Even though school will have started by then, about 300 public-media folks will get to go to camp on the weekend of Oct. 17-18 [2009] — NPR and PBS’s first national PublicMediaCamp. Plans will be announced this week, says Andy Carvin, NPR senior strategist, social media desk.
It’s an “unconference,” like the deliberately unstructured BarCamps that are popular for brainstorming and spontaneous code-writing among open-source web technology activists. But it’s not officially a BarCamp, Carvin says, because this one has planned objectives than those using that name (barcamp.org).
The low-budget, informal camp will be held at American University in Washington, in cooperation with AU’s Center for Social Media.
CPB plans to help each of 10 stations send a pair of representatives. It issued an RFP (deadline Aug. 3) to hire a coordinator to help with training and logistics.
One major objective for the event, Carvin says, will be to demonstrate how stations and other public-media groups can use such meetings locally to hook up with local web developers. So it makes sense to invite nonbroadcasters to this national camp as well. Carvin expects one-third will come from public TV and radio and the rest from the overlapping realms of civic journalism, open-source code and media activism.
Similar web-oriented camps have been held by Minnesota Public Radio and by KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, Calif., Carvin says.
Web page posted Aug. 3, 2009
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