A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona by my friend and mentor Dan Gillmor. It was a gathering of journalism professors from around the country who are going to build their own curriculum to teach entrepreneurial journalism. Dan asked me and Mark Luckie to come speak about our experience going from J-school to startup. It’s a different career path from many and the point is to show professors that it’s a viable path.

Without a doubt it is a real path. I’ve been living it for so long (even before Spot.Us I had been working on “experimental projects”) it doesn’t even seem like a question to me. Sometimes I am looked at as a poster-boy for entrepreneurial journalism. And on those occasions I’m happy to evangelize what is a totally viable path.

But one of the professors at the Cronkite J-school gathering asked a very important and a totally fair question. I’m paraphrasing here: “I know it’s a real path, but it can’t be all butterfly’s and kittens. What are the tradeoffs? What are the hard parts of going down this route? I don’t want to send off students without a healthy dose of reality.”

Sometimes those of us who have drank the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid like to point out success stories and perks without mentioning just what you have to give up to go this route.

I wouldn’t change a thing about the career path I’ve chosen. It has absolutely worked out for me. But if I were to advise a younger me – I would be remiss in my egoistic duties if I didn’t convey both sides of the question “should you go out on a different kind of career path.” There are plenty of positive things I would say. I often shout out about how awesome it is to start your own project, blog, company, nonprofit, etc. But that’s not the purpose of THIS blog post. I’m playing the contrarian so that our Carnival isn’t one big “yes we can”-fest. With that in mind there are THREE big areas that somebody who is thinking of going out on this path should keep in mind.

1. There is a time burden

I used to joke “that the Internet doesn’t sleep and so neither can I.” I’ve gained some wisdom on how to balance certain aspects of work/life but if you have gone out on your own to start something up it is not a 9-5 job. It is not a Monday-Friday job. “What you gain in freedom, you lose in free time.”

2. There is a mental burden

The buck stops with you. There is no “boss” to complain about. If things have taken a turn for the worse, the only person you can blame is yourself. In fact, as other people start to rely on you for a paycheck it becomes an even bigger mental burden. You don’t want to let anybody down. You must learn to live with that mental pressure. What you gain in potential reward you lose in mental security.

3. There is a path burden

It is a career path. Once you start walking down that road, it is difficult to go back. When I made the choice to go down this path I was a hard working tech-reporter. I have followed some of my tech-reporting peers and admired their careers. In fact, my replacement at Wired is still there holding down a solid job. It is a path I could have gone. If I wanted I could still go back to being a reporter/writer – but after several years being out of that game, I’d have to do some backtracking. I’d have to work underneath that guy at Wired (ironically enough, I interviewed/hired him). I’d have to sharpen my skills again. It is difficult to go back. Moreover – you might not want to go back. There is a bit of the “take the blue pill or the red pill” aspect to striking it out on your own.

As you probably picked up – there is an upside to all of these downsides. As with most things in life it isn’t black/white. There are shades of grey and you have to be prepared to paint with those shades. It’s amazing what you can do with only a few colors.

(image credit)

One of the reasons I love words is because through their history we can find meaning. The history of words is not benign. They tell us about human thinking and society and what we truly mean. We stand on two feet for a reason (evolution) and we say the words “victory” for a reason (linguistic evolution).

With the economy (original greek word oikonomikos meaning: management of the household) being on the tip of everyone’s tongues I thought I’d look into the history of two words that 99% of the people focus on. (Side story: the word “Occupy” has an interesting history – in the 16th century it was a euphemism for sex, causing it to fall from good grace as a polite word).

The word “corporation” derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a “body of people.”

The word company has more “friendly” beginnings. Company as in a “companion” is also latin and literally translates to “bread fellow” or somebody you break bread with. Com (together) and “panis” which is latin for bread.

It seems that in the ‘economic’ discussion of the have’s vs. the have-nots we talk about “corporations” being part of the problem. I don’t think it’s a problem that people come together to form entities that make money. The problem is how they regard themselves and how we look at them. They act like corporations when they need to be companies. Who could be against a bunch of people coming together to break bread?

I like that in the announcement of Janet Robinson stepping down as CEO of the NYT that the search for her replacement will look both internally and externally. If they are smart – they will find an external person who comes from a technology background (or an internal person like +Aron Pilhofer).

If technology companies are becoming media companies
then media companies must become technology companies.

from David Cohn @ Google+ https://plus.google.com/109410049853740963142/posts/NwZrdgLo7hM

(What I was hoping would appear)

Headline: If this works – it will be a Google+ public update and automatically create my December Contribution to the Carnival of Journalism on my personal blog.

BODY: For those that don’t know – the Carnival of Journalism is something I re-started in January (coming up on a year!) where a bunch of journalism-bloggers get together and write about the same topic once a month. The question is posed by the host – who rotates.

This month’s host is the Gaurdian’s developer blog and they ask:

“If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree?And, correspondingly, if you are a programmer or developer, what would be the best present from journalism that Father Christmas could deliver down your chimney?”

I go through various phases with my personal blog. When I first started in 2005 it was called “Adventures in Freelancing” and it was about just that – the various stories I was working on our published or other stories I was reading and found interesting.

Since Spot.Us started my blogging has laxed (at best). I use it for occasional big thoughts or announcements. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, etc take up a much larger space of my “online productivity” and to be honest – I wish there were ways to streamline my efforts.

Of course there is IFTT.com – which is what I’m using to repost this Google+ update to my personal blog. And from my blog it will then automatically be Tweeted. So that’s a start.

But there are things lost in the translation from Google+ to my personal blog and back out to Twitter. (SEE UPDATE ABOVE THIS IS FAR FROM PERFECT OR STREAMLINED – I HAD TO COME BACK AND EDIT IN THE WYSWIG EDITOR TO ADD A LINK, COPY PASTE THE BODY, ETC).

In a strange way I still think what I’m looking for was FriendFeed. What a brilliant site that was. Too bad they were bought (talent-scouted) by Facebook.

So if I had to answer the question succinctly: I want a frictionless blogging platform. Not Tumblr or Posterous (although they’ve done an awesome job). I think there is a way to make something even simpler. A platform where I can save something to Delicious and create the formatting once so that from hence-forth all Delicious links will be posted on my blog the way I want (ITTF does an okay job – but not perfect). A platform where I can post something on Google+ and format it once and forever my Google+ public posts will appear on my blog the way I want (what you are seeing on my blog is probably not perfect and can only contain one URL .

That’s my holiday gift ask.

This was one of the more interesting sessions at NewsFoo. It has crazy implications. It’s not a question of “if” but “when” this begins to “take off” (pun intended). At the same time – what are the implications for privacy/safety.

Somehow even more important than Clay’s thoughts is Yelvington’s point: It’s not up for debate if this is happening or not. It is.

Whether or not it’s these debaters – I have a feeling this debate will not end.

Spot.Us launched in November of 2008. Counting the months of planning (and applying for the Knight News Challenge) that went into the launch and I’ve been working on Spot.Us for almost four years. In that time we’ve pushed boundaries, had many successes and shortcomings which I’ve tried to share along the way. As I’ve always said – Spot.Us will never be perfect. It will never be “done” and that as long as we can strive for something we are making progress.

Today we are taking a big stride by formally being acquired by the Public Insight Network. There is a lot to suss out with this merger but when you sit and think about it the merger makes a lot of sense. Here’s the official press release.

The Public Insight Network (part of American Public Media) was co-founded by my friend Michael Skoler, now at Public Radio International. It’s a software platform (similar to Spot.Us) that has long been at the forefront of how Public Media can interact with and take cues from the public by giving them a means to inform journalism. Individuals can provide insight to make stories more informed, insightful and reflect the community in a truer sense. Spot.Us is built on a relationship with the public giving them a kind of editorial control and influence over what stories should be done. Both create a media that is more responsive and responsible to the public’s needs according to their own volition. Combined we offer both opportunities to readers, creating a more nuanced relationship between a news entity that uses PIN/Spot and the public.

Creating and managing a more nuanced relationship – that’s what “public media” should do. I hope that as Spot.Us and PIN merge we can continue to push the boundaries in transparency and participation in the process of journalism so that media organizations can better serve the public.

All of this is under the backdrop of my gig at UC Berkeley’s J-school which is a blast. Spot.Us is my baby, but just as it is time for it to grow up and move out of the house, it was time for me to tackle new problems. Through this merger both are happening.

I will continue working at Berkeley’s J-school and I will remain the founder and a part of the Spot.Us team moving forward. But it is high time for Spot.Us to grow wings and move beyond what any small team can accomplish. I believe under the PIN leadership of Joaquin Alvarado Spot.Us can grow to accomplish much more and I intend to be there as we reach for higher goals and aspirations.

There will be much to write about in the coming months (years). I’m happy to say that Spot.Us is able to fund itself as a project for the first year of this merger and if revenue grows, could do so indefinitely. But for the moment I want to keep this post short and sweet. Spot.Us will continue. For the moment it will be status quo. There will be changes moving forward but we will remain an open platform that will fundraise for independent journalists and news organizations.

And to close it off – an excerpt from the first IdeaLab post I ever wrote about Spot.Us.

As I see it – community funded reporting is low-hanging fruit. The Knight News Challenge is all about doing research and development – the kind that isn’t done elsewhere in the industry.

Now, it may turn out that this low-hanging fruit is poisonous. But aren’t you glad that somebody is at least going to give it a good honest bite to find out? More importantly – aren’t you glad it’s somebody who shares the values of the news industry? Fact is, this idea is going to be a learning process. My goal isn’t to solve the business woes of journalism. I don’t think anybody can do that. But I do intend to taste the fruit of community funded reporting and report back as clearly as possible how it tastes. Fact is, this idea is going to be tried by somebody. My fear, however, is that those who get to it first successfully don’t have journalism’s best interest in mind – but the bottom line.

I’m happy to report back that the fruit isn’t poisonous. In fact, I think it’s time we begin to harvest at a larger scale.

(Image Credit: Jules Brelaz)

I am once again on the advisory board for the SXSW Accelerator which is in its fourth edition to showcase some of the web’s most exciting innovations. And here’s the kicker – it could be your startup!

This event provides an outlet for companies, (and there is a specific news category), to present to a panel of industry experts, early adopters, and representatives from the angel / VC community.  Past judges have included Tim Draper of DFJ, Chris Hughes of Facebook and Jumo, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, Craig Newmark of Craiglist, Robert Scoble of Rackspace and Scobleizer, Jeff Pulver of 140 Conference, Chris Shipley of Demo and Guidewire, and Tom Conrad of Pandora.

We invite your company to join us for this incredible event, as we highlight the technology market’s most impressive new innovations.  The application deadline is Friday, November 18, and the event itself will be March 12-14, 2012 in Austin, TX.

Please apply at http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator. Then let me know that you’ve applied, and I’ll do what I can to help you get in!

Let’s see some great news startups apply and win the SXSW Accelerator!

This month our host asks:

How do you decide to dedicate time to a new tool/platform/gadget? What is the process you go through mentally? And then later – how do you convince others to go through that process? And, last: How do you ensure that the tools you do adopt are used once the “newness” factor fades?

This is a great question and one tied very much to a class I just gave at UC Berkeley’s J-school.

One of the things I started with was showing this list of web tools from Robert Hernandez (the ying to my yang).

That’s a LOT of tools. More than you can probably teach even in a two-hour lecture. My goal, however, is not to teach specific tools, but to teach a mind-set of problem solving. For every pain-point there is a solution and that’s when you’ve come across a good tool. If a hammer didn’t get the job done, it would be a bad tool.

When I start to think about using a new tool/platform/gadget this is what goes through my mind:

1. I start with a “yes attitude.” Hey new site – do I want to give you a try, sure!
2. Is it simple to use. Yes – great. No, too bad for that tool/gadget/platform – I probably won’t come back.
3. If it is simple to use – does it have an intended purpose.

There is an important distinction to make between a strategy and a tactic. A strategy is an intended goal or outcome. A tactic is a way to get there. In checkers the strategy is to eliminate all the checkers of the other player. A tactic might be to get one of your checkers to the other side of the board so you can make that checker a king. That’s a tactic which can help achieve your goal. Another might be to try and set up a triple jump.

Most platforms/tools/gadgets are tactical – not strategic. You should always keep your strategy in mind so that you can evaluate a tool about whether or not it’s helping to achieve that final goal.

The right tool for the right job.

You don’t use a sledge hammer to knock in a nail. Similarly you don’t need to use Storify if all you’re doing is aggregating two or three tweets. You don’t need to use TweetDeck if you only manage one twitter account. That’s overkill and while it can get the job done – it creates more stress than it’s worth sometimes.

The three steps above is part of the mental checklist I go through after I’ve signed up for a tool/platform. I don’t start with cynicism, I grant that somebody took time/energy to think about a particular pain-point and how they might solve it. But if after I’ve begun using the tool I find it difficult or pointless, I’m out.

Once a tool proves its worth to me – the next question is if it’ll become part of my routine. For that again I need to find a simple way to use it. If it creates more work for me than it’s worth – the relationship won’t last. Twitter is a great example because the tool is so flexible (you can put whatever content you want in it) I’ve seen people who use it as a way to take notes during live news events. What a FANTASTIC use of the tool. Not only does it have an intended purpose – but it doesn’t create more energy, in fact, it reduces it.

If a tool can’t become part of your regular work-flow (or solve a pain point in your workflow) it’s not a good tool. The only wrong tool is one that doesn’t work for you!

Convincing others to use a new tool is a different question all together. I must confess, I don’t know if I’m the best at getting other folks to jump into the waters of various tools. I certainly evangelize certain tools like xPad, Jing, TextExpander, Nudgemail, etc – all of which have made my life easier. The only thing I can really do is lead by example and just share the tools that have truly made my life easier. If they don’t – what would I have to show for it?