BBC Manchester - Robin Hamma

An aspect of what I call the Holy Grail for the new media is how to bring in the voice of the citizen without ending up with Babel.

Here is how Robin Hammam is doing this at the BBC:-

Snip:-

The BBC was early in asking for citizen support and input.

So after the Tube bombing there were 7,000 emails and pictures coming over the transom into the news room at the BBC. After the Fuel Depot explosion there were 25,000 by noon! There was a staff of 7 who were overwhelmed by this.

The infinite scale and the infinite Noise created by having an open door was becoming apparent to the Innocents who then asked - how much will this cost to keep this type of interaction going? Can we in reality sift through all the noise to find the diamonds? Is this really participation? How could we find the quality as the noise builds?

These were the questions that Robin's team asked when they asked for permission to try a different track. By asking this type of question - they got the green light. They had exposed the unsustainable nature of and open door and no filters in a world where content was going to reach for infinite.

So what are they doing? They are creating a Space where they will have a Host.