But lately, my bookmarks folder in Google Chrome has been filled with articles about the following six subjects, which I think will have a big impact on the upcoming year:

It's not a roo-mah. The Internet Fridge is coming this year.

The Internet of Things – One of my favorite action movies is “The Sixth Day.” In the movie, which takes place in the future, the main character finishes off his milk and his fridge automatically orders a new carton¹. The “Internet of Things” is the concept of everything in our house being connected to the Internet and to each other. Imagine shades that automatically dim when you turn on your television or getting a text every time your door opens. Connecting our physical to our digital can have effects beyond the living room, it can even help make our cities more efficient.

I’ve even ordered a few Ninja Blocks, small open hardware devices design to help people experiment with the Internet of Things, to play with and I encourage you to kick in a few bucks as well.

Lack of innovation in content delivery – Despite the innovation in tablets, smart phones and internet connection speeds, we’re still consuming content in the same ways we did when it was printed on dead trees. Not since Twitter² has there been a new way to deliver information. We’re still writing hundreds of words with a single byline and a picture or two. Why haven’t other forms of content become more streamlined?

The Facebook Open Graph – Just like the Internet of Things connects the Internet and the physical world, Facebook’s Open Graph promises to connect everything on the web with our social circle. Evil? Maybe. Awesome? You bet.

The end of free – The culture of the web is starting to change. This first, and perhaps most public, sign was the Pinboard versus Delicious story. In a nutshell, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter followed standard Silison Valley startup protocol and sold the social bookmarking service to Yahoo for “between $15 and $30 million³.” The service atrophied as Yahoo struggle to find a home for it. Soon after Yahoo sold the service to YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen for $5 million. The total revenue generated by Delicious during this time? $0 ((One could argue that Delicious served ads and therefore had some revenue. However, those ads were likely served by Yahoo and the revenue was negligible)).

While Delicious was going through its second sale, users were flocking to Pinboard, a similar service. The difference? Pinboard unapologetically charges users for its service. This difference in philosophy led to one of my favorite blog posts of 2011: Don’t be a Free User by Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski((For an even more detailed break down, I suggest this story in the Guardian))

The ethos of the web is the same as business in general: provide people with value and they’ll pay.

The end of average – With two brothers in college and a mother in the education field, I’m constantly pondering the state of education in America. My conclusion is that we need to tell our children that the era of average is over.

Tony Hsieh’s Las Vegas project – What happens when a personable millionaire barrels into a forgotten downtown area of an American city and attempts to revitalize it by attracting small business entrepreneurs? We’re about to find out.

1. There’s even a Tumblr dedicated to Internet Fridges
2. Circa 2005
3. Says Wikipedia

Because we have such a specific niche, we are often the first interaction a local company has with the press. Many times we are dealing with first-time entrepreneurs who are responsible for their own marketing and media outreach. Typically, these entrepreneurs are programmers or business majors who don’t know anyone in the media and, as a result, are unfamiliar with how most media outlets operate.

Recently, at the end of one of my interviews, an entrepreneur I was speaking with turned the tables on me and asked me for advice for building a good relationship with the press.

Below is a synopsis of our conversation that I thought may be useful to other startups. Hopefully it leads to better business profiles and an amicable relationship between press and startups.

The very first thing you should know: journalists are an ethical bunch, sometimes annoyingly so. There are strict rules that journalists often follow. As a rule, journalists won’t let sources dictate when stories will run. They will often double check your claims, especially when given numbers. To get a feel for the world that journalists inhabit, I suggest paying a visit to Wikipedia.

Remember that your startup is like your child. Most tech journalists speak to three entrepreneurs a day who all think their startup will change the world. Most startups also are unnecessarily protective about seemingly trivial bits of news like hires and new feature launches. Your startup is like your child. Tremendously important to you, but for other people its just another kid. Have pride and be excited, but don’t let your ego and possessiveness affect your conversations with the press.

Keep the description of your business simple.  Explain it to me like I’m a five year old…  who speaks another language … and has been living under a rock. Your best bet is to give me a sentence (i.e. “We help students organize notes”) and provide a use case (“Let’s say Mary is in Math class and she wants to record her lecture…”) For an example of simplicity, I suggest reading the famous “No, shut up” thread about Dropbox on Quora. Also, read this before coming up with your pitch.

Have a demo or the press won’t write about you. I want my readers to read my profile of your business and immediately run off to go use your product.

Good design has an unfair effect on how I judge your company. When you launch, I can’t tell if you have the most streamlined code in the world or the smartest sales guys in the country. The easiest way for journalists to see if you’re serious about your company is design. Make it pretty and the press will give you an unfair pass.

Know what the publication is looking for. Like applying for a job, five minutes of research on the publication will go a long way. Decide what fits into the publication’s coverage area and what’s important to the publication. For example TechCrunch covers consumer Internet startups and places a high value on breaking news. GigaOm covers enterprise and Internet technology and places a high value on analysis. Technically Philly covers tech companies based in Philly and places a lot of value in promoting Philadelphia technology community.

It’s unfair, but there are several “red flags” that make me doubt your seriousness. These include businesses that are seeking press but are stilling looking for a technical co-founder or lead developer. If you’re unable to convince a programmer to help you, what chance do you have of convincing your customers? If your big “feature” is integration with Facebook or Twitter, I get skeptical. If you rely exclusively on advertising revenue, I get skeptical. If your business has the chicken and egg problem (or a “marketplace” business model) where the more users you have the more useful your product becomes, I get skeptical.

Don’t play the press against each other. I don’t think it’s worth it to promise media outlets “exclusives.” Journalists disproportionately value “scoops” and will get irritated if they discover you promised something to a competitor. TechCrunch is infamous for holding companies hostage in exchange for coverage. If you choose to get in bed with TechCrunch, know that you will be angering every other outlet.

Give me discounted product codes for my readers. I can provide my community value for reading me and you can measure the success of your pitch and the popularity of the media outlet. Everybody wins.

Practice your “personal elevator pitch.” You know how to pitch your business, but know how to pitch the founding team. Have a few anecdotes about the founding of the company or the circumstances that led to the creation of the business. Business journalism is often writing the same “entrepreneur saw problem and created company” story over and over. Have a few anecdotes ready and journalists will write a better story and you’ll make a better connection with that journalist.

A journalist is on your side. You’ll be asked questions like “How many users do you have?” or “How much revenue are you making?” Many entrepreneurs get defensive when asked these questions by the press. The press wants to help you. I want every company I interview to become the next Facebook. If I cultivate you as a source and you become successful we both win. Give the truth or know that the user/revenue questions are typically just ways of asking “How legit are you?” If you can’t speak to revenue or users talk about your team or your advisors. Tell me why you will succeed.

No, I will not let you read the story before publishing. And any publication that does is not a real news outlet. Remember item number two? Check your ego before talking to the media.

Follow up with headshots, hi-res logos and screenshots. If an entrepreneur doesn’t send me a headshot, I often snag a picture from Facebook or Twitter.

Questions you should be prepared to answer:

1. Tell me what [your product] does.
2. How did you meet your co-founders? Who are they and what do they do? How old are you all?
3. Where are you located? Why?
4. What problem are you trying to solve? How did this come up?
5. How many users do you have?
6. Who is your target customer? What has their feedback been so far?
7. What’s your plan for next six months? How do you plan on growing?
8. How are you different from [obvious competitor]?
9. Why did you raise money? What will you spend it on? Why did you choose [VC firm, angel investor]?
10. What’s the coolest thing [your product] does?
11. What do you think of [trend in your industry]?
12. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me that I didn’t ask you?

Journalistic entities are becoming product companies, offering products that turn content into marketing. As a side effect, this creates businesses that follow Jack White’s theory of control: vertically integrated, creating content that markets a product that markets the content that markets the product all over again.

Journalism as product

Like USA Today selling its data, POLITICO making a bookstore, my local public radio station selling membership or TechCrunch launching Disrupt. Publishers that successfully turn their content into brand building and marketing for a product are the ones that are surviving.

It’s the real reason Patch is having so much trouble: they’re selling nothing but pageviews and sunshine. I’d bet Aol would make more money with Patch if it used it as a sales channel for its dial-up internet access. You know, the business which still accounts for the majority of its revenues.

In the past that product was a subscription and publishers were quite good at marketing and selling it. Now, we have to all get a bit more creative. Your role as a publisher is to connect and help your chosen community. Content is just one way of doing so.

Product as journalism

The irony here is while publishers are racing to be more like more “traditional” businesses, businesses are becoming publishers.

Fields like editorial strategy, content marketing and custom publishing are emerging, teaching brands how to act like publishers through company blogs, social media and more. Think of what American Express is doing with its OPEN network, Behance’s The 99 Percent or Groupon’s army of writers. 37Signals is a master of the company blog and spins its content off into books.

Suddenly, businesses are in need of carving out their own niches online as thought leaders. This leads to publications that can blur the line between journalism and marketing.

A detailed chart created to help demonstrate the movement between publishers and companies.

For example, OkCupid publishes an excellent blog about mining its data for trends in the dating world. I’d call this journalism, though its end goal is marketing a product. Is this any different from PaidContent using its content to sell $500 conference tickets? How about Mint.com’s blog about personal finance? How is this different from the financial columnist at USA Today?

This collision exists beyond the web. Know why the New York Yankees continually snap up marquee free agents that aren’t named Cliff Lee¹? They own a TV network. According to Forbes, the Yankees made $400 million from the YES network. That’s more than ticket sales. Yankee Stadium could be completely empty for an entire season and the team could still make payroll, all from a TV network that “covers” them. Same goes for MLB, NFL, The Boston Celtics and multiple college teams. The product owns the medium.

How about e-commerce? Amazon is using its Prime program to rope users in, delivering the products first and then the content.

So what should I do?

The common theme among most of the aforementioned products is that the product is not the content. Sure Kindle singles and news apps are nice, but they won’t make a significant dent in anyone’s bottom line.

As much as it pains me to say it, I think Gary Vaynerchuk had it right when he gave a newspaper executive advice at the Inc 500 conference a few weeks ago.²

You shouldn’t be worried about pageviews, Facebook likes or what Poynter is saying about you. You should worry about the trust of your customers and the strength of your product.

You know, like a real business.

1. Yeah, I went there
2. I said on Twitter that I wasn’t a big fan of Gary’s and he offered to change my mind. I think that’s pretty cool.

“I’m going wherever you’re going,” said one women stopping mid-conversation.

“Where’s the party?” yelled one of the guys manning the sponsor tables in the hall way.

As much I’d like to say it was because they saw our handsome faces in the conference program, it was likely more about the three 12-packs of Harpoon IPA we were carrying through the halls on the way to our panel.

I’m often critical of conference panels. Talks on theory don’t do much for me. I love actual examples, systems, numbers and next steps. And beer.

Which is why I was excited to speak at the Online News Association’s annual conference in Boston last weekend. I partnered with my Omaha-based counterpart Danny Schreiber of Silicon Prarie News for “Making it Work With a Small Staff” a panel about a growing sector of the media ecosystem: bootstrapped journalism startups with less than 10 employees.

We took great pains to include lots of actionable advice from the point of two people who are in the trenches. Our panel even got a bit meta as it was originally supposed to be a four-person panel. So we had to, um, make it work with a small staff. We did this by shifting our original structure of the panel and by creating a friendly environment by handing out a few beers before we began our talk.

We discussed how Technically Philly and Silicon Prarie News make money, how we sell sponsorships, who we plan on hiring next and how we keep tabs on our growing communities. We goes lots of questions on our events business and many people remarked on how our editorial advice sounded familiar.

We gave out a handout that I’ve included below that includes links to the actual sponsorship materials, invoices and other raw materials that we use at Technically Philly.

The full video:

Excepts from the handout:

Business takeaways:

• Establish a workflow for invoices.
• Have goals. Do you want to bring on your founders full-time? Hire three writers? Launch four sites?
• When selling, always have reference material. Examples: a sponsorship one pager for a large event. For a small event.
• “How can we get involved?” = “We want to buy something from you.”
• Focus your efforts on products and services that yield maximum return per hour invested. Spending an hour selling a $50 advertisement? Not efficient.
• Many online publishers are constantly approached by vendors. Avoid them.

Editorial takeaways:

• Schedule tweets/Facebok posts with CoTweet or Hootsuite.
• Keep a strict editorial calendar with weekly features and departments to ensure there site never looks stale. The simpler the better (i.e. a Q and A, link roundup, a weekly picture, unedited video content).
• Alerts, RSS and Google Reader are your friend. Have Google News, Crunchbase & Twitter mention alerts for all companies, places and people that you cover.
• Never send three reporters to an event when one will do. Let the community fill coverage gaps if needed.
• If you can write something in bullet points, write it in bullet points. Not every story is a narrative.
• Freelancers can be a great way to relieve pressure on your staff or a huge waste of time and resources. Choose your freelancers with care and provide them with tools to succeed.
• Have an ethics policy and keep it public. Refer to this when faced with controversy.
• Be absolutely ruthless with your time. Don’t meet in person when a phone call will do. Don’t call when email will do.
• If you do meet with someone, send an agenda containing the topics you want to talk about. This helps the other party prepare for the conversation and keeps you on topic.
• Your reporters may also sell ads. Disclose this. For most outside of the journalism community, this is enough. Example of disclosure.

Other ONA notes:

• Somehow, my bio in the program got replaced with Joshua Benton’s from Neiman Lab. I’ll take it.
• Advice for future panel speakers: be over-prepared.
• Also, spend lots of time with your fellow panelists and determine points of disagreement. This leads to a better conversation.
• Many thanks to Andrew Pergam for helping us organize our session.
• Much of ONA is dedicated to digital departments within a larger news organization. I found myself wanting more for the indy news site.
• Conference attendees want new services, tips and tricks that they can write down and immediately implement when they return to work.
• Before ONA11, Danny had never heard of ONA. The group should do more to reach out to these independent and profitable news sites.

I’m not here to convince you about the musical talent of Jack White and the White Stripes, this video of their performance on Conan can do that for me.

While the band’s music made me a fan, what’s kept me interested is Jack White’s unique takes on creativity and business. There’s nothing subjective about business success.

Jack White soloing on Conan's desk.

The band is curious for a couple of reasons: the whole husband-wife/brother-sister thing, there are only two members and the band’s monumental success at a time when the infrastructure of the music industry was crumbling around them. Likewise, White’s latest venture Third Man Records, is selling custom, hand pressed vinyl records and making waves in the music business.

As a fan of White’s music I’ve probably read nearly every mainstream press attention he has received and Jack White’s thoughts on business and creativity have had a profound effect on who I am as a businessman.

Below are some takeaways I’ve gathered and try to live up to in my professional life.

Contraints produce creativity

“Little Room” is one of the White Stripes shortest songs, but it’s also one of the most important in understanding White’s business philosophy. The lyrics:

The White Stripes have build a strong, but limited framework for their music and their business. Much like good business can boil down their messaging to a simple phrase¹, creativity is best produced when faced with strict limitations. The White Stripes only have two members, limited color scheme and (for a while) only used analog equipment.

True creativity is born of a struggle of some kind. Build a strong framework you believe in and the limitations will empower you. Put a deadline on that meeting. Limit that product to only three features. Constrain. Ship the damn thing.

In a digital world, we are tempted towards excess constantly. When things are easy, they are boring. They are paralyzing. When we have numbers on every aspect of our business, the information can overwhelm our sensibilities and gut instincts.

“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the colors in the palette, that just kills creativity”

Own it

During its entire lifespan the White Stripes never signed a contract where they would not own all of their content. This resulted in the self-publishing of their first two records. The success of the first albums enabled the group to negotiate favorable contracts for their rest of their career, including a one-album deal with industry giant Warner Brothers. In fact, all of the band’s contracts were short-term arrangements.

From the LA Times: “The band retains ownership of its master recordings–an arrangement almost impossible with major companies, and a major bone of contention between many artists and labels with an eye on growing digital distribution opportunities.”

We’ve seen this tactic employed by Bill Gates with much success when it came to DOS. Owning your work is an important long-term strategy for any creative product.

However, this Jobsian-like control can extend to the manufacture of the product itself. The reason Apple can innovate hardware and software simultaneously is that it remains tight fisted over the entire production process.

So when Jack White transitioned from rock star² to a record distributor he made sure to retain control over all processes.

From the New York Times:

“The [Third Man Records] building would include a rehearsal space, a small record store concentrating on vinyl albums and 45s and even a darkroom: a full-service facility for bands to practice, record and release music as fast as possible.”

Indie Nashville takes a tour through Third Man records and the vinyl factory nearby.

Omit needless words

White is unabashedly obsessed with the number three. From the White Stripes FAQ:

The White Stripes contain no more elements than needed. This serves not only as a gimmick but a way to keep costs laughably low while streamlining the entire operation. White often says that this simplicity also gives him nothing to hide behind, forcing him to put on a good show.

A simple stage set up for a White Stripes concert

Your profession is not a cartoon

Some people choose the profession they are in because they like the idea of that occupation more than the actual practice. In journalism, this disconnect was possible until the digital disruption. Yet journalism professors often tell me that their students are still chasing the romanticized ideal of a journalists, the archetype made possible in All The President’s Men or Good Night and Good Luck. But we can’t ignore our the business realities and we must do what we can to learn the business of content.

White talked abut his love of theatrics holding down his early business ambitions as an upholster. “I was an apprentice for years, but when I opened my own place, I just didn’t have that love for money that’s necessary to run a business. I was so into the cartooniness of it.”

While he never stated this explicitly, White wised up when it came time to turn his music into a business.

1. The iPod’s “A thousand songs in your pocket” comes to mind
2. A REAL rock star, not a fake “I know Ruby” rock star

Since starting the technology news site Technically Philly we’ve since spun off Technically Media (the parent company and consulting arm) and created a week long festival among other projects.

Along the way I’ve stumbled across a series of roadblocks that have forced us to pivot, devise our own solutions or go looking for outside help. I’ve found myself wishing for certain services and companies that don’t exist yet.

Below are 7 of those road blocks that I think would help make the journalism world a better place.

The ideas:

CRM for publishers – As I wrote in June, current customer relationship management options are not created with online publications in mind.  As we experiment with paywalls, one off e-books and events we could use a system to help better facilitate sales. I’m currently experimenting with KISSmetrics to help make this happen, but need an out of the box solution that connects to my site analytics.

Tumblr for advertising networks – Every publisher I have ever spoken with has attempted¹ to group together local sites to form an ad network. The inevitable stumbling blocks make a grassroots local network incredibly difficult to execute. Mostly, current ad serving technology is unnecessarily detailed, difficult and expensive. Let’s face it: most journalists don’t have a clue about online advertising. I don’t need detailed demographics. Or campaigns. Or sample creative sizes.

Give me a bare bones system that allows several sites to easily select ads they’d like to run on their site. That’s it. Keep it so simple that a child could use it. My ad partners and I should be able to set up an account in less than 20 seconds. Make the buttons big and keep it jargon free. Think more Tumblr than WordPress. More iPod Shuffle than full stereo system. More BankSimple than Bank of America. More Coursekit than Blackboard.

The service should have no upfront costs in exchange for revenue share and offer sales training and support for a premium upgrade. Remember: online publishing needed tools like Blogger and Livejournal to gain popularity among the common user. Advertising networks could be democratized similarly.

Voice transcription software for multi-person conversations – Journalists often waste hours transcribing phone and audio interviews from sources. It’s 2011, and we still haven’t figured out a way to easily automate this process that doesn’t involve a disgruntled intern, two cans of Red Bull and lots of muttering about going to law school. I once cornered a Dragon Voice salesman at a conference and he told me that the tech just isn’t available for computers to transcribe two voices at once. The software even struggles with once voice unless “trained.”²

I’d pay hundreds of dollars for such software, especially if it let me click parts of the transcript and jump to the related audio clip. Bonus points for tying the person I’m speaking with to my address book. Related: Google could pull this off if they wanted to.

Context makers – A large part of a blog post or story is often wasted catching the reader up on previous events to help provide a bit of context for the latest news. However, not all readers need this information and its often information that the journalist has written dozens of times. Typically, when humans identify a repetitive behavior, its only a matter of time before technology is created to streamline and automate the process, so where’s our context creator?

When reading stories about the Philadelphia Eagles signing star defensive back Nnamdi Asomugha, I don’t need the paragraphs about his time with his former team. As a football fan, I already know.

However, when it came to Rupert Murdoch’s phone hacking troubles, the paragraphs offering context were incredibly useful in informing me about the intricacies of a story that I was not intimately familiar. Yet both stories had to break from the new information being delivered to offer context. This forces news to constantly cater to the lowest common denominator: the person who has never heard of the story before³.

Not all readers require the same amount of context. Perhaps this can be solved through some sort of uber-personalization or tools that help quickly create snazzy timelines⁴ and sidebars for context.

Easy online quizzes – Is Quibblo the best we’ve got?

Facebook Comments + Facebook page comments – Why can’t we connect the comments on our Facebook page with those on our site?

Custom post-type creator – Smarter people than I have long opined that the journalists need to rethink the article as the “atomic unit of journalism.” I agree, but I’m still waiting for the technology that allows me to easily assemble different data point in a structure I create⁵⁶.

Right now publishers are bound to the content types of their CMS. This most often includes pictures, quotes, links, articles and blog posts. But what if I had a user interface to drag and drop elements of different content types? What if I could even use saved snippets of text from other stories, source documents, my site’s taxonomies and social media to arrange them in anyway I’d like?

What if I could take a PDF of my local school board agenda and highlight all of the times and tag them as “time.” I could highlight the board member that led each discussion and tag them as “people” and highlight each agenda item and tag it as “event.”

I could then dump this data into an “event coverage” content type that I created with a WYSIWYG editor to create a quick story recap that is already properly designed, tagged and categorized. This same information could be used for my “timeline” content type as well.

Boy, I hope that made sense.

Closing thoughts

• I’ll admit, I wrote this post to elicit people to tell me that some of the tools above already exist.
• Also, you may have noticed a pattern above: publishers need tools that help streamline revenue-producing aspects of a content-focused business.

1. And I include myself in this category
2. Right now there’s a Geek Squad commercial touting back school software that includes Dragon Naturally Speaking. Even the YouTube commentors are skeptical about the service working in a quiet classroom, so don’t even think about using the service when there are two professors. And yes, I did actually find value in YouTube comments.
3. True story: I knew nothing about Casey Anthony until I got a CNN Breaking News text alert about the verdict
4. SacPress has the best solution for this problem so far with its “Storyline” tab on article pages
5. And I’m not the only one
6. Someone needs to come up with the “Jarvis Number” which takes the date of all Jeff Jarvis ideas / blog posts and figures out the average amount of time it takes the rest of the world to catch up. For Christsakes, the dude told mainstream media in 2007 to get linking and it took the AP until 2011 to listen. Maybe the Jarvis Number = 4 years.

And because we’re both big content nerds, we spent a lot of time discussing web metrics and the struggle to grow readership to a level that interests mainstream media and advertisers.

By most news sites’ standards, Technically Philly doesn’t attract an impressive number of visits. But when we hold an event people attend. When we write about a company, founders often tell us of a bump in traffic and customers. If we publish something controversial, it is discussed intelligently among the community.

I’m a big believer that there is only one metric that matters: When you ask your audience to do something, do they do it? And when they do it, is it in enough numbers for you to accomplish your mission?

Matt’s unique perspect working on Project Argo makes me sit up and listen every time he has something to say about the industry, whether he’s talking about topic pages or, more recently, Content Management Systems. So I took notice when he wrote about the future of Content Management Systems on Poynter.

Matt discusses the evolving expectation of a CMS and makes numerous points about the content needs of a CMS noting that it cannot be the end all solution to all of the problems of a news organization.

I agree whole-heartedly with most of Matt’s thesis but there is one facet where the modern CMS fails the independent news organization that is rarely mentioned: revenue. Specifically industry standard tools that are par for any website that sells a product or service.

I believe strongly that journalists overvalue multimedia tools as a means to tell stories, so I’ve never been frustrated at the lack of social media or multimedia integrations with my CMS. News sites must do more than tell stories, they must turn readers into customers if they hope to survive.

That conversion can vary depending on the news site. A conversion can be a sign up, a subscriber, purchasing membership or attending an event (or sometimes, all of the above).

Currently at Technically Philly, we’re beginning our plans for a long-overdue redesign, and chief among our needs is what amounts to a CRM to help roll out our perspective membership platform. I don’t need something that makes it easy to post YouTube videos, I need a tool that helps us gather relevant information about our readers to deliver the content that best suits their consumption habits. I need to know which of my users are most engaged with our content and how to convert them in to customers. I need to know the newsletter they signed up for and the event they purchased tickets for. With this information, Technically Philly could send targeted sales campaigns to our users with relevant content.

For example, if I see that John Doe signed up for our venture capital newsletter (which is free), I know he’ll probably also enjoy attending Switch Philly, our startup demo event (which is not).

Currently, industry standard CRMs like SalesForce were not created with content creators in mind. Instead they are often created for sales teams at more traditional businesses. However, what if there was a simple HTML tag I could tie to links that would automatically update our reader’s profile in our customer database?

Technically Philly is not the only news site in search of such functionality. Armstrong, the Knight Foundation-funded CMS boasts CRM integration on the home page and I think it’s a right direction. I would never suggest that CMS makers bake in full-featured a CRM. However CRMs and similar platforms are rarely even considered when discussing a news site.

While workflows and content presentation are important, independent news sites need more. Workflow and multimedia tools are important but they are small improvements on the process of journalism. Real revenue and customer management tools placed in the hands of site owners would produce more innovation than Storify ever will.

Background photo by Flickr user joeshlabotnik.

In 2008, journalism was set into a frenzy. The terrible economy mixed with changing distribution methods led to a state of catastrophe and an industry suddenly besieged by plumitteing revenues.

But you know that part.

What you may not remember is around that time, several dozen news executives clandestinely gathered at a Chicago hotel airport. It was reported that they discussed pay walls and other coming strategies for improving the sagging business. But what they discussed really doesn’t matter. What matters is how they discussed it.

That’s when Jason Krustifek called for a more open discussion about the future of news and thus, BarCamp NewsInnovation was born. In 2009, there were three BCNI’s held across the country: Miami, Portland and Philadelphia. At the time, I was in college without money or any sort of professional network. I couldn’t afford the bigger conferences, there were no jobs available and I felt like I had little impact on the national conversation.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, because we organized the first BCNI Philly just about 100 people showed up on a beautiful sunny day at Temple University to chat about the future news. Since then only Philadelphia has remained an annual tradition, and I have either organized or co-organized the event each year since 2009.

In 2009, 100 people showed up and we managed to order 20 boxes of pizza for everyone for lunch. In 2011, we had 150 people attend and were able to provide coffe, bagels, lunch, drinks throughout the event, free drinks at the afterparty and dinner.

I believe strongly in the mission of BCNI to provide a low-cost and high quality journalism conference and I wish there were more BCNI events across the country. To help facilitate that process allow me to outline everything you’d ever want to know to hold your own event. It’s the guide 21-year-old me would have wanted.

Before you start

Why are you doing this? You should be hosting a BCNI out of the kindness of your heart. Naturally, as an organizer you will make connections with sponsors and guests in a way that you may not as a regular attendee. The primary benefit of hosting a BCNI is giving something back to your craft and meeting some new friends in the process. If this isn’t enough, organizing a BCNI probably isn’t for you. BCNI will not attract executives and big wigs (though a few have come to BCNI Philly). Instead you’ll attract the doers and the thinkers of the industry. You know, the exciting ones.

BarCamps are different. BarCamps use “Open Grid” scheduling, which is a nerdy way of saying that “there is no schedule.” Attendees are responsible for all of the event’s content. While this makes planning a bit easier, it can also be a bit nerve-wracking as nobody can make any guarantees about the event. However, this open scheduling often leads to very obscure, nichy and cutting edge session topics. No “Is blogging journalism?” here. More on how to set up the Grid below.

Planning

Unlike other conferences, BCNI is free (or very cheap). That means that you’ll have to rely on partnerships with people and free tools to handle everything you’ll need.

1. Pick a date. BCNI Philly is always a Saturday late in April. Most BarCamps pick a weekend, though I’m sure a happy hour BarCamp on a weekday would do just fine. Also, a Saturday event allows everyone enough time to travel.

2. Pick a time. More appropriately, pick the length of time. After three years we’ve found that the best timing is:

• 9 a.m. – Doors open
• 9:45 a.m – Opening remarks
• 10 a.m. – First session
• 11 a.m. – Second session
• 12 p.m. – Lunch
• 1 p.m. – Third session
• 2 p.m. – Fourth session
• 3 p.m. – Five session

Have each session last 50 minutes and allow 10 minutes for changeover. Avoid having the event last longer than five hours. Any longer and your attendees will turn into zombies. Scary, scary undead journalists. Plus you want to save lots of energy for the bar afterwards.

3. Find a venue. If this is your first time organizing an event, you’ll likely be surprised at the cost of venue space. The best option is to exchange sponsorship for a free venue. BCNI has partnered with the Temple School of Journalism each of its three years because the school feels that the event helps boast the reputation of the school. I strongly suggest a college or a business with plenty of conference rooms. Other venue requirements:

• Free wi-fi
• Access to food (if you are not providing lunch)
• Access to a bar for afterparty
• Access to coffee shop (if you are not providing breakfast)
• Large gathering space for scheduling board
• Conference rooms, classrooms or similar layouts that enable multiple sessions to take place with out being distracting
• Easy access to a parking lot. For your guests and so you can easily unload and load before and after the event
• Computers with projectors in each session room

Mostly, you want a venue that is excited and supportive of the event.

Pre planning

One you have the when and where established it’s time to get your marketing in order.

4. Establish the hashtag. Otherwise you may have folks having multiple conversations across social media.

5. Create a signup page. For BCNI Philly we go as far as to make an entire site, though that is not necessary. However, you must have some sort of ticketing system for registration. We use Eventbrite, though for other events Technically Media uses Philadelphia-based Ticketleap. Both are great services which are easy to use. We like Eventbrite for BCNI because it gives us the option to list everyone who has signed up, something that we think helps build excitement around the event. Whatever service you use, make sure you require emails at registration so you can easily communicate with your attendees in the months leading up to the event. Also, make sure that your ticketing system allows for easy printing of nametags.

6.Promote the event. Reach out to all of your journalism buddies and invite them to do a session. The first BCNI, we asked a few people that we respect in Philadelphia to come present and we often provided a few ideas to help the presenter brainstorm. We also mailed out a “guide to presenting at BCNI.” If you’d like, you are welcome to steak the one we have used the past three years.

7.Seek sponsorship. After you’ve generated a healthy buzz to your event, reach out to some folks and ask if they’d like to help support the event. Past sponsors of BCNI Philly have included colleges like CUNY and Temple, trade associations like the Society for Environmental Journalists and individuals that have attended the event in years past. We asked for $50 (for supplies) to $500 (for lunch) from sponsors. Some advice:

• Always have specific aspects of the conference that are being sponsored. “General sponsorships” are harder to sell than “Lunch sponsor” or “Schedule board sponsor.”
• Don’t be shy, the worse someone can say is “no.”
• In your email to prospective sponsors point to your attendee list and make it clear that this event is not for profit.
• In all promotional material and websites include your contact information and a call to action for people who’d like to sponsor.

One month before the event

8. Email attendees and remind them that they signed up for the event and offer advice on where to stay, how to get to the venue and where to park. We also like to mention other events going on locally so attendees can make an entire weekend out of it if they’d like.

9. Follow up with your venue. Around one month out, I pay a visit to Chair of the Temple Department of Journalism Dr. Andrew Mendelson and we walk through the venue and write down requirements for tables, chairs, rooms and wifi.

One week before the event

10. Purchase your supplies.

• Print name tags at late as possible and bring extras to the event for latecomers.
• Bring lots of sharpie markets, tape and blank sheets of paper to place signs to restrooms, wifi instructions and any other last-minute information.
• Purchase a foam schedule board, a stack of index cards and lots of pushpins. On one end of the board write your time slots and on the other, write the rooms at your venue. Be sure to include capacity and any other special characteristics such as computer equipment.
• If you are providing drinks (and we suggest you do) purchase two large Rubbermaid containers and a few cases of water and soda.

11. Get volunteers. You’ll need a few folks to hand out nametags and other last minute tasks. I think it’s a good idea to have one volunteer for every 40 attendees. If you can, try and provide your volunteers with a gift.

The day of the event

12. Arrive an hour early. Instruct your volenteers on the check in process, establish protocal if people come late or don’t have a ticket. Provide WiFi instructions and post signs with arrows to each room and restrooms. Make sure all of the rooms are open, unlocked and usable.

13. Kick off the event with opening remarks. Remind everyone how a BarCamp works and provide a short walk through for the day. It’s also a chance to get on your soapbox, if you’d like.

14. Put out fires. You will forget something. Something will go wrong. It won’t be that big of a deal.

After the event

15. Have a local lead the charge to bar. Make sure you help clean up and ask others to help to.

16. Follow up. Thank your attendees, aggregate the reaction posts and tweets and save any pictures. You’ll want them to help promote next year.

Good Luck

If you have any remaining questions, don’t be afraid to reach out and contact me or any of the Technically Media team. Or drop a comment here. Happy camping!