Last year SoCon07 was a big success and we were astounded by those numbers: 96 on Friday and about 200 on Saturday. This year, looking at the numbers we are about 150 percent more astounded.  When we started planning for SoCon08 I was thinking there might be Web 2.0 conference fatigue, apparently not in Georgia. One more interesting fact, last year Saturday was free, this year we are charging $15, mostly because we felt if people had to pay something, they would be more likely to show up. It is easier on the conference planners and helpers which include in alphabetical order: Lauren Booth, Jeff Haynie, Sherry Heyl, Timothy Moenk, Sean O’Leary, Barbara Vinning and me Leonard Witt. Apparently, that fee did not deter many from registering.

One figure which I am not sure of yet. Last year as the conference ended late Saturday afternoon, just six of use came to the Marietta Town Square for a evening pub crawl and dinner.  This year 72 folks say they want to join us. After a day and half of networking, we will see how many want to soldier on into Saturday night. Any how, last night, which was Saturday, I had to visit the different possible venues on the Marietta Town Square. Rough duty going from pub to pub, but alas here I am on Sunday typing away.

Finally, here’s another social networking, social media, Web 2.0 message. We did no advertising. It was all word-of-mouth via our various online networks. Does that mean we know all of these people? Heck no, but we all know some of them and they know some others. After next Saturday, everyone’s social network will be increased, fortified and energized. Welcome everyone to the world of Web 2.0 and SoCon08.  

There’s the Canon SD1000 for stills (the same model I already carry everywhere); a nice Panasonic 3-chip camcorder (consumer, not pro-sumer…we need to remain portable, you know); shotgun mic; an external hard drive the size of a Bible for footage; and a laptop the size of a boogie board (Dell, not MBP, but hey), all jammed into a spiffy and very comfortable backpack with our Choose or Lose Street Team ‘08 logos embroidered thereupon.

As they were filling his backpack, they were also filling his head with legal advice:

Yes, to appear in my videos — even if it’s because you stepped up to a microphone to ask John Edwards a question, in front of all those people and cameras — you need to sign my Guest Release. Otherwise, it’s the cutting room floor for you. I’m also going to need someone who is authorized to represent the Atlanta IBEW to sign my Location Agreement, saying I have permission to film there. Oh and I have to slap up Cablecast signs at the door, warning the rest of you that you’re wandering into the line of fire. Meanwhile, my MSM rivals will be pointing and laughing at me, who is now neither as credentialed as a “real” journalist, nor as free from restriction as a “citizen” journalist.

And who are those MTV citizen journalists:

The rest of the Street Team seems pretty cool — even the small handful of Republicans! Well, what do you want, it isMTV after all, so our conservative caucus definitely has the look of a token minority; but I’m sure Vermont, Rhode Island, Indiana, and I believe even Alaska (she’s hard to call) will do you right-wingers proud. The group is split right down the middle in gender, and, as an ever-so-slightly snarky article about our orientation in the Boston Globe says, we even have enough diversity to appeal to “Hispanics, African-Americans, and lesbians.”

She neglected to mention that we are also really, really, incredibly good looking, and do other stuff good, too.

By the way, Shelby will be at our SoCon08 conference on Feb. 8-9, 2008 at Kennesaw State University. We just broke the 146 registrant mark, so are on our way to 200 people at the conference. Having Shelby there will be like having your very own American Idol star sharing dinner with you. Who will you be dining with Friday night Feb. 8? Sign up now.

Yo, Shelby bring your gear. We want our MTV. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

Update: Marietta Daily Journal reports that Trooper Grant Rowe didn’t stop in time and caused this six car rear end crash chain reaction. He was just on general patrol.

 The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.

Being a resident of Georgia and the owner of citizenjournalism.org,  I felt obligated to provide the opposite view, which is in today’s AJC Op-Ed section.

 I was civil, but others on the Internet were less forgiving. Here is Dan Gillmor’s blog title: Needed: Regulation to Prevent Journalists-Turned-Professors from Embarrassing Themselves.  Rhetorica’s response emphasized free press and is also worth a read. TigerHawk takes the best nasty shot. But first, of course, read the unedited copy that I sent to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has the headline, at least online of “Citizen journalists: They don’t need to be regulated.” Here is the unedited copy:

As the owner of the URL CitizenJournalism.org, I feel obligated to respond to David Hazinski’s opinion piece yesterday about citizen journalism, in which he wrote: “The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.”   He doesn’t think the formerly passive news media audience members, who are now content producers, are very trustworthy. He adds: “Journalism schools such as mine at the University of Georgia should add courses to certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures, much as volunteer teachers, paramedics and sheriff’s auxiliaries are trained and certified.” 

 I agree with him that journalism schools should offer training for citizens interested in the news media.. In fact, the Department of Communication at Kennesaw State University, in which I teach, is about to introduce a new concentration entitled: Journalism and Citizen Media. Although we might offer a Citizen Media certificate, I am far most interested in helping future journalists understand the power of citizen media involvement and totally opposed to “monitoring and regulating this new trend.”

 For example, mainstream media have been guilty of what Dr. Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte of the
University of Texas calls “censorship by omission.” The voices of the poor, the disenfranchised and minority groups often go unheard. Now citizen participation in the news media is an opportunity to get the disenfranchised heard in ways impossible in the past. Who is going to certify which of those voices is most trustworthy? Will it be the members of the journalism profession, who are 86 percent white and almost 100 percent middle class? I hope not.

Furthermore, you can be a great journalist without formal training. In 1996 former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger did a national study of journalism education, entitled Winds of Change: Challenges Confronting Journalism Education. In her survey of relatively new journalists, those with less than 11 years experience, 27 percent said they had never studied journalism.

It gets better. Taking a 10-year slice of the major journalism awards and fellowships winners she found “the majority, sometimes an overwhelming majority” never studied journalism.” Here are her findings:
·  59 percent of print journalists who won Pulitzer Prizes never studied journalism;
·  75 percent of broadcast journalists who won DuPont Awards never studied journalism;
·  58 percent of journalists awarded Nieman Fellowships never studied journalism, and;
·  51 percent of journalists awarded Knight Fellowships at Stanford University never studied journalism.

Citizen journalism, which goes by many names including networked journalism, We Media, distributed journalism, and open-source journalism, is a direct outgrowth of the open-source software movement, about which Eric Raymond wrote in his book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.” The cathedral being the old top-down model and the bazaar being the almost out-of-control street market model. Much to his surprise and almost everyone else’s the chaotic bazaar model produced better and more rigorous software than the rigid top-down model. In the end, this open bazaar form of citizen created journalism will produce a better informed public and a more rigorous public square.

Models will be formed, just as they were in the open-source software movement, which will filter out the crackpots, vandals and incompetents, and it will happen without a certification board. It will not be professional journalism pitted against citizen journalism, it will be a combination of both and that’s what I will be teaching my students. In other words, I will be teaching them about inclusion rather than exclusion and about freedom of speech and the power of the free press even if that press is a blog owned by a solitary individual publishing to the world.