Innovation Incubators

Check out the new Knight-Batten awards

2007-09-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

(This is a repost with some tweaks of what I just put on the Rockchucks blog)

I'm going to come back with some deeper observations on my own blog later, but I want to post this quickly so you can peruse it and see how it validates our ideas, or how it may suggest that our ideas need a bit of a polish or a nudge.

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism were just announced, and you will find a couple of familiar faces (and some not) among the winners. Here's the link.

I think these projects might should influence/inform our projects as we move forward. Team Kansas, I particularly think the TechPresident project (grand prize winner) has implications ... Is there something here you can reflect/learn from/build on in what we're doing?

Team Kansas: Progress Report

2007-09-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

The KU/K-State team had an hour-long phone conference on Monday night (Sept. 3) and here are the highlights of what we discussed. We decided to continue exploring ways we could further develop and add depth to Better Letter and still retain its simplicity. Towards that goal, team members divided themselves into groups to explore the following (1) ways we could integrate video into the design of the product to allow users alternative ways of communicating. One possible solution could be to simply insert a link that would connect users to video-hosting sites that already exist (2) the possibility of incorporating Google maps to help public figures identify the geographic areas generating particular issues
(3) Research and identify open source voice recognition software that can easily be integrated into the site to allow citizens with disabilities to be part of the conversation.
(4) Incorporate a comments and Talk About feature into the design.
(5) The team is in need of a computer coder who can help design a prototype that would incorporate the above features.
(6) We further decided to explore the possibility of Beta testing the product on the sites of K/State and KU student media.
(7) The team will adopt the name Team Kansas.
(8) Each member will continue to research other innovative ways of improving our product.
(9) We will move the conversation to our blog and continue to be actively involved in blogging.

Rockchucks stepping up

2007-09-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

At our weekly conference last night, the Rockchucks team seemed to be leaning toward a broad idea that one team member dubbed "collabor-portal." Three or so members of the team are working toward nailing the idea description by noon Tuesday.

As they worked toward deciding on one idea last week, the blog discussion was all over the place, with some people floating some pretty theoretical concepts and others sprinkling in totally new bits of ideas. The discussion was quite lively and engaged, with a lot of back and forth in the comments areas. No one in this group seems shy, and at the same time, no one person appears to be dominating the discussion.

I'm waiting to see the articulation of the idea before giving it a tough critique. Up until now the ideas have been in sort of "soft focus" which makes them harder to evaluate from a practical standpoint. It's my hope that they would rather hear the tough critique from faculty now, than fall flat in Toronto.

As the week progresses, the team members will be critiquing the idea and they will also self-select into sub-groups for technology, presentation and research.

A question for the research folks among us: Is there any good way (besides transcribing notes) of recording the conference calls? Would that be useful to you research people?

Expiring minds wish to know ... ;-)

Group Webinar results

2007-08-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Team 3, now known as team devastator, had our phone chat last night. We have 2 ideas we really like. The group is dividing up to work on one or the other in more detail, start to mock up what it owuld look like, how people would use it. They have nice connections for local news organizations, are going after good target audiences, and have built ways for the users to be both consumers and producers of news which i like a lot. And they seem different from other things out there. A version of the 2 ideas are on the team blog - this week hopefully they will get even more fleshed out and pictures should start to appear.

We also have at least one person we're going to cut for non-performance. I'm ready to send at least one of the people a message today - anybody think of a reason to wait? They have missed a couple of chats, haven't posted, didn't work with the groups developing the ideas the last couple of weeks and didn't come thru with the research on the idea they had picked to work on. So not just one kind of non-performance, but several. Again - anybody have a reason I should wait/not cut them? Let me know

url for team 2

2007-08-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

http://rockchucks.wordpress.com

2007-08-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

Here's the group formerly known as team 3 - now known as team devastator

http://teamdevastator.blogspot.com/

Post blogs

2007-08-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Team leaders, or knowledgeable others, please post all three team blogs.

thanks,

Darcy

Here's the info from brandy

2007-08-23T12:39:00.001-07:00

Brandy will (already did) book all of the hotel rooms in Toronto.
Pay for and register all the people going to ONA.
Set it up so that any school that can't afford travel can call out travel agent and I will pay that bill.

I need!!

- To know everyone who is going - we are traveling there on Wednesday, 10/17, presenting on the evening of the 18th, and departing on the 19th.
I will need name, address, phone, grad or undergrad, if they are a member and the ID if so,
If someone wants to stay on Friday night, the grant can't pay for this, so I'll need a credit card to book the room for another night. (ASAP - the hotel is filling fast)

I also need to know if anyone is willing to double up. (would faculty share any rooms to save some $?)
I really need to know if there are any students that would have 4 in a room, 2 per double bed. I would need to get a list together of who is rooming together soon!

Team Rockchucks

2007-08-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

The team formerly known as Team Two is the Rockchucks (long story, and I suspect sleep deprivation was a factor in the misidentification of an actual critter Saturday morning in front of the IC dorms).
Here is the link to their blog.
We will be teleconferencing/meeting Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern time, 6 p.m. Vegas time, 8 p.m. San Antonio time, and I have no idea what's wrong with Kansas time ;-)
Should any "floating" faculty care to join Darcy and me on the call, pipe up --
Thanks!

Floaters vs consultants

2007-08-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

In preparing for Fall semester and Phase II of the Innovation Incubator, I feel that going with the role of consultant may be better than the role of floater for the non assigned faculty.

Keeping up on three team blogs, being prepared for three different discussions and thinking about the details of all the projects may be too much work when combined with other duties. May we consider assigning the "floaters" to the teams they worked with in Ithaca. As a result, each team would have two full time faculty members. Any faculty member could be "invited" by another team to consult with them on specific issues concerning their project.

What are your thoughts?
If we keep the floater, can the role be simplified?

blog url for what was team 3

2007-08-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

now known as team devastator
http://teamdevastator.blogspot.com/

this week they're looking into a couple of different audiences
still kicking around the video idea but looking for a focus, for what audiences need/want

till school starts anyway - we're going to talk on sunday evening at 8:30 eastern time

Kim

Jeff Jarvis has post about another incubator project in Journalism

2007-08-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

in his BuzzMachine blog

The project was over at the Economist magazine. Sounds like they were doing things similar to our project - be open, talk to lots of people, come up with something on the web that was innovative.

he has some good critiques of their process - the biggest complaint was that they didn't come up with a business idea as a philanthropic/social service kind of idea that won't help the magazine's business much in the near or long term.

And he describes (briefly - would love to hear more) a new class he's teaching - on entrepreneurial journalism. The students will have to do this kind of innovation process too.

Kim

NY Times story on mapping..

2007-07-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

..please share with teams working with mapping features:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/technology/27maps.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1185674824-rIy86jXTlN/ic+UuZPFgHQ

nifty tools for our work

2007-07-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article from ZDNet about some mashup tools that might be just what some of us are looking for to help online collaboration in this process. My husband stumbled across this on one of his listserves and passed it along, thinking we might find this useful. I am posting it here at Kim's suggestion ...
Here's a little snippet from the piece by Dion Hinchcliffe:

A bumper crop of new mashup platforms
... I’ve been been tracking many of these new or evolving mashup platforms and thought I’d compile my take of the leading players in the mashup space today, particularly given the number of new or significantly upgraded products in the last few months. To make the cut, all the products listed below had to allow live integration of functionality or content (data) over a network, provide an easy-to-use development model that is theoretically accessible by end-users, be available in at least beta form, and either consume and/or produce Web-based applications and services. Using this refined selection model, you’ll see this list looks a bit different from last year’s round-up of mashup platforms. Yet despite the removal of a few products, the list is bigger than ever with 17 products currently available that offer credible mashup assembly capabilities today...

A list of collaborative tools

2007-07-23T08:31:00.001-07:00

from the folks at Mashable (a social networking blog)
http://mashable.com/2007/07/22/online-collaboration/
Might be some tools the groups can use now - or after the August meeting when we're down to 3 groups;projects

they have a list today of mapping tools. earlier this summer there were lists of wordpress add ons, blogger tools, tools for online photo and video editing, and wiki tools.

Worth a look...Kim

Faculty Webinar check-in on Tuesday

2007-07-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Looks like Tuesday, July 24 at noon (eastern) works for the majority. I will contact Brandy to set up a Webinar call, and you will hear from her directly as to the phone number/access code.

Talk to you then!

Faculty conference call (pre-Ithaca) requested

2007-07-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

Following today's Webinar conversation with Dianne and several faculty members, it seems important that we (the faculty mentors) have another Webinar call together before our return to Ithaca on August 2. (Dianne said she would be hugely grateful for our input on two items.)

1) Are there students who have not been participating adequately in the process and should be disinvited at this point in time? If so, does it make sense to ask them not to come to the August meeting? It was agreed that the project's performance measures were adequately and clearly explained in Dianne's e-mail letter to all students in June.

2) How much time at the beginning of the Ithaca meeting should be given to the students to tweak ideas/finalize presentations? Should they be asked to present upon arrival or have an evening or 24 hours to reconnect (particularly mixed teams) and practice? A good chunk of the Ithaca meeting will be spent synthesizing ideas to three and defining teams/roles for phase two of the project.

Dianne will send another communication to students within the next day or so re: her conversations with folks at the ONA and key news executives (interesting developments!)..as a kind of positive motivator/reminder about the importance/seriousness of this project, with the potential for their ideas to redefine online news for the industry. (That'll put the fear of God into 'em!)

How about a Webinar call next week, Tuesday, July 24 at 5 p.m. Eastern? Or Friday, July 27 at 12 noon Eastern? Other suggestions?

August Presentation Template?

2007-07-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

greetings everyone:

would we like to consider devising a template for the final presentations in august? when i've been a judge for advertising campaign competitions in the past, the students have had a plug-and-play format including elements like objective, history, intended audience, sample implementations of print/radio/video/etc. (which would translate easily to our prototypes here).

a consistent outline across teams seems to force researched and reflective content while reducing fluff, consequently improving the clarity of the final best ideas.

just a thought that may be discussed here or during our conference call...

cheers.

Team Awesome plus one

2007-07-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

An update: We have adopted Steve Patterson from team 2. He attended tonights Skype session and is interested in Team Awesome's idea.

Comments feed is active!

2007-07-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

The comments feed is now active. If you note the top of the sidebar, you now have a choice of subscribing to the "posts" feed or the "comments" feed. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't allow you to integrate them into one feed and I don't want to mess around with feedburner, so...I suggest you all subscribe to both feeds. This will keep you up to speed on all things going on with this blog.

Thanks to Sam for graciously opening up the guts of the blog to me so I could get this up and running.

Team Voltron update

2007-07-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

My group has had difficulty making a decision (on a single idea) via consensus. No contentiousness among members, just challenges in agreeing on a direction. So, we are in the process of voting on our blog (a weighted system, where their #1 choice gets 3 votes; #2 idea gets two votes; and #3 gets one vote). We should have our sole idea posted by tomorrow morning at the latest.

Another bit of news: Tyler Machado (St. Mike's), of Team 2, will be joining Team Voltron beginning today through our return to Ithaca (when teams will be reconfigured). Apparently Kim's Team 2 has lost four of the five students through lack of participation on their parts. Kim has asked us to "adopt" Tyler for now, so he can have some experience of creation netting with other folks. Tyler also showed an interest in some of the ideas Team Voltron was working on. I conferred with my team members and they are happy to have him on-board. Not sure what happens to Team 2's ideas? Any suggestions, Kim?

future research

2007-07-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

in our june ithaca meeting, we talked about future research ideas surrounding this project, one of which was kim's proposal of conducting a thematic analysis on the chat transcripts.

after our conference call last week, it occurred to me that we may not have all the data we might need to succeed at something like this if some groups are using phone interfaces and others are meeting in person (and probably not recording/transcribing those conversations).

my interpretation may not be accurate on this, but i thought i'd mention it in case we wanted to make sure we had such data from here on out.

happy monday.

monday presentation

2007-07-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

greetings.

i wasn't sure how detailed we wanted our team presentations to be tomorrow, so here's what i suggested to my students:

state project description
state project objective
outline project (key phrases/bullets fine at this phase)
state project benefits.

let me know if this is fine, too vague, or too comprehensive for what we'd like to see tomorrow.
thanks and happy monday.

feedback weekend

2007-07-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

just an update that i've urged my team to offer feedback for other team ideas as immediately as possible. at this point, our feedback flow is weak. my students are still shuffling through ideas and seem to be hitting walls when it comes to conjuring a truly innovative idea that holds the potential to revamp journalism technologically while maintaining traditional ideals. may the epiphanies soon flow...
cheers.

Raising the red flag on feedback (or lack thereof)

2007-07-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

So, I've scanned all seven team blogs and there are at most five comments for Sam's team's ideas (out of a possible 30-ish per blog). My Team Voltron's ideas have received only a single feedback response. My students were hesitant to narrow from three ideas to one tonight on our Skype check-in because of the lack of feedback. (The solitary response was actually quite helpful to them in furthering development of an idea.)

Charlotte-Anne, you asked me to "raise the red flag" on Thursday if there was limited feedback, and I am doing so tonight! Somehow, we need to light a fire under the masses to get them commenting on each other's ideas before Sunday.

Are the top ideas easily identifiable on the blogs? Some are, and some are not, in my students' opinions. My team will be revamping its presentation of "Top 3 Ideas" tomorrow morning to (hopefully) make it clearer where to comment. This is our last chance to press them for inter-team feedback before Ithaca in three weeks. Good luck!