My point is, anyone can innovate any time, anywhere. You can do it in small increments so no one will notice. A method I've heard here is that you innovate and change in small ways over a long period of time. At the end of your journey, everything is completely different but everyone thinks of ...

CRITIQUE & LAUNCHING POINT

Throughout the two-day think tank, many important themes continued to rise to the surface: community journalism, user customization, paperless/mobile, engaging/fun content. Below, I want to describe some of the observations I made about the process and the people as well as briefly critique each prototype. Then make some kind of inspirational statement about ...

GROUP 3 PROTOTYPE

The concept

Our group identified two major problems: the disappearance of local journalism institutions and a public disconnected from journalists. So we wondered, "how might nomadic journalists work and how would community life continue to be successful?" This idea builds on Group 2 (inadvertently), mixes Spot.Us, Innocentive.com, OhMyNews.com, uWeb/iTunes/iNews and other journalism movements: public journalism, ...

GROUP 2 PROTOTYPE

The concept

This group wanted to develop a point system on a news website. For every activity users do, they receive points. People receive more or less points depending on their level of engagement. For example, commenting on a story nets maybe 2 points, but writing your own story is worth 10. The site basically ...

GROUP 1 PROTOTYPES

The concept

They wanted to create a news experience around a physical public space, likened to town halls of Benjamin Franklin's day. So they chose to partner with places like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and other congregation areas within communities. In doing this, you create a cohesive community that centers around news, interest-based conversations and tasty merchandise. As ...

DISCOVERIES AND HIGHLIGHTS

How might we?

The rest of the day was spent identifying a series of problems in journalism. I unfortunately can only speak for my group but I think these were important points:

• News is horribly fragmented/decentralized
• Journalists produce for journalists because there is no reliable system of feedback from readers
• If readers need to learn "media literacy" ...