Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

The Best Apple Commercial, with Steve Jobs as the voice

Description of the Khan Academy:

What started out as Sal making a few algebra videos for his cousins has grown to over 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises and assessments covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history.

Our small team is on a mission to deliver a world-class education to anyone anywhere, and you can help. Take a second to get the word out, or read about how teachers, translators, donors, and everyone else can contribute.

They are encouraging people to get out and be social. A major issue with Facebook, Myspace and other social networks was the fact that you created something online and it almost encouraged you to isolate yourself.

April 16th was the 1st Annual Foursquare Day. Foursquare is an app that encourages users to go out and explore our towns and cities. Online and offline worlds are starting to blend together.

Photo Credit: wordcat57

Living in the public for the most part is a good thing. You can make business connections (LinkedIn or FastPitch), find info about a new hobby (Twitter), get reviews and tips for a new restaurant in your city (Yelp or Foursquare).

Embrace the openness. You will enjoy it. And you will find that most people will not bother you.

I share all my contact information on my website. I find this to work very well, if someone has a real question for me, they can find my email and phone number (Google Voice, just in case I have to block them)  and contact me.

Robert Scoble – Shares all his contact info. Says that he doesn’t get bothered too much. This is someone who has hundreds of thousands of contacts. Someone who makes it his life’s mission to be seen at every event and interact with the most people there.

Guy Kawasaki – Lists his email and other contact info. I’ve contacted him couple of time when I had a question. He replied, answered my questions. Was very easy and eliminated a lot of headaches in trying to find someone who knows someone who knows his grandmother.

I’m not telling you to list your bank pin code or your home address. Just to make it easy to get in contact with you. Be smart and don’t overshare, you know what is safe and what is too much information.  i.e. Don’t create your home as a venue in Foursquare…

Be smart and connect with the world!

Did the AP buy the rights to the photo? No, they did not buy the rights.

Did you sell it to someone else? No, I actually copyrighted the photo and control the rights to them. Anyone interested in using the photo needs to have my permission.

How do you feel about the unlicensed use of the photo? It is what it is. I posted it on a public site to my 170 followers. I did not send it to CNN or FOX. I am satisfied with how everything has unfolded.  A lot of good has come of this event and I can’t get mad at something that I have no control over. When I took the photo my priority was rescuing the passengers of the plane and not selling the rights to one of the news organizations.

Lessons for citizen journalist? What would you change about the current structure of distribution?

Firstly, anyone at anytime can be a citizen journalist. You can’t prepare for it. You can only get lucky enough that you know what to do in an emergency situation. That may mean spreading the news or just being able to help the distressed people. Prepartion is the key here, as one of my favorite quotes states:

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Seneca

If you’re a journalist, I recommend being on top of all the new tech apps. Ot at least know how to do the basic things like tweet, send an email with a photo, etc… You should not try to figure it out on the spot. A quote from Professor Sree Sreenivasant perfectly states it:

“When a plane lands in the Hudson, it’s too late to figure out Twitter” – Prof. Sree Sreenivasan (@sreenet)

The Future?

One thing that I would like to see is the protection of photos in services like TwitPic, YFrog, TweetPhoto, and others. If they implement some type of distribution avenue it could make sense in events of significance. News organization would know where to look for their info and the photographers would be compensated for their material.

I don’t like what iReport and others are doing. They are getting people to send their property to them and they get nothing back, at best a credit when they show it on air. I think this is putting professional photographers out of jobs and devaluing the craft of photography.

Does the business model work?

The downfall of citizen powered services like Scoopt  was the fact that the likely hood of someone choosing that one particular service was very low. However, majority of photos are being uploaded to about 4 photo sharing sites. If they would work out a way to distribute note worthy photos it would help citizen journalists monetize their top shots and give incentives to professional to use these sites.

I know that there is a fine line between locking photos up and having them totally open. If a middle ground can be established then we could really see a lot of value. I think that is a major obstacle but one that can be solved.

I don’t know if the numbers make sense. But after speaking to a few journalism students at Columbia. They expressed interested in a service that would be geo-location enabled and provide them with photos of small and large events that they could report on. Journalists want access to as much information as possible.

I hope this answers some questions. If you have any more, leave a comment or email me and I will get back to you.

My informal talk at Columbia Journalism School:

Related Articles:

• Can Citizen Photo Agency Demotix Succeed Where Scoopt Failed? http://ow.ly/1gdHL
• Twitter Can Be Vital In Covering Breaking News — A Non-Journalist Teaches Us How: http://ow.ly/1lgvp

I ask that every Latvian share the link below and try to attend the expo. I’ve embedded couple of videos below that give you an idea of what you’ll see at the expo.

If you are reading this from somewhere other than Latvia and either want to show your support or need more information please contact Linda and she can give you any additional information. Her contact information is at the bottom of the post.

If you represent a Latvian group somewhere in the world please contact me or Linda so that we can all work together and help our country through this tough economic time.

Multimedia and Links:

Latvian television segment on car maker OSCar. They make rally cars that compete in some of the most demanding races in the world.

Link to Video: http://jkru.ms/razots-latvija-2010-video-0

Pirmā izstāde 10 gados kurā tikai piedalās ražotāji no Latvijas.

http://www.kelle.lv/lv/home.html

http://www.kelle.lv/lv/press-room/preses-relizes.html

Ja gribat piedalīties, palīdzēt, vai vienkarši uzināt daudzāk informāciju kontaktējiet Lindu: linda@kelle.lv