High Touch: what does it mean online and in the physical world?
Convener: Michelle Ferrier
In the new media ecology being discussed at this and other Journalism That Matters conferences, we are exploring the role of the community weaver. Our circle of placebloggers, broadcasters and legacy media folks threw out the following job description in this morning’s session I hosted on “high touch.”
Wanted: Community Weaver. Talking to everyone a lot, relationship building and community organizing, “waving”, suggesting and understanding, addressing issue of getting folks scared of technology to get their voices heard, use your social capital to build networks, how to enter a community and find the folks who are in those communities and working those relationships, being able to meet people where they are both figuratively and physically, partnering, listening to what people are telling us, talking with people…explain your mission and find out where their passions are. The ability to forget about you for a minute, asking the questions, curiosity, have to be curious about people to hear and process what they’re saying, got to know people and inspire people at a level they can understand, to inspire and work with people where they are; I like to bring people together; community broker, creating relationships, matchmaker. Yenta, Teacher and coach about how to use the technologies.
Community organizing is about building relationships. Got people together in the room after a lot of interviews and process. One of the activists stood up and said “Now sign on to our petition to….”
There are people that have an agenda…I’m an activist. But his point was about building community and building relationships and setting aside your own activism. And then there are the people that really have their issue and are interested in the net result.
How do you build the relationships online and face-to-face. Building trust, knowing biases and folks can put that into a context. Ross Williams, Grand Rapids Minnesota. www.mnstringer.net.
Fairlight Baer-Gutierrez, YourHub.com in Denver, Coloradol “Our staff will go into communities, into homes to show how the system works and being humble and not expecting everyone to come to you. It’s a combination of talking with other people to find out how to help people.”
In this crab clawing world, where crabs are trying to get tot the top of the bucket, they are rushing to get the technology onto the web and losing the purpose, which is building relationships..
Erica Mueller, Minneapolis People need to know that you are hearing them, versus taling to them.
Give them attention and nuturing online…Fairlight…and let them know they are valued.
Are we trying to empower other people or just ourselves? Ross, Am I trying to influence other pe3ople or am I willing to be influenced by others?
Translating the waving idea; Takie the country road analogy.
Linda FAntin, “It’s very intensive. Anyone who comments, we acknowledge that they responded. Whether it feeds into a story or not, we acknowledge them. If it feeds into a story, we will send them the link to the story. That’s one of the things that we feel is our job. Everyday you go into your email box and provide those thank you notes for the questions we ask and the responses we get.” Frequency of use, people have to access your content a lot and they need to receive some feedback that they are paying attention.
Becky LaPlant, Blandin Foundation, “It’s consistency, Like Michelle’s country experience, if you start it, you have to continue doing it, because I feel as if I’m in relationship with you.”
Linda Fantin – We will send a questionnaire once a month, asking for their input around a certain issue.
Ross: Are there models for people creating interaction between people? People can say “I like this comment.” It’s not the same as the personal note saying thanks.
YourHub.com we held a luncheon one year in, where our top users came in and we had lunch and went around the room. People were crying in the room, sharing phone numbers. And now people are getting together regularly without us.
Block Party for a cause at MyTopiaCafe.com: Getting the users in a physical space.
Ross: Trainings and clubs to provide ongoing support to people in the community who want to do journalism, get ideas, and to get people together face to face. The agenda for those is that they talk about what everyone is working on. The other part of that is to give people a sense of identity.
Linda Fantin: When you’re bringing people together, are they coming in from all over, are you paying their expenses, can you maintain a true collaborative?
Ross: We’re working with towns that are 18,000 to 200 people. We’ll go to the communities. We are planning on creating community journalism clubs.
Borrow relationships building from other media like radio, community radio. Leveraging off of existing base of listeners at KFC radio?
All these types of things weave together. Becky LaPlant – citizen media weaving it together into a whole mix. \Ross:
Using radio to build community is part of the radio medium.
Community Weaver: talking to everyone a lot, relationship building and community organizing, “waving”, suggesting and understanding, addressing issue of getting folks scared of technology to get their voices heard, use your social capital to build networks, how to enter a community and find the folks who are in those communities and working those relationships, being able to meet people where they are both figuratively and physically, partnering, listening to what people are telling us, talking with people…explain your mission and find out where their passions are.
The ability to forget about you for a minute, asking the questions, curiosity, have to be curious about people to hear and process what they’re saying, got to know people and inspire people at a level they can understand, to inspire and work with people where they are; I like to bring people together; community broker, creating relationships, matchmaker. Yenta, Teacher and coach. How to use the technologies.
Feedback loops for comments; not forgetting that you have a telephone; pick up the phone; The telephone.
I had a lengthy commentary that I thought was worthy of putting into a different format and the person was amazed. Jean Dallas, Hometown Focus.
Rewards:
Open-ended questions: Sent our broadly (Linda Fantin). Mainly to get stories around the current war. He sent in a long narrative of his military career. We had to get the story on the air. We got photos from his wife, when he got off work he got on the air with our host.
Call:
Fairlight Baer-Gutierrez, of YourHub.com in Denver, Colorado says “Our staff will go into communities, into homes to show how the system works. We’re being humble and not expecting everyone to come to you. It’s a combination of talking with other people to find out how to help people.”
We have tips on our website, how to write a better story, how to take a better photo and I’ve given a lot of advice to writers on how to do a better job. Jean Dallas
Fairlight; We bring people into our newsroom into our meetings. Regular staff meetings, day to day stuff, we go around the room asking people about what they are concerned about and that includes users and readers.
How do we use this website to organize other people in their community. Hiring a teacher to do foreign language teaching. Is there a way to take that social networking idea and connect people.
People self select: Permissions;
Support Groups; Forums for online groups. They already have a group of folks that they are into relationships with where we can move them online. Becky LaPlant
The sandwich generation: Bring people in around a common
Add tools to our network to help them get together. Facebook, MySpace,
Ross: Relationship building stuff; help people to develop relationships, and the only way you can do that is to move beyond the narrow confines and relationship discussions around more than one topic.
Christopher Pommier, Freelance writer for Twin Cities Daily Planet. I don’t think we should be looking at it as a failure, but a learning experience.” Michelle, perhaps parachuting in the tech expert who doesn’t know the community is not the right way to go. The idea of the locally grown advocate who is passionate about the place in which they live, work and play…