Robert Paterson's Weblog

Toronto Fire - Citizen Journalism - The New AP - Station Economics

There was a huge fire on Queen Street in Toronto yesterday. This picture is merely one of many on Torontoist that draws in pictures from citizens using Flickr as the pool. These pictures were being added in real time - way before any conventional news service was able to respond.

This is the resource that your local station has to draw on - IF you want!!!!

You are a small station with 3 people in local news - In your dreams you might get one more FTE. But if you go down this road, you will have thousands of journalists. You will also have thousands of committed supporters as well.

Our Barn in a magic moment

We are in the grip of winter but this is to come - our place after a summer storm - you can be here this summer if you want.

Commons - Co-working - Now mainstream?

You know an idea (here is a broad review of many of the commons/coworking sites out there)  has come when it is reported in the New York Times.

CONTEMPLATING his career path a couple of years ago, a young computer programmer named Brad Neuberg faced a modern predicament. “It seemed I could either have a job, which would give me structure and community,” he said, “or I could be freelance and have freedom and independence. Why couldn’t I have both?”

As someone used to hacking out solutions, Mr. Neuberg took action. He created a word — coworking, eliminating the hyphen — and rented space in a building, starting a movement.

While coworking has evolved since Mr. Neuberg’s epiphany in 2005, dozens of places around the country and increasingly around the world now offer such arrangements, where someone sets up an office and rents out desks, creating a community of people who have different jobs but who want to share ideas.

“It’s nourishing on a fundamental level,” said John Vlahides, the executive editor of 71miles.com, a travel site covering Northern California, who rents a desk for $175 a month at one of Mr. Neuberg’s original sites, the Hat Factory. “And if you’re not nourished, how can you be creative?”

Coworking sites are up and running from Argentina to Australia and many places in between, although a wiki site on coworking shows that most are in the United States. While some have grown-up-sounding names, most seem connected somewhere between the communalism of the 1960s and the whimsy of the dot-com days of the ’90s, like the Hive Cooperative in Denver, Office Nomads in Seattle, Nutopia Workspace in Lower Manhattan and Independents Hall in Philadelphia.

The coworkers, armed with Wi-Fi laptops and cellphones, are in some ways offering a techie twist on the age-old practice of artists or writers teaming up to rent studio space.

Most coworkers say they were drawn to the spaces for the same reasons that inspired Mr. Neuberg: they like working independently, but they are less effective when sitting home alone

It is nice to know that for once we on PEI were at the very beginning of a global movement and we opened our doors at the Commons at the very start of the cycle. (Thanks Dave Hyndman for spotting this)

The Future of Public Radio & TV - The Value of Search

Public Radio and TV has so much wonderful inventory - if I cannot find it, has it any value? I have been at the Fast 2008 conference in Orlando with 1,300 other people who have had a profound lesson in the relevance and the power of search on the web 2.0 world. I have come to the conclusion that higher levels of search - enabling me to have IT MY Way and to reflect back in real time my preferences to the producers is going to be the key to any system that Public Media rolls out.

Here are some neat video interviews with people such as Dan Tapscott and David Weinberger. MY favorite is Clare Hart of Dow Jones who showed us what "evolved search" looks like in practice today - where your world is presented to you.

I will leave Fast 08 knowing one thing. That Search will be one of the key ingredients in the new business model.

Imagine if I sent you a container full of DVDs. Packed to the top with DVD's. Many of them great films and shows but many of them not. Imagine there are 50 million of them in the container. Would this be helpful for you? In your busy day, how much time would you invest in trying to find the gems? With so many unknown to you, would you bother to have a look to see if you would like them?

My bet is that you would give up after a while. And so all that content would in effect have little value - even though it may have cost a lot to make.

Imagine the web in say 3 years time. Now for every conventional film, there are a million made by us the public - some of which are very good. There are more films in 2010 than have ever been made before. Now every film made will be there. (If film bores you, think books, or music, or shirts, or shoes) Think of a store the size of America - with no order to the layout or shelving) Will you have time to sort through all of this? I doubt it.

So of course when and should you find something that you like it will have value. In this new world of personal film, there will be thousands of films that you have never heard of that you might like. But the barriers to finding it are very high.

So I am now convinced that in a world of infinite information, finding what I like and what I would like will become one of the most valuable processes. Search becomes not a nice tool but essential. I even use it myself now to find my own stuff. I can't possibly keep up even with my own output let alone yours!

True search will not look like Google search box. I will want to know stuff that is important for me as a matter of course. I want events and stuff that will affect me to arrive before my eyes. I will want to be able to find stuff I don't even know I need.

My bet is that my friends will play a role in this. Even today, I would rather, in my time starved life, accept the recommendation of a friend than a stranger. He knows me and is filtering better.

For time and attention are scarce for all of us.

So as I struggle to understand all I have heard today - I know this. That the web has made the world infinitely more complex. There are too many choices out there for me to comprehend.

Evolved search will give me a perspective that will enable me to make meaning of it. Evolved Search will be like my own nervous system on the web. It will be an extension of me. It will filter as much as find.

Our nervous system deliberately limits noise. The world and life offer us too much data. So our eyesight is confined to a narrow bandwidth. Our hearing can be selective - enabling most of us to hear what others say in a crowd. We have evolved to select out the important from the noise. So it will be with Search - it too will have to constrain but also allow - allow what is most meaningful for each of us.

A Mother speaks for choice

Who could say this better?

Child Care Facilities Act - Conflict of Interest Part 1

What would it be like if a inner group of your neighbors had discretion about how the building code was applied if you wanted to add a room to your house? Weird right? Today if you meet code - you can proceed. If you plan to meet code, you will be fine. If your neigbours had control - the process might never end. What if you had annoyed one of them? Could you predict anything unless of course you were on the inside of such a group? Would the regulations mean anything?

Well that is what it is like on PEI to get your self licensed or to get a day care licensed. On PEI we have such an inner group!

The regulations don't matter as much as getting the support of an inner group who have a vested interest in the status quo.

There is no good reason to have such a group. No other province has one and it should go as part of the changes to the act.

A major part of many people's concern about the proposed changes to the act is that if the new wording "May" is used in stead of "Shall" that there will be discretion to deny licenses to people who HAVE MET ALL THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE ACT. Officials have been clear. They intend to use this word change to limit the number of new places.

But it gets worse. For the decision makers who will have this discretion are not A bureaucrat working with the delegated authority of the minister but a "Board". PEI is the only province to have this layer between the people and the minister.

It is this board that will get the discretion and it is this board that already uses its discretion say in staffing. So if you are a specialist in early childhood care but come from another province or another country, your credentials are scrutinized by this body already with full discretion. This discretion in staffing and in who gets paid the government subsidy is already being used.

Where do the members come from?

The board is appointed by the minister. It has one parent - the rest are officials or leading members of the operating community. Of course recommendations as to who sits are made by the key officials to the minister. In effect the existing "in group" run this board.

No other province has such a body. In all others the minister is accountable and the issue at all times is judicial - DO YOU HAVE THE QUALIFICATIONS & DOES YOUR PLACE MEET THE REGULATIONS.

This provides a level playing field.  The core of such a system is the law. You meet the requirements of the law or you don't. What is the point of having any regulations if meeting them is not the real test. The real test on PEI is whether the inner group like you or not.

The PEI system is confusing, open to abuse and creates a conflict of interest. The board has to go.

The New York Times Challenges PBS & Praises Public Radio

As many go of to the IMA conference next week here is some food for thought from Charles McGrath writing for the New York Times today - my few comments follow at the end. Please ask yourself - How accurate is his appreciation of where public tv is today. If you agree and you are involved, please then ask what are you going to do.

Scanning the PBS lineup, in fact, it’s hard to detect much of a bias toward anything at all, except possibly mustiness. Except for “Antiques Roadshow,” all the prime-time stalwarts — “The NewsHour,” “Nova,” “Nature,” “Masterpiece” — are into their third or fourth decade, and they look it. Every now and then a one-off like “The War,” Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s World War II documentary, the most-watched PBS series in 10 years, comes along and makes a huge splash. The broadcast of the first episode was watched by some 7.3 million people, or about as many as tune in to the “NBC Nightly News.” But such projects are few and far between, and they’re so overwhelming and time-consuming that for many people they mostly serve as lengthy advertisements for the boxed DVD set, which you can view at your own convenience and your own pace.

More typical prime-time fare — if you watch WNET, Channel 13, in New York, anyway — is the weekly rerun of “Keeping Up Appearances,” a BBC sitcom about class snobbery that was old 10 years ago. With her permed hair, dowdy clothes and fluty accent, the main character, Hyacinth, is practically a parody of a certain strain in public broadcasting: the one that puts on airs and wants to pretend to singularity.

Forty years ago it really was different. There were only three networks, and none of them were known for challenging or high-minded programming. Indeed, public broadcasting came into being out of collective despair over what had become of the airwaves. Cable has changed all that. There are not only countless more channels to chose from now, but many offer the kind of stuff that in the past you could see only on public TV, and in at least some instances they do it better. (I think that this is the key point he makes)

The stunning (and stunningly expensive) BBC documentary “Planet Earth,” for example, which in the old days would have been a natural for PBS, was instead broadcast on the Discovery Channel, which could presumably better afford it. The Showtime series “The Tudors” is just the kind of thing — only better produced and with more nudity — that used to make “Masterpiece Theater” (now simply “Masterpiece”), once the flagship of PBS, so unmissable. Now it’s so strapped for cash that it has pretty much settled into an all-Jane Austen format.

If you’re the sort of traditional PBS viewer who likes extended news broadcasts, say, or cooking shows, old movies and shows about animals gnawing each other on the veld, cable now offers channels devoted just to your interest. Cable is a little like the Internet in that respect: it siphons off the die-hards. Public television, meanwhile, more and more resembles everything else on TV. Since corporate sponsors were allowed to extend their “credit” announcements to 30 seconds, commercials in all but name have been a regular feature on public television, and that’s not to mention pledge programs, the fund-raising equivalent of water-boarding.

In a needy bid for viewers, public television imitates just as much as it’s imitated, putting on pop knockoffs like “America’s Ballroom Challenge.” Even though a number of surveys suggest that a large segment of the viewing population still wants the best of what public television has to offer, there isn’t as much of that as there used to be, and when it is on, it often gets lost amid all the dreck.

Now McGrath makes his point about Public radio:

Considering how much it costs to create new topnotch programming, the best solution to public television’s woes is the one that will probably never happen: more money, not less. Here too public radio has an edge, because giving listeners what they want doesn’t cost nearly as much. NPR has benefited, moreover, from a huge bequest from the estate of Joan Kroc, widow of the longtime McDonald’s chairman, and you could argue that it has spent its money more wisely than PBS, spiffing up existing shows rather than trying to come up with new ones. Listeners complained mightily when Bob Edwards was booted as host of “Morning Edition” in 2004, a month before his 57th birthday, but the change invigorated the show and ratings are up. (Jim Lehrer, 73, has been with “NewsHour” since 1975, so long that some of his early viewers are now in assisted living.)

But by far the greatest advantage of public radio is that, by not trolling after ratings, it has managed to stay distinctive: it does what nothing else on radio does and sticks to its core: news and public affairs and the oddball weekly show like “Car Talk” and “A Prairie Home Companion.” At the same time, public radio thrives, in a way that public TV does not, from internal competition: in addition to NPR, the old standby, there is the newer, hipper PRI (Public Radio International), importer of the invaluable BBC World Service news program and distributor of innovative shows like “Studio 360 With Kurt Andersen” and “This American Life,” which NPR did not fight for.

Where would we be without this stuff, gathered so conveniently at the low end of the FM dial? How would we fill those otherwise empty hours when we’re held hostage in our cars? At its best public television adds a little grace note to our lives, but public radio fills a void."

What will just plodding along mean for TV? What if TV really embraced the potential of the new media? Would this not differentiate it from the herd? What if Public TV made it easy for people to find the best content in a world where content is infinite and where great content is now commonplace? What if it made it easy to have community surrounding this content? What if it used this media to radically changes its costs? What if it was able to use the new media to create connections with its local audience that would bind this audience to the station and change its ability to support itself?

All this is possible - it requires a few to step out.

We surely live in an age that is becoming more visual. Geriatric1927, first YouTube video had nearly 3 million views! It seems that an intervention with a few good men and women and a few good stations could offer up a new model that could take the nation by storm - but trying to get it all to happen in lock step - has I think no chance.

Killings at School

In the last week there have been 4 incidents. So what is your plan at your school?

• Feb 14 Northern Illinois University - a student killed 5 and wounded 16
• Feb. 12:  A 14-year-old boy shot a 15-year-old boy in a classroom at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, Calif. The victim was declared brain dead at hospital.
• Feb. 11: A 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically injuring a student during gym class at Mitchell High School in Memphis, Tenn.
• Feb. 8: A nursing student opened fire at the Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, killing two students before killing herself.

100 members join in a week! Facebook supports advocacy for the Child Care Facilities Act

There are now 100 members of the Facebook Group advocating for a proper examination of the Child Care Facilities Act on PEI. The group was formed 6 days ago.

100 may not sound a lot if you live in Toronto or New York but there are only 140,000 people here on PEI. If the GTA is about 4 million - that would mean a group of about 3,000.

The utility of Facebook is that it enables news to move back and forth very quickly - its notification tools are very helpful.

It's early days and it is not all clear. But what is clear to me is that having a few bureaucrats do what they want is going to get hard for them.

Until now, a typical government consultation was to have what you wanted already decided and have a couple of hours with the punters - everything was decided in the back room.

Well this is just not viable anymore.

The irony is that most people who have the control jobs in the bureaucracy have no experience of social software themselves. If I was in charge of a file and I really wanted to do a good job - I would use the tools that exist and have a real debate both in person and online.

I wonder if that is possible - is the need for control too great?

Child Care Facilities Act - More Time to Talk - So What is Quality?

Thanks to the Minister who is listening and who has extended the discussion to Feb 27 and to a time when people could attend.

So now we have some more time let's see if we can expand the conversation beyond the proposed solution - to limit the growth of spaces in the hope that this will increase quality.

What would Quality be? Is is about having clean bathrooms? Is it about having qualified staff? Is it about the space and the furniture? Of course it is but let's ask ourselves what its all for - let's not get stuck only with the process.

What are the Outcomes that we all need to define Quality? Do the current reg focus on process and miss having an aim? Should not our Child Care Centres drive a result?

What kind of result do we want? It is clear now that THE OPPORTUNITY for children to be set on a trajectory for life is set between the ages of 0-6. This period of time determines the adult. More on this later. So surely quality means that each child & their parents are given the best environment possible that will optimize their development.

Quality is about setting the conditions for children to become their best at the time when the trajectories of their lives are set. How they learn - if they can learn is set then. How they behave and see the world is set. Their relationship to food and addiction is set then.

So are we in the baby sitting business or in the human development business? The OECD has an opinion about how we are doing. Here is how the OECD saw it in a report in 2004 when it reviewed PEI's Child Care & those of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and BC.

• Canada's child care system is a fragmented, money wasting patchwork of programs that provides babysitting for working parents but disregards a growing body of global research that shows educating preschool minds provides lifelong dividends there needs to be some sort of policy agreement about the services for young children to give them as high a quality as possible.

• While they came across some child care centres that were top notch, many other centres were found wanting with quality depending on the calibre of the child care director

• In many centres they found barren, poorly lit rooms with an abundance of plastic toys and games that were of doubtful learning quality - play grounds were lacking - over protective child care workers were frequently forcing their charges to sit down and not move which runs counter to children's natural instincts to be active

In my next posts - I will say a bit more about Quality and the things that we know about our kids at this age and that the stakes we face