reciprocity available on the the Net, while probably underused at the moment (bearing in mind they copy I’ve got was written in 2000), is helping people separated by space maintain their dense interrelations.”

So, back to Twitter then

My Twitter network can be broken down into a number of smaller networks, two of which are practice based: journalism and e-learning.

These networks do share practice and knowledge. But we do have direct links, and the ability to talk directly to each other, and there is a significant amount of interaction among various members of the networks on a very informal basis – kind of like being in a kitchen at a party. And like the kitchen party it isn’t considered rude to join in with other people’s chats.

I’d argue that tools like Twitter allow this reciprocity that was missing under Web 1.0, which in turn allow these interrelations to develop.

It does allow sharing of knowledge and I’d argue, at least in the case of people like @paulbradshaw, the generation of knowledge. But yes, this efficient sharing of information is crucial.

Admittedly Twitter is just one part of our online environment, just one tool that allows us to share, generate, discuss and reflect on the changes happening around us. But it is an interesting tool for a community/network to use to talk in both the professional and personal domain, and can be used to notify of developments using links – before we even get onto the idea of micro-reflection on events.

And as well as being able to share what we develop from our personal news environment or personal learning environment, the definition depends on which of my networks you come from, with our wider offline communities of practice – those of us who use social tools are often keen to meet each other.

Interestingly the strength of the interaction and its immediacy does mean that it doesn’t feel awkward when we meet in World 1.0 – for example I’d never met @adders, @shanerichmond or @foodiesarah offline until recently, but what was really our first meeting was actually just another way for us to carry on our chats.

So maybe, we are in the process of building some kind of community of practice that spans the online and offline worlds, spans company and (in some cases) national borders and allows us to talk and share with those who are interested in the same fields of practice as ourselves. Maybe it gives us a social life where we can share and learn while reflecting and sharing jokes (this means you @jemimakiss) during our normal life. Try explaining that one to your boss.

Not bad in 140 characters really.

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