ONA Conference, Day 1.5
I’ve been in sessions all day at the Online News Association gathering in Toronto. Danny Sanchez just posted a good roundup of who is blogging what from Queen Street West.
The morning started with a keynote speech by Hilary Schneider, a Yahoo marketing VP and former high-level executive at Knight Ridder Digital. While her talk was a little too obviously a pitch for newspaper companies to partner with Yahoo, it held my attention and even made me stop and think a few times.
I had never seen Yahoo’s MapMixer before, for example. “Upload an image of your map, use our layering tool to align it with Yahoo! Maps and we’ll do the rest! Your map will have all the features of Yahoo! Maps (zooming, panning). You can also syndicate it on your own site or blog.”
Schneider also showed off Yahoo’s Democratic Candidate Mashup, in which users were invited to create video mashups from segments of the TV debates. The package got 4.4 million pageviews, and visitors spent an average of 7 minutes on the page.
She did urge news organizations to embrace rapid prototyping and “rapid failure,” which far too few editors and managers in this field understand. (I wrote about rapid prototyping here in May.)
News organizations should be working to increase the reach for ALL the content they create, Schneider said. Yeah, no kidding! Her shtick is that by partnering, the organization increases its reach tenfold. You link to them, they link to you, they carry your content, you carry theirs, and everybody wins! Woot!
Here’s the ONA student journalist’s coverage of Schneider’s speech.
Hi Mindy,
October 20, 2007 at 6:02 pmI’m the producer of Discovery’s Everest site, which unexpectedly (to me anyway) won the award last night! I just wanted to say thanks for what you’ve written about the project. It WAS a GIGANTIC technical achievement, mostly achieved by a single designer/developer — Dan Linfield. I had hoped to meet you at the conference, but alas, it was harder than expected to get to everything. Hence the note.
Thanks again,
Trisha Creekmore
I was really surprised, but I’m very happy for you and anyone else who worked on that package at Discovery. Dan must be an amazing designer. Sorry we missed each other — maybe next year!
October 20, 2007 at 8:10 pm