Yesterday was a treat.

I spent the day at NPR with five other consultants — Zadi Diaz, Jeff Jarvis, Doc Searls, and Euan Semple, and Jay Rosen — brought in by Rob Paterson, who has been consulting to NPR for months. As Jeff Jarvis points out (in a post that covers the day well enough that I don’t feel a need to rehash it), many consultants would be too insecure and self-centered to bring in a bunch of others. So, thanks, Rob.

We’d spent Wednesday afternoon in a lively open discussion amongst ourselves, along with Maria Thomas , the head of NPR.org, with whom we all felt an immediate bond, and with Andy Carvin, the estimable blogger whom most of us already knew. (Andy’s been blogging the meetings.) Not surprisingly, the NPR folks we met were uniformly, well, wonderful. You don’t get to NPR without being good at what you do, and you don’t try to get to NPR unless you love what NPR does for us all.

Wednesday night we went to a red-checked tablecloth Italian place for a group dinner with NPR folks, which was one great conversation after another. Then, Thursday morning we met in a slightly larger group to hash out issues and to prepare for the two-hour panel discussion open to all NPR’ers. Jeff Jarvis was nominated to lead the morning discussion because he has an uncanny ability to do so. Quite remarkable. David Folkenflik led the afternoon panel, with only a few moments of hippy panelist rebellion.

So, that was the format. As to the substance, Jeff’s post covers it well. The discussions throughout the 24 hours pretty consistently progressed from full-time Web heads (Maria and Andy) to those less involved in the Web side of things. So, the focus of concern shifted over time from the long-term internal contradiction — NPR is a product of member stations, but as audio content gets “miscellanized” and available to anyone at any time, member stations are at risk of becoming just another play list — to shorter term hurdles such as the assumption that the growth of listener-created-content means lowering NPR’s standards.

To the standards point, I tried to respond that this isn’t a matter of posting listener’s content as if we’re all now as good at telling stories as NPR reporters are. Rather: (a) There are lots of ways that listeners can and will contribute, beyond posting their own NPR-ish reports; (b) Metadata saves the day. We humans are good at sensing the metadata that tells us that this is a comment someone dashed off, that is an audio piece NPR’s staff has picked out as meeting its professional standards, and everything in between.

For me a highlight was Jay Rosen‘s response to a question from Michel Martin , the host of a new program being developed in public at Rough Cuts, about objectivity. Jay gave a measured, thoughtful response that was a brilliant use of language. When controversies are particularly polarizing, Jay said, NPR inevitably is going to resort to strict objectivity in order to retain its innocence. But, he continued, that can be at the price of truth. Beautiful. I loved Jay’s Blake-ian use of the term “innocence.” (I followed up by asking him if NPR’s Web site gave it a way to blurt out the truth. Blurting is the opposite of objectivity?)

I also thought the various discussions about how and when to enable the users to filter content, rather than relying on an NPR editor to do so, were particularly illuminating.

Zadi Diaz, host and co-creator of JetSet, provided a series of highlights throughout the day. She told a story about a 14 year old who approached JetSet with an ambitious idea for a video series and received unbounded help from the community. It made me want to yell, “Jeez, I love the Web!”, but I managed to restrain myself.

So, it was a great 24 hours for me, and I hope it was at least worthwhile for NPR. What a treat to be allowed to participate.

I had a brainstorm-y idea I floated to NPR I will try out on you, too. Keep in mind that it’s an ill-formed, un-thought-through idea, which you should feel free to kick the bejeezus out of.

NPR values civil discourse. And, despite its reputation in some circles, it’s committed to being non-partisan. So, suppose on pages devoted to particular segments or topics, NPR listeners were explicitly charged with pulling together links that represent the spectrum of opinion and thought on that topic. If it were a page about, say, the Libby trial, users would be asked to find Web references from the left and right, from US and elsewhere, from the scholarly to the flippant. If this were to work, it would presumably be because some small cadre of users stepped up to the task. Getting the “social physics ” right would be crucial, of course.(This idea is spurred by Debatepedia, except it aims at a plurality of views, not a duopoly.)

Bad idea? Impractical? Undesirable? Too much coffee, not enough reality?

[Tags: npr radio everything_is_miscellaneous ]

I’m at NPR again today for a group discussion of the effect of the Web. I am very lucky.

There was discussion yesterday about whether NPR.org should become more of a news site. My gut reaction (which usually means “my wrong reaction” — bad guts! Bad bad guts!) was that it shouldn’t. I woke up this morning realizing why I reacted negatively.

NPR’s distinguishing strength in news isn’t coverage. Audio is hard to skim. Besides, there are already lots of news sites, and increasingly we’re pulling in the coverage we care about, rather than going to a source site. Why go to CNN.com when you can have CNN, The NY Times, Alternet, HuffingtonPost and Ethan Zuckerman come to you in a feed?

But NPR is fantastic at feature stories analyzing and contextualizing the news. Which means NPR.org faces the same problem every blogger does: Getting word out about the interesting features they generate. NPR has some facilities available to it that we ordinary bloggers don’t, of course, but the challenge is the same. So, I think NPR should think through how they can surface more of their excellent reportage. And I think it comes down to two basic, well-understand things.

First, let us subscribe to people (e.g., the Nina Totenberg feed), topics (e.g., Iraq coverage, book reviews), programs (e.g., “Fresh Air”), and stuff that other people recommend (e.g., a Digg-like facility?). NPR is already good about providing feeds within the limits of the law and the need to maintain a relationship with their member stations.

Second, let us add value to the NPR content by posting our own, posting reactions, engaging in conversation, etc.

So, should NPR.org become more of a news site? It depends what you mean by news. Coverage? Nah. Features and discussion? Sure.

Straightforward stuff, but hard to get right, and with plenty of room for innovation within these bromides. [Tags: news npr media everything_is_miscellaneous journalism ]

At I’m at a meeting with NPR, along with Zadi Diaz, Jeff Jarvis, Rob Paterson, Doc Searls, and Euan Semple. Jay Rosen is on his way. We’ve been hearing about NPR’s structure and business. Fascinating. And check Jeff’s fabulous pre-post.

Just a few notes from the opening background discussion:

NPR’s structure is complex. It produces some shows, but NPR member stations run lots of stuff produced by others. So, when your local station runs “A Prairie Home Companion,” NPR doesn’t get a nickel. About ten percent of the country listens to NPR stations, but the average age is in the 50s. (The average age of PBS viewers is 60.) It has an operating budget of $140M and 750 employees, which makes it smaller than some of its stations, particularly stations with radio and tv branches.

After a while, we come to what seems to me to be the essential conflict: NPR wants to tell more stories, allow listeners to tell stories, and make those stories available to anyone at any time. But, NPR is also a creation of the member stations. If we can find and listen to those stories when and where we want, we won’t tune in to the stations. In short, podcasts peel listeners from stations.

We talked for a few hours after that about what this means for NPR going forward, and then had a group dinner. Then Doc, Jay, Jeff and I had a beer in the hotel bar, where we each declared our unending love for the Internet and threw our glasses into the fireplace.

So, I learned a lot, spent time with people I admire, and maybe get to help in some tiny way an institution I care about. Sort of a great day.

BTW, Euan has flickred a photo here. [Tags: npr media radio everything_is_miscellaneous ]

The beta of the blog for my book, Everything Is Miscellaneous (which is released on May1), is up in beta. The blog is about the ways we’re pulling ourselves together now that we’ve blown ourselves to bits (digitally that is, not through evil Lite-Brite boards). (You can get there via www.EImisc.com, too, so don’t send me your carpal-tunnel bills!)

The site’s been up for a while in stealth beta mode. As you’ll see, some of it just doesn’t work: There are no samples yet, I’ve only started to build the bibliography (in LibraryThing.com), the forum is under-formatted, etc. And the posts are mainly cross-posts from this blog. (Thanks to BradSucks for doing the work behind the scenes to get the tech up and running.)

I’d love to have your suggestions about how I can make it better. [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Much as I love Wikipedia — and I love it so much that I’m giving it candy hearts on Valentine’s Day — its policy of neutrality sometimes forces resolution when we’d rather have debate. Yes, competing sides get represented in the articles, and the discussion pages let us hear people arguing their points, but the arguments themselves are treated as stations on the way to neutral agreement.

So, there’s room for additional approaches that take the arguments themselves as their topics. That’s what Debatepedia.org does, and it looks like it’s on its way to being really useful.

Like Wikipedia, anyone can edit existing content. Unlike Wikipedia, its topics are all up for debate. Each topic presents both sides, structured into sub-questions, with a strong ethos of citation, factuality, and lack of flaming; the first of its Guiding Principles is “No personal opinion.” Rather, it attempts to present the best case and best evidence for each side.

Debatepedia limits itself to topics with yes-no alternatives and with clear pro and con cases. To start a debate, a user has to propose it and the editors (who seem to be the people who founded it…I couldn’t find info about them on the site) have to accept it. This keeps people from proposing stupid topics and boosts the likelihood that if you visit a listed debate, you’ll find content there. It also limits discussion to topics that have two and only two sides, which may turn out to be a serious limitation. But, we’ll see. And it can adapt as required.

Will Debatepedia take off? Who the hell knows. But it’s a welcome addition to the range of experiments in pulling ourselves together. [Tags: politics wikis wikipedia debatepedia everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Personal Democracy Forum has launched a terrific blog — techPresident.com — on how the presidential campaigns are using technology. For example, Joshua Levy blogs about Fred Stutzman’s post about my.barackobama.com, Obama’s “private-label social network.” Here’s a bit of what Fred says:

In reality, 2008 is going to be about the enmeshing of networks. Some of the action that goes on in the networks will be centrally maintained, but some (as in the example of the Facebook group) will be produced by people external to the campaign. Should candidates put their head in the sand and act like the external work doesn’t exist? Absolutely not. The simple reality is that by embracing social media, communities are going to play a significant role in the creation of the candidate. Like it or not, some of Obama’s online identity is going to be created by the Facebook group, over which he has no control. The millions of users who embrace Obama in one way or another will get their messages from a number of different sources, so central control is effectively impossible.

The TechPresident feed is going straight into my aggregator… [Tags: personaldemocracy democracy techpresident fred_stuzman obama politics everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Lorcan Dempsey has a brilliant post on why Google’s moving from a SOAP API to Ajax syndication transforms it from an information landscape into an “information brandscape”™ Amazon, he points out, is happy to let other apps and sites use its product data because the data — a link to a book, a book cover — is by itself and ad. Google wants to get their actual ads into those other sites. Lorcan goes on to apply this distinction to library Web services.

(BTW, Lorcan, I slapped the trademark on to “information brandscape” so now it’s mine. Bwahaha!) [Tags: google libraries amazon lorcan_dempsey everything_is_miscellaneous web2.0 api soap ajax worldcat]

Here’s a list of the interviews I did at the Fast Forward user conference, along with the little blurbs describing them. I’ve appended an occasional editorial comment. Most are around 5 minutes, although a few run considerably longer. (I’m writing this in an airport and will probably get things wrong. Darn that haste!)

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail talks about when taxonomies, text search and tagging works, and how this applies to a magazine site. And what about tagging’s own long tail? [Tagalicious!]

John Battelle, the author of the best book on Google, says that search should be a conversation with your customers. And it won’t occur only by typing into a text box.

Jeanette Borzo of the Economist Intelligence Unit talks about her survey of 400 executives that showed that even though they’re unclear about what Web 2.0 means, they’re planning on using it to increase revenues and drive down costs. [Quite amusing survey results.]

Matthew Brown, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, talks about the future in which search is ubiquitous but also frequently less visible.

Susan Feldman, an analyst with IDC, gives an advance peak at a study she’s going to be announcing tomorrow that upsets expectations about how people find sites…and opens a possibility for “long tail” advertising. [I think I forced a “clarification” on her that’s actually misleading. From talking with people afterwards, the two types of “queries” she’s talking about probably are ones made at search sites, and ones made using the search services of particular sites, e.g., searching for a book at Google or Amazon. I thought by the second type of query she meant people typing a URL directly into the address bar of a Web site. Sorry!]

Carl Frappaolo of the Delphi Group explains why we should think of search not in terms of finding so much as in terms of teaching.

Stephen Gallagher, Senior Director at Accenture, says that business intelligence is the main factor high performance companies have in common. Bottom-up, “messy” data (in Tim O’Reilly’s phrase) is only a “nice to have.”

Kathleen Gilroy, who’s also doing video blogs at the conference, answers her own question, “How has search changed her life?” If you want to know, just ask her husband.

Joyce Haas, search product manager at WebMD, talks about the use of social software in her company, the resistance to it, and the transformative effect it has. [WebMD’s willingness to let its employees talk this frankly says a lot about WebMD.]

Dorothea Herrey of Dow Jones Consumer Media Group, Director of Franchise Development and Partnership (a subsidiary of the Long Titles Divisional Department :) talks about how Dow Jones organizes itself in the multi-dimensional world of the Web, where the dimensions include content, brands, devices, markets, interests….

Bill Inmon of Inmon Data Systems says that at last we’re able to combine structured and unstructured search, so that (for example) a search for a customer will find transaction records in the database and emails the customer may have exchanged with customer support.

Dan Keldsen of the Delphi Group talks about the intersection of full text search and tagging.

John Markus Lervik, founder and CEO of Fast, talks about who is a bigger competitor, Oracle or Google [a question I totally stole from blogger Joe McKendrick], and the ways in which Fast internally is a Web 2.0 company…wikis and blogs, emerging bottom-up.

Lydia Loizides, a former VP of technology and emerging media at IPC.

Andrew McAfee, creator of the Enterprise 2.0, talks about what Knowledge Management 2.0 looks like…and whether it will arrive top-down, bottom-up or both.

Tom Mandel of ConnectBeam, a social software company, explains why tags are like poetry. [And the extent to which poetry and tagging are expressions of the individual. And why rhyming adds meaning.]

Jim McGee of the Huron Consulting Group, and DiamondHead founder, talks about the need for businesses to allow employees time to think, and the extent to which thinking can be done in the social public of blogs.

Tim O’Reilly, creator of the Web 2.0 meme, says that organizations have been slow to understand how “network effects” can benefit their business if applied internally as well as externally. As customers add to what the company knows, should that added-value information be made accessible outside of the company? [Tim emphasizes the need for internal sharing and notes that that sharing externally may not always make business sense.]

Hadley Reynolds, VP of Fast’s Center of Search Innovation, discusses the implications of the fact that in enabling sites to provide us with highly relevant results, we may trade-off some of our privacy.

James Robertson of Step Two Designs explains why “search sucks,” and how it can be kept simple and made more effective if the implementers do more work up front. [Plus, there’s the great Prawn vs. PrOn confusion…]

MIT’s Michael Schrage explains why getting highly relevant results from a search can actually inhibit the iterative process by which we discover and learn. [Is this the first use of the term “post-relevant results”?]

Euan Semple, formerly the knowledge management guru at the BBC and now an independent consultant, says that he thinks search is overrated. He trusts more the answers given to him by his social network. [Did the leave in the part where I find out that Euan, whom I’ve counted as a friend for years, pronounces his name “You-ann,” not “Eee-an”? How embarrassing!]

Sandeep Swadia, head of Search Business Consulting for Fast, talks about the intersection of customer needs for search and the evolving media business model.

David Watson, VP of Product Design and Development for Digital Media at Disney/ABC, talks about the role of user-generated metadata in guiding people toward his company’s content. Look for looser licensing of news content before creative content. [This is a Disney guy who understands that an importnat measure of control has slipped from producers to the audience.]

Zia Zaman, SVP of Strategic Marketing at Fast, talks about search as the visible surface of deep business processes, and what this means for Fast as a partner. [Tags: ff07 fastforward web2.0 videos interviews search everything_is_miscellaneous]

Earley and Associates, an information architecture firm, has bought Wordmap, according to an article in KMWorld. WordMap makes tools for constructing, viewing and navigating taxonomies, including a pattern-matching tool for automating some of the construction process. From having poked around their site, Wordmap seems to be all about the top-down side of taxonomic life, a side that we continue to need to do well even as the bottom wells up. [Tags: taxonomy folksonomy everything_is_miscellaneous wordmap earley information_architecture]

This video is a beautiful piece of work. It will be a classic statement. Don’t be the very last person to see it… [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous ]