It’s all in the videos.

Emerging Skills of Tomorrow’s Journalists- The 3 minute gist.

My pre-panel interview

Full Video

Hear me schill for Stanford’s J-program at 33:00.

I’d bet we’ll also talk about media companies and people doing things right, and how to train for whats next.

I’ll be joining Jay Rosen of NYU, Vadim Lavrusik of Mashable, Jenna Wortham of the NYT tech section and Laurie Segall, a reporter at CNN. A pretty decent cast of characters for this subject, actually.

Why should you believe us? I’m not certain you should, but here are the perspectives you will get:

Jay Rosen is a professor of journalism at NYU. He recently started an experimental program there called Studio 20, where he is attempting to cross pollinate journalists with developers. Jury is still out on his strategy, but it is an incredible effort. He’s also one of twitter’s loudest pundits about journalism.

Vadim Lavrusik is Mashable’scommunity manager, and also has excellent journalism chops. He and I represent the “recently exited j-school and entered the workforce” crowd. This is Mashable’s party, so he’ll be moderating.

Jenna Wortham is one of the New York-based technology reporters at the NYT. She focuses a lot on consumer tech and apps, as well as start ups. She’s in her twenties, sassy, and something of a taste-maker, with a great deal of social-media relevance. I’m hoping she focuses on what skills and tech she brings to covering her beat, and how the demands of her current gig differ from her past life at Wired.

Laurie Segall is an unknown for me. She seems to be young, and her coverage of “Money and Technology” tells me she is dispatched to cover things that call for a young/female/techish voice. I’ll be listening closely to what she has to say, as I don’t know her well.

Me. I’ll be winging it, as usual. I recently graduated from Stanford’s journalism masters program, and did a stint at The New York Times before taking a permenant position at D: all things Digital. My title is Associate Editor, but that means I have developed and am implementing out social media and metrics strategy, as well as working on new multimedia products. I also cover early stage start-ups and emerging technologies in the weekly “Early Adopter” column.

I also consult and teach at Stanford in their journalism program. I focus mostly on digital journalism, practical techniques and tools, and distribution platforms. I also consult heavily on the Stanford’s flagship media program, Digital Media Entrepreneurship, which is 50% class, 50% incubator, with a side of VC, Angel and media execs. Its full of students and professionals from the journalism program, the graduate school of business, the CS department and some Silicon Valley orgs that lend a specific hand when needed.

As for topics to be covered, the materials are vague, but I’d imagine thats because Vadim and co are figuring out what we are going to be talking about. I’ll update this post if I hear more on that. If you have thoughts, feel free to tweet at me (@withdrake).

I’ve posted the official promo language below, along with where you can go to get tickets.

Oh yeah, and the whole thing benefits the Y, so buy two. And rumor has it there may be an open bar.

200 Hudson Street | www.92YTribeca.org | 212.601.1000
MASHABLE’S NEXTUP NYC
Tue, Feb 8, 6:30 pm, $15

Mashable’s fifth NextUp NYC focuses on the skills that news organizations will demand and the tools journalists will need to be successful as they redefine the way they report, produce and distribute their content. The night will consist of networking and a conversation and Q & A with Vadim Lavrusik, Community Manager & Social Media Strategist at Mashable; Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and blogger at PressThink.org; Jenna Wortham, Technology Reporter for The New York Times; Drake Martinet, Associate Editor of D: All Things Digital/The Wall Street Journal Digital; and Laurie Segall, Money & Technology Reporter at CNN. Part of Social Media Week New York.

About 92YTribeca
92YTribeca is 92nd Street Y’s downtown arts and culture venue in New York City. Opened in October 2008, 92YTribeca presents music, comedy, film, theater, talks, classes, family events, and Jewish community and holiday programs in a versatile, street-level, modern space at 200 Hudson Street. In addition to the mainstage and screening room, the venue houses an art gallery, lounge, bar, café, seminar and meeting rooms, and free Wi-Fi around the space. With programs developed by a professional curatorial team in partnership with staff, local artists and arts organizations, new-media companies, fellow presenters, and community and cause-based organizations, 92YTribeca aims to engage a diverse community of young people from around the New York area with smart, relevant programming that encourages participation and conversation. For more information, visit www.92YTribeca.org.

To take this next step, I’ll share a metaphor that I often used while teaching New York Times journalists about the dynamics of twitter. When you hear twitter, think instead of a cocktail party within your beat or interest area. You populate it mostly with interesting people, some impresarios who just need to be there, a few outsiders and some wild cards. Following more people means more conversations at your party, but also makes it harder to hear everyone.

To torture the metaphor further, posting to twitter is like being at the party too. You are trying to be the best version of yourself. You endeavor to be good natured, clever, and topical, all in 120ish characters.

Twitter Etiquette

How to share links to your own work with out sounding like a self-promoting dirtbag.

Twitter is great for sharing links. Links to articles, links to images, and links to funny pictures. Sometimes we want to share links to our own work but want to be gracious and helpful- here are some ways.

Give a shout out to the people on twitter who were quoted in your article, or who contributed to the reporting. Something like,

“Just posted this piece on the new thai restaurant in Green Point. http://bit.ly/rbslla Big thanks to @thaifoodnut for the great background info.”

Retweet someone who tweets a link to your piece, and thank them. For this, first retweet their tweet, then tweet your own post with something like,

“thanks @journalismlover, hope the piece on artificial sweeteners was useful. http://bit.ly/lbfobaf”

How to take a conversation out of Twitter to another medium.

Many Journalists use Twitter to find sources. Once you’ve found someone, its great to take the conversation into e-mail land. Here’s how.

@withdrake: people of earth- I’m looking for anyone who has noticed that their iPad has been getting way too warm. Tweet me back.

@ipatty: Hey @withdrake, mine got so hot it left a mark on my plastic outdoor table.

@withdrake: @ipatty, Interesting. Would you shoot me an email at withdrake [at] withdrake [dot] com? would love to hear more.

See what happened there? At the end I put my email in that funny human-only format because there are computers out there that scour twitter for email addresses to do nasty things to them. Another way to accoplish the same task would be to use the Direct Message.

A Direct Message is like a private “mini-email” between two people on twitter. The trick there is that you have to follow the person you wish to message, and they have to follow you as well. Once that reciprocal relationship is established, the “DM” feature can be used. That exchange would look something like,

@withdrake: Greetings tweeps, I’m looking for anyone who has noticed that their iPad has been getting way too warm. Tweet me back.

@ipatty: Hey @withdrake, mine got so hot it left a mark on my plastic outdoor table.

@withdrake: @ipatty, Interesting. I just followed you, would you mind following me back so we can DM about it?

DMs are used for short info exchanges, and often are frustrating if you are trying to get rea info. They can be great for trading phone numbers when you’d prefer them not to be public, but dont want to get email involved. Also they enable periodic private communication between you and the other party- occasionally useful.

Final Thought.

Twitter is immediate and asynchronous. Make your tweets stand alone when you can. In journalism speak, the best tweets are often a lede+nutgraph+action(link) all in 120 characters, so that others may retweet. It’s an exercise in brevity and word economy, and occasionally, its fun.

Four hundered nintey years, several months and one very long, hungry winter ago, the locals of a harsh land walked out of their homes and into what was surely little more than a shanty town of makeshift dwellings at what would become known as Plymouth colony.

The locals shared the fruits of expertise in a bounty only available to those who’d lived there long enough to build up the surplus of food, resrouces and communal connections.

The immigrants were a foreign color, mostly refused to adopt the local clothing and cultural practices, and kept an insular community where they only knew each other and spoke their native language— ignoring the language of thier new home.

But on a day not unlike today, all those years ago, a group of locals looked far enough past the differences to share a common experience, at a common table and a common meal.

On this, our national day of Thanksgiving, we retell these stories of hardship too often as ones of triumph of our early immigrant forebearers, and not often enough as ones of generous locals looking past the differences that devide parts of our nation today.

In giving thanks, I encourage you to remember what really came to pass on the day we have elevated to a status shared with the births of our founders and commemeration of our veterans sacrifices.

Those natives, so long ago, looked past the devisions that tear at our socity’s seams today. They reached out the most sincere hand of welcome- one full of food. The locals, often portrayed as savages, provided the warmth of a universal human experience- a bountiful meal.

Now, it’s unlikley that the story hapened as it is retold to us each generation, but, as I am fond of saying, there is a difference between the facts and the truths.

The truths therein, which we’ve found self-evident enough to decalre this day a holiday, are that all people are created equal and endowed by their creator with equality and human dignity that the natives recognized in their shabby visitors.

For one day, allow every one to feel welcome in your homeland, and attempt a shared experience that can create, if not a love, at least an understanding, among men.

We will all, native and immigrant alike, lead enriched lives for having honored one of our great founding truths- one we like to think Thoimas Jefferson penned, borrowed from French enlightenment thinkers

It’s a truth the Pilgrim’s native benefactors understood and acted on.

So, on this and every Thanksgiving, I ask those of us who have enjoyed a life built on generations of prosperity and comradeship to remember the truth of shared humanity with all people- even the most recently arrived and unadapted immigrants.

In Love and Thanks,
Drake

They do classic Italian style crust and baking (brick oven and all) but fold in some of the fresh, local ingredients that have made the Berkeley food scene so famous.

I didn’t catch it in the video, but they are also mixing some seriously excellent original cocktails.

Didn’t know what it was back then, but I shot a quick video of one of Google’s autonomous Prius (Prii?) before it drove away from in front of Joya in Downtown Palo Alto.

Looks like the sensor pod on top has a fixed and rotating component, as well as what I’m guessing is a stepper-motor style rotation counter on the left rear wheel. I also see what appears to be a GPS antenna (no surprise there) on the rear dorsal section of the roof.

I’m going to talk to some friends at Stanford’s vehicle lab and ee if I can pull apart what sensors are actually bolted on here.

I encourage you to read the official post and browse the photos over at the City Room blog. Read the lede… I’m pretty sure they even referenced my cuddling newlyweds.

Have a look at this interactive map of the city’s waterfront. Great for planning where you might like to shoot.

ORIGINAL POST: The weekend of July 31, The New York Times’ City Room blog is asking you to help them cover New York’s waterfront, in a crowd-sourced storytelling adventure.

Below you’ll find all the info needed to submit some images and descriptions. Some of the best will be featured at nytimes.com and likley in the print edition of the paper.

They don’t have a post with instructions about it up yet, so I’ve pasted most of the email sent out about the project here so everyone can join in the fun.
________________________________________________________________

Cover the Waterfront : A crowd-sourced photo project to run on City Room (the blog of The Times’ New York report, nytimes.com/cityroom) and in the Sunday Metropolitan section.

THE GOAL
To get as many people as possible to submit as many pictures as possible from as many places as possible along New York City’s 578-mile coastline, thus showing how the waterfront is really used.

YOUR ROLE
To seed the submissions, and help us guarantee range, by going to far-flung and well-selected spots along the waterfront to see what you can see.
And, to tell all your friends (Facebook and otherwise), followers (Twitter and otherwise), colleagues, contacts and people you see on the street to join in.
And, to write up beautiful (or haunting or funny or poetic or insightful or charming) vignettes from what you see to be posted on City Room next week to help keep the buzz going.

WHERE TO GO
We’ve passed out lists of 32 interesting places selected by Andy. We’d love to get people to these places, because together they create a wide spectrum, geographically and otherwise. So if you’re game to take on one or more, you’ll have a chance to sign up during today’s meeting. If you’ve got other spots you know and love, or somewhere you’d like to explore, by all means, go there. You don’t have to tell us.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Anything, and everything. Surprising things. Iconic things. Strange things. But don’t be like my mother, and send in all 158 photos of the twins eating ice cream. Pick a handful from a place, and send those.

Besides photos, you’re looking for quotes, anecdotes, observations, interactions, moments that could turned into great vignettes — mini stories/blog posts/postcards. These should also be surprising, iconic, strange, telling. They should feature characters. They should have action, or decided inaction — check out Andy’s fun list of ING words for inspiration. They should, by all means, be brief — no more than a couple hundred words. Again, be rigorous — we cannot possibly use more than a couple from each of you.
Always note exactly where you are and what happens when.

WHAT TO DO WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT
Use the handy form just posted by the nytimes.com City Room blog. You’ll find it HERE.

2010
iPhone 4
Operating System – iOS 4.0
Processor – 1 Ghz ARM A4 CPU, 512MB Memory
Graphics – PowerVR SGX 535, uses system memory (28 million triangles)
Screen – 614K pixels
Data Transfer Speeds – .04-20MB/s (3G-WiFi)
Storage – 32GB Flash Drive
Dimensions – 4.5 x 2.31 x .31 inches
Weight – 4.8 ounces

What will the device be like in 2020?

I just clicked on an innocent looking Facebook ad asking for beta testers. What followed was a page explaining how Facebook was launching a new product that involves getting users to ask and answer questions that will be published to Facebook as a whole.

Drake’s Note: I’ve copied and pasted the beta user offer from Facebook at the bottom of this post. Decide for yourself if I’m reading this right.

For those with only a moderate level of tech obsession, the service Im talking about is one in which users interact with each other, posing and answering questions, that can then be searched by all. Sort of what user forums are for software.

Google has tried it, Yahoo has tried it, and Quora, a tech-darling of the moment, is trying it. I’m a beta tester for Quora, and have used several ask-answer type services online. A missing link for many has always been scale of the user community.

We’ve all heard the, “if Facebook were a country statistics”… or, if you haven’t, heres a handy info-graphic (thats already 2 months old).

I include the graph only to say that Facebook has scale if it has anything, and even including the recent privacy hullabaloo, the 80% of users who could care less still add up to a ferociously huge user population for an ask-answer service.

Ok, ok. Yes. Google has scale. Yahoo, well, they once had scale. But both boast core services that are based on moving freely in and out of their pages. Nothing keeps users in like walled garden.

Additionally, there is something inherently social about asking questions that the early ask-answer crowd seems to have missed.

Yes, I want an expert to answer my question about how a catalytic converter works (or wikipedia), but if I want to know how to throw the best dinner party, I am just as likely to take notes on an answer from a friend of mine who throws great parties as I am from Paula Dean. Maybe more so.

Quora realizes this. They have built out a whole social networking component to their service, and encourage you to connect the other networks you are already a part of.

But what’s harder? Getting people to know one another, or getting wannabe pundits to pontificate about something they are interested in… on the internet? I know I’m an easy sell on the latter. Just ask me

Below is the copy and pasted text from Facebook’s, “so you wanna be a beta tester” questionnaire. Decide for yourself what they are up to.

Help us build the future of Facebook.

We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great.

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It’s up to you. You’ll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people — including job recruiters. And we’ll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team.

Ready to get started?
Before we can give you exclusive beta access, we’d like you to submit three great sample questions and answers. We’re looking for evidence that you can write clearly and authoritatively on familiar subject matter.

Here are some guidelines to follow when submitting your questions and answers:

Choose provocative questions. Write about things you know. Some examples:
How can I get over my fear of flying?
What are some fun family activities to do with two small children on the weekend?
What caused the U.S. stock market to crash in 2009?
What’s the secret to throwing a great housewarming party?
What are the main differences between Google Chrome and Internet Explorer?
What are women looking for in a relationship?
What methods has BP tried to clean up the oil spill?
What should I do to prepare for the Bar exam?
How did The Beatles find success?
Write detailed, articulate answers.
Where relevant, cite and link to third-party sources such as Wikipedia.
Your answer must be original. Plagiarism is unacceptable.