Norgdom

Some time ago I blogged about a talk given by Nokia Australia General Manager Shaun Colligan at a Leadership Matters seminar in Perth on the impact of mobile technology on the media.

It wasn’t long after that I got in touch with Shaun and told him what we were doing at PerthNorg and we agreed to meetup. It was a great meeting and Shaun and I decided we could put some of Nokia’s great technology to use on PerthNorg that could put our vision of new media into practice.

He gave us the use of five of the latest Nokia N93 phones. For the geeks among you here are the specs on the video and photographic capabilities of the phone:

Imaging and Video

Mobile Video

Mobile Photography

Camera Specifications

Or to put it another way - it takes amazing quality videos and photos. Essentially, what it is though, is a mobile reporting station.

Video and photos can be uploaded from the phone to the Web while out and about- depending on the limitations of telcos to some degree.
You may have noticed a couple of videos popping up on the norg by Cit J Skribe filmed with the Nokia N93. In the next few months you will be seeing more of them - from Skribe as well as Busybee, Justin, Lizzie_P, Rich and myself. But I hope everyone is inspired to do the same and be prepared to report and record what they see around them.

Thanks to Nokia to their awesome support and belief in all our Cit Js and what we are trying to do. Let the real citizen journalism begin. Hope to see you round the norg …

Now I have evidence. Of a supernatural kind - well, sort of.
Abby, a recent Cit J posted some great pics of comet McNaught up on PerthNorg over the weekend. They made the comet look like a crash-test dummy hurtling to earth - well that’s how I read it anyway.

Now The Age has contacted her to use the pics! Congrats, Abby. I can just imagine looking at the photos when you got home and wanting to show someone. I think we’ll see the pics popping up on other sites around the place … they have that spooky quality.
Hope to see you round the norg ….

One of our readers alerted me to a story on nativelandz.net which a copy of a story I wrote on Watching the Wandjina.

The article appears basically as I wrote it (typos and all) with a short introduction - it has my byline By Bronwen.

I have no problems with it on a personal level and I’m impressed the issue has been picked up elsewhere. I think it’s a great story that raises many complex questions for indigenous and non-indigenous people that would be of interest to others. A link would have been appropriate though.
But what if it was another Cit J’s work that had been used like that? Our terms are that copyright remains your own and with that some of the responsibility for pursuing copyright infringment lies with the individual owners. But I would also like to see our Cit J’s rights protected.
What I would like to pursue this year is for other oganisations to use our material through a proper channel with some payment that then goes to those Cit Js. It would be something Cit Js would opt into. But let me know your thoughts on this.
I know that a number of news organisations keep an eye on our site and it really provides a great chance for someone to make a name for themselves in front of an audience. So there is always that possibility of a break for someone out there.

Keep up the great work and hope to see you round the norg …

The second largest newspaper company in the United States has sold the Star Tribune and bought two small citizen journalism sites.

The McClatchy Company reportedly sold the Star Tribune for half the sum it paid a few years ago and instead invested in two small sister sites FresnoFamous and ModestoFamous.

I found out about the purchase through the Editor’s Weblog, who summed up the significance:

McClatchy’s discrete reorientation towards citizen journalism gives an early indication to media analysts of newspaper companies’ 2007 strategies.

To be honest, I had never heard of FresnoFamous or FresnoModesto, until the sale, but they really look like vibrant community sites. They are worth having a look at just to see what other citizen journalists are doing around the world.

It might get the creative juices flowing.

See you round the norg ….

I’m not big on looking back. People are often horrified to learn that I keep most of my family photos in a large unsorted box, that I usually only look at when I stumble across it.

I’m probably what you’d call the anti-scrapbooker. So when it came to writing a post around the New Year, I partly avoided it because, well I hate navel-gazing, that and I have a bad back from all the hours spent on my computer the last few months.

I like to look forward. Everyone knows what happened in 2006 right? I’m more interested in where all of us - the community of Cit Js - can take PerthNorg in the future.

Part of founding something is having to have that utter conviction that you are doing is worthy. The next step is convincing everyone else of the same.

That’s where 2007 looks exciting. I don’t want PerthNorg to be mine. The less I feel that, the better I think PerthNorg must be getting.

I can then also refocus on some things I always intended for this blog. Like tips on citizen journalism and some ideas for a podcast, as well as news on new media and dealing with issues that Cit Js have on the site.

Hope to see you round the norg…