By Griff Wigley, on March 20th, 2007
At the invitation of Bernadine Joselyn, Director of the Blandin Foundation’s Public Policy and Engagement Program, I spent the day at KAXE – Northern Community Radio‘s headquarters in Grand Rapids, brainstorming on how to best foster the development of citizen journalism / community media in their bio-region. (Click photos to enlarge.)
In the conference room, L to R: Jeremy Iggers, Executive Director, Twin Cities Media Alliance; Bernadine Joselyn; Scott Hall, KAXE Community Access Coordinator; Louise Mengelkoch, Chair of the Mass Communication Department at Bemidji State University; Ross Williams, community volunteer; Heidi Holtan, KAXE Outreach Producer; Maggie Montgomery, KAXE General Manager; Dan Houg, KAXE engineer.
Jeremy told the group about his experience with the Twin Cities Daily Planet and I talked about my experiences in Northfield with Northfield.org, Locally Grown, and leadership blogging in our local civic blogosphere.
Later in the afternoon, I did a video interview of Scott and Maggie about their long history with KAXE for the Media Giraffe Project. (Click play to listen to the audio. 44 minutes.) However, I neglected to get the story on the community radio art work in the corner of the conference room (center). Hopefully, I can entice one of them to attach an enlightening comment here. Right photo: You know you’re in northern Minnesota when the external doors of the hotels have this sign on them.
By Griff Wigley, on March 15th, 2007
Stacy Becker is one of consultants I’m working with at the Citizens League on their MAP 150 project. (See her MAP 150 blog.)
At a meeting last week, she told me about this book: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
I bought the book last night and read the intro and chapter 1 (PDF available on their site). Wow. I’d read two of Tapscott’s earlier books Growing Up Digital and The Naked Corporation but they didn’t grab me like this one already has after 33 pages. It’s probably because I’ve been so immersed doing the stuff they’re talking about (creating online communities, jump-starting a local blogosphere, developing leadership blogging and podcasting, teaching the use of web-based project collaboration tools) that I’ve not fully appreciated the pervasive implications.
Cool phrase: “weapons of mass collaboration.” I’ve incorporated this into my blog tagline:
Wigley and Associates: Leadership blogging, citizen media, and weapons of mass collaboration for organizations.
Here are some quotes from the book that stood out for me.
Continue reading Weapons of Mass Collaboration
By Griff Wigley, on March 9th, 2007
Yesterday, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with Thor Henning Lerstad, News Director for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK). He’s visiting Minnesota this week to “study best-practice examples of Consultative/Participatory/Public Journalism.”
(Last September, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with a colleague of his, Jørgen Jensen, a journalist with Danmarks Radio (DR), Denmark’s national broadcasting corporation. He also wanted to learn about all the citizen journalism/community media/civic blogosphere stuff we’ve been doing here in Northfield for the past decade.)
Northfield.org’s Anne Bretts was kind enough to pick him up in the Twin Cities and bring him to Northfield for the day… and return him. How’s that for Minnesota hospitality? I brought him to lunch at Northfield Rotary (“Hey, everybody, a real live Norwegian named Thor!”).
I’ve included Thor’s email to me and Anne below in case others are interested in what he’s up to. Now we just need a similar visit from a journalist in Sweden to complete aScandinavia trifecta and maybe top it off with visits from journalists in the other Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
Continue reading Scandinavia and Northfield’s culture of citizen journalism
At the invitation of Bernadine Joselyn, Director of the Blandin Foundation’s Public Policy and Engagement Program, I spent the day at KAXE – Northern Community Radio‘s headquarters in Grand Rapids, brainstorming on how to best foster the development of citizen journalism / community media in their bio-region. (Click photos to enlarge.)
In the conference room, L to R: Jeremy Iggers, Executive Director, Twin Cities Media Alliance; Bernadine Joselyn; Scott Hall, KAXE Community Access Coordinator; Louise Mengelkoch, Chair of the Mass Communication Department at Bemidji State University; Ross Williams, community volunteer; Heidi Holtan, KAXE Outreach Producer; Maggie Montgomery, KAXE General Manager; Dan Houg, KAXE engineer.
