Norgdom

I have had so many thing I’ve wanted to write about during the week, but time escapes me at the moment. The weekend looks even busier with PerthNorg covering the GO3 conference as well as the Blues and Roots Festival.

I’ll be going along to GO3 for the weekend as we are live blogging the event and I want to get a better feel of how we can do more of this in the future.

If you are at either event and see one of our Cit Js, come and say hello - we will be the ones in the Crowd Source(d) t-shirts - of which I have a few extras to give away.

Besides preparing for the maddening weekend, I have been taking a long hard look at what we are getting right and what we are getting wrong. Our readership/reach goes up every week, but we are not getting much more interaction.

This could be one of two things:

1) People are not ready to be involved in the news, they prefer the passive role of being a reader/consumer.

2) People want to be involved and just don’t know how to. If this is the case, the problem could be in our message, the “explanation” of what we are about.

Perhaps the word “news” is intimidating to people, maybe they don’t see their own life experiences as news yet?

I know that the model we have created is pretty progressive/radical/forward looking:) and it takes time for people’s habits to change. So some of it may be my own impatience, because I really believe in citizen journalism (for lack of a better word) and I do think that people are genuinely interested in taking part when they understand its potential.
We are talking about the opportunity to shape the news around us. Why are we all so cynical about mainstream media? Because it has influence. But we can reclaim some of that power - all of us, together. As the mainsteam media becomes more centralised, our influence becomes more important.
The Norg is a central place for us to have discussions, to BE important. And it doesn’t always have to be serious news … we can be as creative, funny, honest as we want to be. Someone said to me the other day that really what we have created is the “YouTube for news”. I don’t like descriptions that draw on other descriptions, but I think it makes a good point. We are just a platform for you to embrace and make your own. Take us over. Set us free
Crowd source(d), a sourced source!

Hope to READ you round the norg … and also in the comments to this blog.

Every day my email box is filling up with press releases from music reps with information about album releases and upcoming tours.

As things get busier for me at the backend of PerthNorg I’m finding less and less time to post them. Ideally I would like our Cit Js to have the chance to have a go at being a music writer.

I have had a few people get in touch wanting to cover gigs for us, and that is fantastic. I’ll be getting in touch with all of those as things come up.

But as well as writing reviews there is plenty of opportunity for someone to set themselves up as PerthNorg’s music writer. All it takes is a real desire to make a go of it. It may not have the perks in the beginning, but if you do a good enough job I’m sure free passes and interviews will come your way.
And I’m always happy to pull strings where I can.

Justin is doing an awesome job with Perth Music, which covers the local scene. So this would be more about major bands touring and album releases and well, whatever you want to make of it. But really there is so much going on that there’s enough work for a few people.

Let me know if you’re interested by emailing me at bronwenc at perthnorg dot com dot au

Hope to see you round the norg …

Wednesday of last week saw the inaugural Dinner 2.0 for Perth. It was not as Grum suggested our second course of dinner for the night or even a salad with ajax on the side, but rather a get together for those of us involved in web 2.0 here in Perth.

There were 10 of us who attended and probably there are a few others who we may not be aware of, who are always welcome to come along next time. We plan on making it a regular event.

I took some blurry photos of the event, but the lighting was not that great. It had nothing to do with me drinking too much as I stuck to the light beer on offer at The Belgian Beer Café and was gob smacked with it’s $15 price tag (for that beer) at the end of the night. Next time I’ll stick to the more alcoholic stuff.

We had a huge mix of attendees, which just goes to show how creative and diverse a bunch we are.

Scouta, Buzka, in8vision, Minti, PerthNorg, and 88 Miles were all there. Jon from Australianbloggers.com.au sent his apologies.

On reflection I have to say it’s a pretty impressive line-up for a little city on the edge of a desert.

It was great to get together and meet others facing similar challenges launching a web 2.0 company from Perth. A few have decided some presence in the US is essential, but the jury’s still out on that.

With that, make sure you check out the great companies that are putting Perth on the virtual map.

PerthNorg is blogging the GO3 Electronic Entertainment Expo, which is heading to Perth from March 30 to April 1.

It’s a fairly huge event and we decided cover it with a separate blog. We have been given three press passes for all the days and we’ll be covering the event from there. So if you are heading to GO3 make sure you keep an eye out for us.
I love the idea of blogging the expo and I’m hoping we can organise more of these for upcoming events. For the GO3 at least, I think our coverage will be somewhat unique, because it will be written by gaming enthusiasts - for the fans, by the fans.

Hope to see you round the norg …

I hate pop-ups and as a news consumer I find them very annoying. There’s nothing worse than reading something to be interrupted by a large flashy picture covering the very story you are reading.

It’s plain bad manners and as frustrating as someone shoving something over a newspaper you are reading. Anyone with kids can relate to that one.

This latest ad on the hompage of The West, pictured above, has the punch line “Convenient isn’t it?” just to rub me up the wrong way that bit more.

I don’t know how advertisers think they are winning customers this way. From the beginning, when I started thinking about the norg, one of my first “rules” was that we would not accept pop-up ads - they are nothing more than internet spam.

One of Australia’s biggest super funds would win me over much more quickly without a pop-up ad
Does anyone else find them so annoying or am I being a touch over-sensitive?

Media Giant (well according to the unbiased report at theage.com.au) Fairfax launched an online news site in Brisbane today. The site called Brisbane Times even managed to score a link in the Business section of it’s (older sister) site theage.com.au - this special treatment is usually only rerserved for Technology stories.

It is an interesting day in the  World of Australian media, because it is the first time a major media compnay has launched an online site into a market where it has no print version.

From the press release article:

Fairfax Media chief executive David Kirk today launched the site, brisbanetimes.com.au, which joins the websites of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald as the company’s “national platform” delivering breaking news.

Mr Kirk said Brisbane and south-east Queensland wanted an alternative to News Limited’s publication, The Courier-Mail, but confirmed the company had no plans for a printed version.

“It is not a new newspaper with limited circulation, but a new online competitive publishing force instantly available to the one million-plus internet users in Brisbane - providing an alternative to what was, until today, the only game in town,” he said.

“It will give readers a fresh, new perspective on what’s happening in our community, and why - throughout the day, with news and updates filed continuously.”

It is the first time an online-only news service has been published by a major newspaper company.

My guess is Perth is next.

See you round the norg …

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalises the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists.

The law that is being put forward could lead to eyewitnesses who film acts of violence, or sites who publish the material, being sentenced to jail.
The irony that the decision to approve the law falls exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers were videoed beating Rodney King has not been lost on many. The act, which led to the LA riots after the officers were acquitted, was caught on tape by an amateur videographer George Halliday back in 1991.

Had George done the same thing in France today he could end up in prison and any website found publishing the video could face a fine of AU$127,000. Publisher’s responsible could also face five years jail.
Under the law, the punishment for filming the violence could be harsher than committing the crime.
The law has been proposed to clamp down on “happy slapping” in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for amusement. It’s been an issue here in Australia with the Victorian Government now banning YouTube in all school’s to appear to take action over repeated incidences of violence recorded at school and broadcast on YouTube.
Videographers in those cases are clearly guilty of a crime by acting as an accomplice in the violence. But an eyewitness recording an event is a completely different story.
To date the proposed law is not making any provision for that. Which has led Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi, to is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

We live in a very interesting time, where the internet is challenging our access to information – the good and the bad. But bad laws don’t solve problems and we need to figure out ways to curb what’s bad without detracting from the good as well. In this case, killing off the good with the bad.

France’s new law takes shooting the messenger to a whole new level. And our own Helen Coonan’s not far behind either – but that’s another blog post.
See you round the norg ….