Blueprint-telconf-12-12-08

look at demographics

leave out the ad model

illustrate the notion of a social network for news

draw on a white board:

blocks and circles and connect them up, what are the core pieces that reynolds can do.

do a mockup. do it with a few slides.

What would a CMS look like that is inherently social -- user and organization accounts, not just paid reporters, but others, that allows stories to be peer reviewed for factual correctness, that allows for the more atomic units of content to be broken out, categorized, linked against concepts.

Abe:

He has a version of a block and circle squares.

There is on the consumer side, he believes that whatever the confidence being produced, presentation is a big part. So it is a whole visual navigation component. AT the bottom there is this stack of various layers of mechanics involved in creating a huge, enriched digital repository. At the top there are little silots that stick up -- it is a cake with something sitting on the top of it with candles and a thread around the candles.

If one thing sits on top is

a trust network,

another a commerce network

anotehr a social network

Too big to mash into one.

What is the priority for IVP and which you want to demonstrate as a concept first.

What is the aha demonstration. 70% is what we are trying to solve, 30% is part two but there will be lots of partnering around that.

There is a big gap around trust.

Not a big gap around paying vendors. Not a big gap is in commerce networks.

The big thing is the trust network -- how does it effectively engage a smart repository.

Jeff: jumps in

Network newspaper is in a unique position to build the trust network. Newspapers have 10s of thousands of people. Why don't we tap those networks, put them in some kind of social network and organize them in a trust network of the topics they are expert to speak about.

In that trust network there will be one or more writers/editors/journalists/bloggers whose stories can be trusted.

The existing network of trust networks can be tapped to validate your stories.

Distributed network of smarts.

Easier to access a revenue model by accessing the smarts of people rather than content.

[This point was made later but relates: Business model can be to organize like an information consulting company.]

Abe: It has to be perceived as radical enough to risk all that you hold true but come across as authentic. There will be more pain before it gets better. check out: scivee.com

Has created a YouTube for scientific and research content. Videos represent sections of their project. People might pay for very targetted content. The general consumer looking for general news and information will not pay for it.

Jeff:

Instead of just video, consider a semantic media wiki project. All possible forms of content. Not just keyword tags but "tagged" based on semantic concepts. Then the re-aggregation is straightforward.

These journalists are experts. Run of the mill updates don't go far. This would be a format -- the wiki format -- the idea of trust networks linked to that, could be the monetization scheme.

Abe: Rgenerativge Atomic Content Server. RACS general idea is that content produced by bloggers and professional journalists, all the comments, are encoded in a managed chaos environment and the links between them are really really the key. They could find research, movie, video, ad. Monetization might occur here.

Figure out the digital repository core problem, then present upwards in terms of what problem is trying to solve. Trying to link it to a trust network.

What is the trust neworking to do?

How provisioned?

Relationship between content served and relationship to social network?

What is the front end experience the consumer might have and workflow that and create use cases.

Those things have to be mapped out before we can right a demo for it.

Jeff:

Need to do a plan, but in parallel could do some tactical things.

Projects:

1) IVP should focus getting some agreement in principle of shared trust network of content producers, editors and so on. Otherwise no revenue model

2) Abe think about a semantic media wiki. That has some advantages (a) news needs to move to a wiki format (b) run some back end semantic experiments atomizing and reaggregating content.

PHASE ONE:

Get these balls rolling.

PHASE TWO:

Engage with deeper semantic concepts

Focus on tapping the network of journalists.

Jeff:

Imagine a Lexis-nexis interface. Like Matt showed slides of his wiki idea. They go to a web page and select a category or subcategory AP, NYTimes, the Lee group, some are journalists, some editors.

Content-creation functionality -- article on following topics, interface can invite you to break out the atoms themselves.

Abe:

Visual guy. it works for him to try and map out the concept architecturally. First thing to focus on is the piece a prospective consumer might see.

Jeff:

database of 10,000 journalists, editors, managing editors, field offices and foreign desks.

For no money could build the network using Jeff and Abe network. If we could get the 10,000 people in a semantically connected way.

Get the 10,000 people into the structure, show the benefactors, look at this information, access to a brain trust for real. If you were a blogger you could get your article peer reviewed. professional orgnazations benefitting from the citizen journalists.

Abe:

True to what we believe. We believe the problem of paying for content is going to become worse not better. Role of journalism in this vast sea of information, need tools to bring all those things together so that they inform, and the consumer will find value. And at some point the person that helped to bring you that usefulness would share in the value created -- like buying an airline ticket. Revenue model: bounties and revenue.

Jeff: A second revenue model -- once we are storing content semantically, we can allow users to ask questions. We start unicasting. The answer to the question is specific to one person who asked that. Potentially nowhere in the web does the answer exist, so there is a scarcity element. They are going to have to pay to get that. Like a search query except the answer is created from data on the fly rather than from links to websites

Abe: There is community-building potential out of this thing.

If IVP could develop the trust network, the token system, it is not trivial. Not that it is insurmountable. A couple of slides and a markup is not going to make it work.

Jeff: IVP has a scope problem. It is too big. If this were a chess game, what is the opening gambit. Look at this as a chess game, multiple moves are required. What is first move: Newspaper industry has smart experts who know how to convey information.

Google has laid off 10,000 contractors. Google has been taking on too many technology challenges at once. Be super focused and start small. We are going to learn only by doing. If we run experiments we are going to get insights.

Jeff: Get buy in information of the newspaper industry. Build a semantic data store to navigate how those people are connected.

Abe: Catch-22 to go to participants of a trust network. Have to be able to explain what this is. To get tactical, there are a few things that we can do that can communicate a concept quickly. We just need to pick one. We focus: Pretend that what I'm about to show you is anchored bya huge, smart network of software that knows how to get at all the inforamtion you have ever published on the web. Let's talk about the trust and presentation. What is the consumer experience. You can experiemnt without going toa single content producer.

Jeff: Benefit of starting to get content producers engaged and excited. In terms of the user experience, without engaging users what have we won. The wiki approach to the news -- maybe anybody can edit aspects of a story.

Second: Can we leverage the trust network of content producers -- bloggers will see huge value in being part of that network. Millions of freelance content producers who want to tap that network. If reporter works for media news and blogger wants to tap in then medianews is going to have to get paid. Fair enough.

ABE WHAT DO WE HAVE ALREADY

JEFF: do we want to do a Gap analysis? What's a better way of organizing the people and smarts of an entire industry? If we take Steve Mott approach of creating a matrix, a gap analysis, that is really helpful and we should do that. Realistically integrating multiple technologies is always a nightmare, and 50% of such projects fail. But it is helpful for clarifying thoughts. We can build our way up more organically. Easier than taking existing technologies.

ABE: From an efficiency standpoint -- silly for e-Me to invest time and resources to solve a problem and have IVP solve the same problem and Jeff solve the same problem. it seems there are a set of problems that need to be solved that can be done by one initiative and hsared. if Missou and IVP were looking to figure out how to resource a project -- think of one that is already on the way, to not reinvent the wheel.

BILL: Describe the straw man and then see if the tools are there, if not tweak a bit.

JEFF: If we had three part time computer science students, could we get started on a technology level.

ABE: How do we dedicated % of those resources to help work the super-scaling algorithm so that Mizzou gets value on that when it is done.

JEFF: Not so worried about the algorithm as the people in the industry. Source is the people. We can be the Barack Obama of the news media industry. All of you have a role to play you have not been disenfranchised by the technology. You people are the source of value. If you have 10,000 pepole excited they are going to want to be part of it, and you have just solved the network problem. This earth is more about people than about machines. We spent too much time talking about technology approaches. That will come.

ABE: They are at a place where they want to talk less and do more. Are really interested in solving problems they have spent a lot of time researching. Needs resources to do that. Can raise funds alone or do that part of the work in concert with this program, such that there is a shared result. Missou becomes bridge between IVP work and e-ME work.

JEFF: Totally.

ARE THERE THREE SLIDES THAT SHOULD EXPLAIN THIS?

Jeff: Big picture more than three slides. Elevator pitch a couple of paragraphs. The organizing principle is we give change and hope to tens of thousands of people. Overlap concept is what RJI brought me in to do which is to think strategically how we reposition an industry.

HOW WOULD YOU GET COMPETING NEWS ORGNAIZATIONS TO SHARE

Jeff: They have a gun to their head.

WOULD PEOPLE WORK ON THEIR OWN

Jeff: A company that manages all the infrastructure. Money comes from access to the brains of people who work for the organization.

Abe: We don't start by saying our job is to save newspapers. Our job is to find a way that information can be created to publish, share, such that the news industry will have to come up with different models to make money. It will stress news organizations to find out new ways to add value.

JEFF: What we are trying to do is pretty novel. I think we should give ourselves a three year horizon to pick off the low hanging fruit in the meantime.

ABE: Content of this conversation different with steve.

Throw the concept into a JV.

Jeff: Organization question deep. He could do work for hire. More of an issue on Abe's side.

What Tim heard:

A network of people who are experts, then rate those experts and get people to essentially pay for those services by contract. Maybe have a fee to join the network and access the brain trust.