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David Eggers doesn’t know much about the people buying Panorama, other than that they are people who buy books from independent book stores, that they are ‘very intelligent’ and are ‘charming and good at parties’. He must know, however, that people are loving the 330-page newspaper. Now in its second run, Panorama is being lapped up by McSweeneys fans throughout the Bay Area and beyond. I rushed out on December 13 to buy the last copy at the student book store, and according to Eggers, most of the newsies didn’t make it from their car to their corner before they were relieved of their 10-20 copies. There was also a report of a tackling incident. Most unfortunate.
Eggers was at UC Berkeley last night – with Panorama publisher Oscar Villalon and associate editor Jesse Nathan – to talk about the paper that ’showed the Bay Area an exciting example of the kind of newspaper it deserves.’
During their conversation with J-School lecturer, Deidre English, the trio described Panorama as an ‘homage to the old craft of newspapers’. Said Oscar Villalon: ‘This wasn’t about reinventing the wheel. All the ideas from Panorama were ideas that were being kicked around in the newsroom.’ These ideas included ‘bigger design, a more literary bent, a wider array of voices and a longer paper’.
Eggers said, ‘We wanted to prove that some of these things might work and to give our friends in the newspaper business some optimism’. Villalon talked about the value of ‘unleashing people’ – giving them the ‘time, space and resources they need to get things done’. None of the contributors had word limits, said Eggers. ‘It’s finished when it’s finished,’ he told them.
The trio firmly believe that profit is the biggest obstacle to newspapers right now and that the solution is not to go digital. They talked about the fact that it’s a fallacy that newspapers are not profitable.
‘2006 was one of the most profitable years for newspapers,’ said Eggers, who quoted David Simon who said that 5 or 6% profit on a newspaper should be enough. I can’t find the particular quote he used, but did find Simon’s testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on the future of journalism in which he said:
‘(W)hen newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now – because bankruptcy has opened the books – that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits. In the years before the internet deluge, the men and women who might have made The Sun a more essential vehicle for news and commentary – something so strong that it might have charged for its product online – they were being ushered out the door so that Wall Street could command short-term profits in the extreme.’
With advertising revenue in decline, Eggers said that ‘for the first time, people will pay for the (newspaper) product’ (rather than advertisers subsidising it). At $16, Panorama isn’t cheap – although the team says that it’s a small price to pay for 320 pages of excellent content.
When asked whether Eggers was worried about the fact that some of the investigative stories (such as the story about the true costs of the Bay Bridge and about the Pakistani 25-year-old who taught himself law to defend people against foreclosures) wouldn’t make as much impact as they could if they were online, he replied that some of the stories have been made available online but that people would have to pay for the newspaper if they wanted all the content.
When asked about the costs of the model, Villalon said that as a prototype, the paper was more expensive than if it were being produced regularly. He said that, at 20,000 copies per print run, Panorama couldn’t make use of the economies of scale that could bring costs down, but that McSweeney’s broke even on the first run, paid all of their 220 contributors and would make ’something’ on the second.
Eggers says that Panorama should show journalists, by working together in a small collective, that it is possible to have a small operation with 10,000 readers a day, and a reading public paying $2, and that you don’t even have to be a non-profit in order to achieve this.
I’m not convinced that Panorama is necessarily a model for a daily newspaper (it took more or less a year working on an off to produce) but I am totally inspired that there is still some hope for newspapers and the printed word. And for that (and not even beginning to talk about the incredible writing, graphics and illustrations), Panorama has done its job.
I’m on the team at the iSchool organizing the upcoming InfoCamp. It all started when we were sitting in a meeting last semester talking about doing an event in the Spring. Someone mentioned InfoCamp. I emailed the organisers and Kristen and the team from InfoCamp Seattle welcomed us with open arms. It’s been a great experience so far – all the richer for having the Seattle team as supporters and collaborators (and providers of great event content that we’ve used as templates). Makes me realise how cool this model is and how we should do it for GeekRetreat – especially the principle of letting local groups decide on the specifics of the meeting but still sticking to some core principles around the unconference format, lack of advertising etc.
Anyway, more on that soon, but in the meantime, check out InfoCamp Berkeley and if you’re in the area, and you’re interested in information design, policy, experience or organisation, you are most welcome – to attend, speak and/or help out.
More below:
Mark your calendar–the first annual InfoCamp Berkeley is taking place Saturday, March 6 at UC Berkeley!
InfoCamp is an unconference for anyone interested in user experience, information architecture, interaction design, user-centered design, information design, librarianship, online search, information management, informatics, and related fields. InfoCamp features an egalitarian, community-driven format in which you, the participants, create and lead most of the sessions! The purpose of this format is to encourage collaboration, interaction, discussion, and real-time innovation. And, it’s a lot of fun!
Tickets are just $20 and can be purchased here:
http://infocampberkeley2010.eventbrite.com/
Learn more and keep up-to-date with the latest information about InfoCamp:
InfoCamp blog
Dror Kamir talks about the war of the wiki at WikiWars in Bangalore
Last week, I was in Bangalore for ‘WikiWars: Critical Point of View‘, a workshop organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (India) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Netherlands). As our invitation letter outlined, ‘WikiWars is not a traditional conference. It has attracted not only people from across disciplines but also people with different kinds of stakes in the Wikipedia knowledge network that we seek to build.’
I was pretty nervous about the event. It was the first time that I spoke publicly against the architecture of “free and open” organisations and projects, and the first time in a very long time that I’ve presented an academic paper rather than speaking from my experience or with my “free and open” advocate hat on.
I’ve discarded that hat for now. I think I had probably discarded it a long time ago – or at least started to understand that my role as critic will be much more useful. I had started to become disenchanted many years ago, but kept thinking that I just needed to work a bit harder, be a little more convincing, in order to prove that we really could build something better, more globally united, more fair and just than what we had built before.
WikiWars was an eye-opener. Almost everyone came from a similar place. Many of us are (or were) Wikipedians or open-source activists, and this is, I think, what differentiates this kind of critique from most of the mainstream criticism that we hear about Wikipedia. The perspectives of the participants came from a very deep understanding and experience of Wikipedia. It was this experience that made the one perspective from an academic with little (or no) experience of Wikipedia so stark against the background of such rich experience.
There were geographers, political scientists, social scientists, media researchers and artists – a hodgepodge of the people from Israel to Taiwan, the United Kingdom to Australia who shared what is so rare these days: a critical perspective on one of the world’s most powerful information sources.
At the beginning of the event, co-organiser, Geert Lovink talked about the role of the critic. ‘We know what a literary film critic is, but what is an Internet critic?’ he asked. ‘Usually the way we look at critics is that they are losers, but they have an important role that can be very productive – productive because there is a direct relationship between the way we talk about things and about how they are actually represented.’
‘It shows that people from the outside care so much that they will put something like this on,’ said Lovink. ‘It is a desirable state of emancipation that Wikipedia research moves out of the Wikimedia Foundation.’
After I had presented, I talked to Nishant Shah, research director at CIS, who must be one of the cleverest, most eloquent people I have ever met. He talked to me about the ‘politics of despair’ and said that my talk reminded him of this. ‘Despair is not negative,’ he told me. ‘Negative would be if you ignored it.’
I feel like many long, dark days of isolation are over – for a while at least – and that this is a community that I have the utmost respect for. Watch this space. WikiWars will be publishing a reader later this year with the papers from the event series.
Justin Spratt, Elan Lohmann and Daniel Neville shoot the breeze in true GeekRetreat fashion last Saturday
It’s exactly a week since GeekRetreat Stanford Valley and I’m sitting in my freezing cold Berkeley apartment collecting my thoughts and the countless pages of notes that I wrote on the plane back to the US on Monday night. (Moving around the world at such an alarming rate is such wonderful medicine for perspective.)
After some heart-warming perspectives from participants (Marlon Parker, Snowgoose, Jarred Cinman, Eve Dmochowska have all written insightful, provocative posts – but there are others still emerging) there has been a great deal of debate whether the retreat is a ‘talk fest’ or whether ‘anything changes’ as a result.
I think this debate is fascinating – but for less than obvious reasons.
The first is implied with the horrible ‘circle jerk’ term (which I promise never to use ever again unless it is absolutely necessary). If you don’t know what ‘circle jerk’ means, please look it up, or take my watered-down explanation here. The term refers to a group of young men sitting around in a self-referencing circle pleasuring themselves. Although gross, I think this is a really good analogy for the kind of self-referencing, isolated, homogenous, male-dominated community that often dominates when members of the South African IT community get together.
On the other hand, I’m struck by the liberal use of this term for every event initiated by this community.
Self-congratulation, where not warranted, is no good (although I can think of much worse things). But I find it incredible how hard we South Africans are on ourselves, and how seldom we are able to congratulate ourselves and one another. I always remember an old mentor telling me how we Africans grow up with a very large burden. Everything we do has to save the world, or the continent at least – and it robs us of the kind of play and enjoyment that enables innovation to thrive. Being in the US I understand the value of congratulation, and I also understand the value of play – both of which need to be nurtured in order for us to build anything worthwhile.
I also think that the circle-jerk term is probably a symptom of the dissatisfaction that many feel with the self-referencing, smallness of the ‘IT crowd’ in SA. There are, however, some incredible people on the outside (and even the inside in some cases) who are optimistic about breaking up the circle and looking for some deeper meaning for the community.
This is the last that I’m going to say about it personally because I’d rather spend my time on more important debates, especially ones where the critique is more well-informed. Don’t get me wrong – I’m thrilled that there has been critique – it shows that people care, and that is our greatest battle overcome. I only wish people would be critical about important things like why a particular strategy for mentoring young geeks was chosen, why the culture of the retreat is dominated by particular world views, or why IT pros find it impossible to have a constructive discussion about race and solutions towards diversity.
I, for one, will continue to sing the praises of those who came and shared at the GeekRetreat – and especially those who will continue the conversation after the event. I’m only certain of one thing these days and that is that ‘change’ comes in different forms and that deep, meaningful change happens slowly, gently, without the kind of fanfare that we’re used to.
As Elaine Rumboll said in one of the sessions, ‘It’s questions that change the world; not answers.’
For me, and for most (if not all) of the people who attended the GeekRetreat, so many questions were fired inside of me to say that that, for now, is enough.
Over.
I set out for food and adventure after arriving at my hotel earlier today and passing out in the kind of drunken stupor only possible when flying half way around the world. Ramanashree Hotel is about 50m away from the renowned ‘MG Road’ (I don’t know much about it but it conjures up images of wide boulevards and people drinking beer on pavements).
I turn left onto the main drag and have to ask a couple of people to confirm that I’m actually here. It’s not quite what I expected. I stumble along what looks more like a bad tetris game than an actual pavement. To my right is a road over which uncountable numbers of auto rickshaws, taxis and other methods of transport fly. Their flying is accompanied by the very unmelodious hooting by the same. I wonder how hooting makes any difference when everyone is hooting… all the time. I guess driving in India is about understanding that we are all held in suspension in a kind of cosmic, dynamic fluid. We alert one another to our presence in the fluid by letting one know where we are. Perhaps this means that blind people can drive in india too…
I continue along the pavement, keeping well to the left. Apparently there isn’t a clear boundary between the main road and the pavement. This doesn’t deter the locals. Although it is dark and the cars are hurtling towards them, people calmly walk along with their backs to the horror behind them. I want to shout out and save them. Instead I keep my eyes on my real live tetris game, imagining just the shape of block that it would take to level it.
On my left I pass what appears to be an army recruitment center. There are large billboards with images of helicopters and battle tanks with captions like: ‘Join the army and be a hero for life.’ (ok, that isn’t it, but you get the picture) After being tempted to give it all in to play soldier soldier, I come to a small room in which a host of krishna (and other) idols and flowers and other gold bits and bobs sit. I wonder how this works. It looks like someone is sitting outside tending to the place. Perhaps you must pay to visit?
I hear the sound of electric bass guitar coming from the mall up ahead. A band of teenagers is singing bad rock music on a stage that seems set up for Saturday sessions of this kind. About 20 people are watching. This is my idea of a concert! It’s like being on the set of Idols auditions. A young teenage girl is singing about being in her room waiting for ‘him’ to call. She’s surrounded by angsty looking boys who strum violently at their instruments. They’re hot. She must be the talk of her school. I think I see her mom. She looks concerned – not because her daughter is singing bad rock music about boys, but that her other daughter might not have gotten it all on the small video camera that she is dangerously wielding.
Seriously doubting the fact that this is the MG Road that everyone talks about, I ask a nice lady who is waiting for the bus. She says that I have passed MG Road but that there is a great mall just up ahead for getting food. I forge on. The mall is just up ahead on the other side of the road. A zebra crossing lies across the road, but apparently zebra crossings in India are a little game of ‘how to trick the foreigner into believing that these symbols mean the same everywhere’. I make as if to start walking across the road, expecting the way to part for me like Moses parted the sea (it was Moses, right?) No one stops. In fact, they actually hoot at me! I stare indignantly and then beseechingly at the wall of traffic. After a while I realise that my blonde hair and pitiful stare are not going to work. I glance around me and try to work out how everyone else is getting across. Ah. This is how it goes. Lone travelers wait for a large enough group who want to cross the road to gather. Talk, handsome man confidently holds up his hand for the oncoming mass of traffic to halt, and people follow him as he bravely holds up the traffic for the few seconds it takes to cross. Just like Moses.
I’m in the mall and it’s crazy. There are a gazillion people here. There’s a Marks & Sparks; a Mango; a lady on a stage with a microphone selling insurance. Nice. I head up to the food court on the fourth floor and straight to what looks like the local Indian food joint. I don’t know what anything is, so I pick the ‘combo’ deal with aloo paneer (which I think means potato and cheese). After holding out my pale white hand with my receipt stupidly for a few minutes, my face lights up when the plate of food I was really hoping was mine is shoved into my gleeful hands. I rush a seat in the food court and tuck in to a plate with those cool little compartments. A dhal, a chickpea curry, a cucumber raita and four triangles of the most delicious fried naan-type bread stuffed with potato and paneer. Just the right amount of heat. Just the right flavors. Just the right combinations. I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.
As I eat, I’m starting to get a weird sensation from the people around me. No one is watching me! WTF?! I’m like the only blonde person I have seen in this place. I thought I’d be getting cat calls and propositions. It’s a relief… but also not.
I’m in such a good mood that I decide to splash out on a salwar suit. I go into a shop where there are many determined young women, opening up beautifully folded items of clothing and dropping them just as quickly. These gals know what they want. I look at a couple of the gazillion tops in as many colors and choose a pink short-sleeved top and black pants that look like they are made for a human-sized praying mantis. Apparently this is a salwar suit. I skip the try-on queue and purchase the goods. It feels good to be alive.
India. Baby. I love you.
I walk back along the way that I came, pausing only for a strawberry miracle smoothie and a smile from the gaggle that serve it to me.
It’s that time of the year again. Creative Commons and Wikipedia are working towards their fundraising goals for the coming year and asking users to donate to support the cause.
I spent the last five years working on building a global perspective on the commons and will probably spend the next working out what I did wrong. I worked directly with both organisations during this time, so it’s really sad for me to say this (and probably not very politically astute) but I feel like the only way we’re ever going to attack the problem of a lack of global agenda and global solidarity is by the funding issue. Here are my reasons in brief:
- Creative Commons (despite pressure from its international volunteers) still has a mostly male, mostly white, almost all American leadership. If CC is really committed to an international agenda, then they must at least attempt to involve a more diverse leadership in planning for the future.
- I know it’s a fundraising campaign but statements like this by Hal Abelson: ‘By supporting Creative Commons, you are helping to realize the promise of the Internet to uplift all of humanity’ leave me speechless. Until we have an international *common* agenda, until ‘all of humanity’ or at least major parts of it have ownership of this agenda (South Africa is the only African country in the CC International stable), we should feel ashamed to make statements like this.
- Wikipedia plans to spend $9.4 million in the 2009-10 financial year (up 53% from last year) and has, at last, a plan for spreading the wealth with a $295,000 new grantmaking program (that’s only 3% of spending that goes to chapters but it’s better than almost 0). Problem is that this money seems to only be going to existing chapters (there are no chapters in Africa). This means that, if you wanted money to go specifically to outreach on the African continent, you couldn’t do it since you can only donate to Wikipedia or to existing Wikipedia chapters.
I think that one of the worst things that organisations who have global goals can do is to stop people from countries who are left out of the agenda from donating money. Even if it’s just a small amount, CC and Wikipedia are perpetuating the myth that we don’t care about these issues in Africa.
My small contribution has, instead, gone to Global Voices. They spread the small amount of money that they receive pretty widely and their leadership team reaches each region at least.
We’re gearing up for the next GeekRetreat from 15-17 January in Stanford, Western Cape. I can’t wait! It’s going to be awesome 
And, best thing is that we have 11/12 scholarships for people from non-profits/social entrepreneurship ventures related to education and the Internet! More below:
If you’re working on or have an idea for an education project that uses the Internet to improve quality/access/diversity of education in South Africa, please fill out the form here by 7 December at the latest. If selected, you’ll join 50 social entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, tech journalists, and PR people making the Internet better for South Africa one byte at a time.
Scholarships are sponsored by Old Mutual and Sentient Communications, and will go to candidates who will get the most out of connecting with some of South Africa’s most important digital entrepreneurs.
The retreat will be held from 15-17 January 2010 in the beautiful village of Stanford in the Western Cape. Scholarships will cover participant fees + airfare (if necessary).
Find out more about the GeekRetreat by visiting the FAQ.
The biggest debates from the day was between those who think that this protest was ‘pointless’ and ’stupid’ vs those who think that it is ‘important’ and ‘worthy’. I’m fascinated about this question – about strategies for bringing about change, and the enormous gaps between how the debate is framed by both kinds of people.
Last night I went with friends to see Pomplamoose and others play at the Brainwash Cafe in SF. Brainwash is an awesome little place on Folsom Street where you can grab a beer while doing your laundry. We arrived at about 7pm in time to hear the awesome Danielle Ate the Sandwich playing her beautiful folksy music to a gaggle of geeks and college students. The place was packed. Apparently Brainwash can fit 59 people. There were already at least a hundred. I heard one of the guys selling T-shirts saying that they never would have expected so many people. It was incredible.
A woman came round offering the last of her pizza. It was the nicest piece of pizza I’ve eaten in a long, long time. People were edging inside the already-packed place. More were outside watching through the glass windows. Someone released balloons and we punched them across the room. A group of girls were dancing and goofing around on the benches.
We couldn’t move more than a few inches at this stage and could see nothing (Brainwash really is just a cafe – there is no raised stage so the performers were literally just standing a few inches from the crowd around them). I stood on a chair once to see Danielle Ate the Sandwich. She’s pretty hot in a cute librarian kind of way.
Eventually the Pomplamoose duo (Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn) arrived. Everyone was going crazy and I was starting to feel claustrophobic as people pressed up against us at the back of the room. The sound wasn’t great, but the music is just so wholesome and Nataly’s voice is so angelic, it makes you feel really happy. About 3 songs in, Jack and Nataly ran outside and sang a song for the people on the street who couldn’t get inside. She was cold, so she asked everyone to get in closer to warm her up. People loved it. They loved them for doing that. It was so kind. The whole event was just so wholesome – I feel like it’s one of those moments that I will remember when I’m old.
And, with this their only second physical performance (they’re a band ‘made’ on the Internet) not a single ‘traditional’ news channel is talking about them. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
