media landscaping

See you at the Networked Journalism Summit!

I am really psyched to be a part of tomorrow's Networked Journalism Summit at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.  It is organized by Jeff Jarvis and made possible by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.  The vision for the event is:

bringing together the best practices and practitioners in collaborative, pro-am journalism

and I was invited to talk about our learnings from the WPNI Blogroll Program.  You can read a summary of my pre-interview with David Cohn here.

I'll post some afterthoughts and maybe even live-blog if possible.  We'll see what happens.

Letting Go of the Brand

I have been a major fan and loyal listener of the "Across the Sound" Podcast with Joseph Jaffe.  I first started listening when Rubel was still on there.

This podcast is my #1 source for learning about "new marketing" and has been a big influence on me in the development of the WPNI Blogroll Program.  One meme on the show has been that companies should "let go of their brand" because frankly, they have already lost control over it.  Consumers own it now and always will.

Just this morning we requested design submissions for some T-Shirts that we are going to give out to some of the early members of the program. 

I thought that I would see some resistance to letting go of the brand like this, but was surprised that everyone was really open to it.  So much so that we even promoted a Flickr Tag where anyone can share their creations.  This image is my design contribution.  Create yours here.

This should be fun.