Living next door to a newsagents does, occasionally, have its advantages.

Stumbling to get a couple of pints of milk first thing in the morning, you do see what’s on the billboard… what news was ‘breaking’ some 12 hours ago.

And in the case of this morning’s Eastern Daily Press, it was ‘news’ that Norfolk - and Suffolk - now have their very own ‘medical maps’.

And here’s said story… http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tBrand=EDPOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=NOED30%20Jun%202009%2021%3A45%3A28%3A797

So, living in south Norfolk, I was duly heartened to discover that I can expect to live at least three years longer than a bloke living in Yarmouth.

‘Men in South Norfolk can expect to live three years longer than men in Yarmouth, with early deaths from heart disease and stroke causing most of the differences.

‘Even within the borough of Yarmouth, life expectancy varies by eight years for men between the most deprived and least deprived areas…’

What’s interesting is the level of detail that the ‘maps’ provide.

It’s almost as if someone in HM Government has had the foresight and imagination to mine for health data in each and every Norfolk postcode; cross refer them with hospital and surgery records and ‘Bingo!’, you’ve got a medical map of Norfolk laid out before you… complete with such details as the fact that…

‘… an estimated 100 people die from winter cold in Yarmouth each year - one of the worst rates in the country. It is the first time winter deaths have been included in the profile…. [and that] King’s Lynn and West Norfolk has one of the worst rates of infant mortality in the country…’

Where it all falls down, of course, is the fact that there doesn’t appear to be a live link between the newspaper article and the data as mined by the Association of Public Health Observatories.

But, bless them and the generosity of the UK tax-payer, the Association of Public Health Observatories does have its own website… here we go…  http://www.apho.org.uk/

It makes for a very interesting read; albeit in a very data-led kind of way. Me? I prefer people to data, but on this occasion I’m intrigued… particularly to discover that the Eastern Region has its own website… only this one is ‘erpho’ and not ‘apho’ … http://www.erpho.org.uk/

And I can now drill down a little further and discover what’s going on out of my own GP practice… here in Loddon; in NR14.

http://www.erpho.org.uk/pracprof/

Actually, I can drill it down even further. I live on Church Plain… 100-yards from Church Plain Surgery… just round the corner from the newsagents.

Ah, scroll down… here we go… http://www.erpho.org.uk/pracprof/Profile.aspx?pct=5PQ&prac=D82006
 

Now I can mine the data by ‘disease area’…

OK, let’s try diabetes…

http://www.erpho.org.uk/pracprof/Profile.aspx?pct=5PQ&prac=D82006&theme=2000002#otherThemes

Not a f*cking clue, what that means. But I’m sure someone does.

And I’m sure that someone within ERPHO, APHO, AFRO, or whoever can look at that deep-mined data and tell someone with a digital advertising budget within the Dept of Health whether patients at Church Plain Surgery, Loddon, NR14 needed to be targetted with central Government ‘messaging’ re the dangers of diabetes…

… or whether we needed reminding about heart disease, liver complications, mental health issues.

Just as the people of King’s Lynn need education re infant mortality and the people of Yarmouth need to be told to wrap up warm this winter.

Cos Government can now do that; they know to the nearest postcode and the nearest doctors’ surgery what public health messaging they need to be delivering to the people in those communities.

All they need is a delivery mechanism that can put such highy-targetted messaging in front of the eye-balls that really matter. In NR14. Or, say, TS10.

And, in these straitened financial times, do that in the most cost-effective manner that they can find.

Mmmm….

I guess they could bid for the terms ‘diabetes’ and ‘Loddon’  and pay for You-Know-Who to spray it all over the place… or compete for the word ‘Yarmouth’ with every hotel and B&B in the place.

Or else, they run it through a strip of Addiply… and take the element of chance out of the equation. Place it in front of that community; place a postcard in the window of their ‘Post Office’ and digitally engage with the people of this country.

There’s the data; now deliver the message. Oh… and here’s the mechanism to do it…

And, you know what? Someone, somewhere in the very bowels of Whitehall could actually deliver something for a Digital Britain. 

And in so doing, you could start to support every flegdling blog and ailing regional newspaper group in this country.

Only ever been a case of somehow joining the dots.

  �

In many ways the half-baked musings that follow are the fault of the two Martins, Moore and Belam.

The former has very kindly asked me to contribute at his forthcoming NewsInnovation gig in London on July 10… http://barcamp.org/newsinnovationlondon; all of which demanded I think of both a subject matter and a pithy title.

And as the latter Martin, quite correctly pointed out, I’m not the greatest at delivering pithy, three-word headlines on OutWithABang. I tend to bust people’s RSS readers every time.

So, with that in mind, I decided on ‘Collaborative Individualism’ as a way forward. Now all I’ve got to do is work out what it means…

Which, fortunately, I don’t have to do. Cos someone has already done the academic theorising for me.

http://www.minessence.net/pdfdocs/CollaborativeIndividualism.PDF

I’ve no idea who D Limerick and B Cunnington are, but those boys deserve a medal. For within their essay: ‘Collaborative Individualism & the End of the Corporate Citizen’ lies truth after truth after truth.

What’s more remarkable is the date. It was written in 1993. The year that I was still a wide-eyed football reporter on his first, full season following Norwich City to Bayern Munich and beyond.

If you have a moment, scroll down to the very foot of the document and the conclusions, ‘A Continuing Battle…’ ; where, exactly, Limerick and Cunnington are seeing ‘collaborative individualism’ unfold in 1993…. and, in particular, where they saw this new movement, this ‘Fourth Blueprint’ heading…

‘In this era a battle for power between the individual and institutions, collaborative individuals are slowly winning.

‘They won outside the Berlin Wall and the Moscow White House and they are slowly winning inside the everyday organisations of the West.

“The victory is not assured and there may be many set-backs. But there is much that is positive in what has been won…’

That line is worth repeating; that in 1993 Limerick & Cunnington could see even then how collaborative individuals ‘are slowly winning inside the everyday organisations of the West…’  

Arguably the British Parliamentary system is the oldest ‘everyday organisation of the West… ‘ 

And what are Martin B and his pals at The Guardian doing? They’re collaborating with 000s of individuals to tear down the walls of privilege, secrecy and tradition and, ideally, encourage a renegotiation of the ‘reciprocal rigths and obligations between the individual and the institution…’

That’s what this is… in one sense, it’s Britain’s Berlin Wall; a seismic cultural shift in our relationship with now-broken institutions of yore.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/19/heather-brooke-data-accessible

The same collaborative approach underpins the launch of this…  http://www.investigationsfund.org./ It’s here, at a hyper-local level, in David Cohn’s www.spot.us project out of San Francisco and, of course, lies at the heart of Paul Bradshaw’s www.helpmeinvestigate.com project recently launched out of 4iP.

In fact, that first strap line could have been penned by Limerick and Cunnington themselves… this is their words made flesh…

‘Collaborate with other people to investigate things you all care about…’

Go back to the PDF document and do no more than read the first page and all our current buzzwords are there…

That ‘collaborative individualism is the dominant culture of network organisations…’ ie, not silos. It smashes down the walls of silos; as in the one that penned the citizens of East Germany in.

Networks and and collaborative individualism ‘go hand-in-hand’ ; they are ‘part of the same mind-set’; and it is the emergence of networks that has ‘torn the individual apart from the static fabric of the hierarchical organisation…’

And that, for me, is brilliant. That’s Twitter, that’s #mpsexpenses and that’s a ‘hierarchical organisation’ that for the better part of 800 years has governed are un-networked lives.

You could, I suspect, make the same case for newspapers; what was once our audience just don’t do the kind of ‘hierarchical institution’ that only puts my news on my door-mat once a day.

And what empowers and emancipates the individual to challenge such institutions and to act collaboratively?

‘Information technology…’

In many ways - and not for the first time - journalists are Johnny-Come-Latelys to all this.

‘Audience on your key-pads, please…’ 

Let’s collaborate with the individual sat in front of Chris Tarrant and let’s see if we can’t make them a millionaire.  

‘Remember, if you want Susan Boyle to be in the semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent, this is the number to ring…’

I’m biased. I’d point a finger at another ‘hierarchical institution’  in need of a re-think; where relations between me, the citizen self-publisher, and you, the dominant institution, are somewhat strained; which is why we set such store by collaborating over the development of www.addiply.com - it is little more than a tool for us all to play with… 

Nothing works, but everything might… so you go figure… only tell us what works…

One last line. After that, go read it for yourself.

On technology. And networks. And this global community we now Twitter amongst.

‘As organisations move into new technologies, into more networked arrangements and into global markets, they too will find themselves confronting situations for which their past has not prepared them.

‘As that happens, they will be drawn more and more into either entering or interacting with the world of collaborative individualism.’

In no particular order, but right now you could argue that organisations facing the full might of collaborative individualism might include everyone form the Iranian Government, the House of Commons, News International and the BBC downwards.

TrinityMirror, GeneralMotors, Habitat… Heh, you could even make a case for Google…

 �

For all-too obvious reasons it seemed a mite remiss to let this pass without some sort of longer comment.

As easy as it is these days to hope that a couple of well-placed tweets complete with a six-word quote will suffice… That said, twas the power of Twitter that led me to said piece. So thanks to @MSuster for the heads up…

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adsense_the_weak_elephant_in_the_room.php

For me, what’s interesting is not so much the general thrust of the main body of the piece rather the comments that then follow.

Some, you suspect are from those that may have built a business and a living on teaching others how to AdSense; how to optimise their site to the best degree in the hope of making the numbers and the mechanics work.

Others, however, appear to be genuine voices from the streets; people who can’t get the numbers to work. Or, indeed, people who can’t even see enough numbers to decide whether or not this all works…

For them Caveat Vendor has yet to arrive; they’re stuck in the Era of Sunlight; waiting for the Age of Pixelisation to arrive… all familiar themes in this neck of the woods… 

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=249

So delve into the comments and see what’s being said…

‘For myself, I want more transparency on the revenue split….’  Mark Hansen, and there’s the ‘T’ word again.

‘Google has based itself on a monopoly - the way they terminate Adsense accounts is completely dictatorial. Their refusal to show the % of profits the publishers get is criminal too…’  Puranjay

And if that, too, touches on the issue of transparency, so there’s a spot of imposition going on; that and a lack of accountability…

‘And for even smaller people out there (like me), we are stuck with Ad Sense until we can at least get that $100.00, until then we are stuck with Ad Sense…’  Yasser.

‘A white labeled adsense-like solution for Publishers is wanted by the latters. Publishers sets their pricing (CPM, CPC, $), ad format and the advertisers contact details are theirs….’  Franck Poisson.

At which point, we’ll stop. Anyone can cherry pick quotes that suits their purpose - particularly, if they have a product to sell.

And we do. Clearly.

But, for me, this is about far more than what Addiply may - or may not - have to offer the kids of Berkeley’s J-School. Or James on www.london-se1.co.uk Or Craig on www.thisfrenchlife.com

Because if the charges that some are starting to lay at AdSense’s door are those that relate to transparency, to accountability, to imposition, to dictatorial rule, to the ‘opaqueness’ that Matthew Buckland threw into the ring…  

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=272

… then each and every one of those charges could figure in the MP expenses scandal that continues to rip the British political establishment apart.

Interestingly, the ‘A’ word crossed the lips of Tom Watson MP in the Independent on Sunday yesterday; in the sense that what might be good for the goose, might be equally good for the gander… that the Parliamentary lobby is another of those ‘closed’ institutions that the Web has little time for…

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tom-watson-crack-open-the-lobby-cartel-rip-up-the-rules-and-let-a-new-era-of-accountability-begin-1711569.html

.. particularly when harnessed to the limited column inches left in a printed newspaper. Big pictures, big debates and the numbers that really matter to people aren’t available for widespread scrutiny and digestion.

And yet this is what the Web empowers us to do… to get to the real numbers; to see the detail in this Era Of Pixelisation.

Just as big business is struggling like never before, so is big government.

And people don’t want big; they don’t trust big. They trust small.

And that might be Google’s Achilles heel; in an Age of Small, they’ve grown too big.

A fact, you suspect, not lost on Mr Murdoch; a timely quote from whom popped up on Twitter yesterday.

‘The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow’ - Rupert Murdoch.

RT, Rupert. With one, small proviso.

It won’t just be the fast beating the slow, it’ll be the open beating the closed.

It would be nice to think that certain people - when asked to appear before a House Of Commons select committee on the future of local media - arrived knowing what they were talking about.

Claire Enders is clearly not one of them.

She hasn’t done her homework.

http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-dcms-select-cttee-hearing-draft/

Now, some of what she says is clearly very true. The 1300 local newspaper titles left in this country do, indeed, face a very challenging future. I suspect no-one who is about to give evidence today would deny that fact.

But some of what she would appear to be saying is dismissive of everything good and positive that’s being done online to the point of ignorance. Willful ignorance.

And the line about professional journalism ‘never being replaced’ … that we’re all going to have to supplement our livings by ‘washing cars or whatever…’ is, frankly, patronising bolloc*s of the highest order.

For someone who clearly has no need to wash cars for a living, Ms Enders needs to get out more and start to justify her lofty consultancy fees; to stop making crass and inaccurate generalisations and actually do some work on her chosen subject matter.

‘—Can websites save local newspapers?: “Absolutely not. the average income earned from a regional or local newspaper reader is about £100 a year, the average income on a website visitor is about £2 a year, and probably falling.

‘People are spending about five minutes a month on these websites; by comparison, people who read the newspaper spend about 12 hours a month - the websites do not substitute the printed page.”

Fine.

But if Ms Enders had started to ponder what the ‘great unbundling of newspapers’ might mean going forward, then those numbers can change. On average, it might be a two-minute engagement time, but you start to deliver niche interests to a passionate audience and those numbers begin to work back in our favour.

Last time I looked, I had some c35,000 uniques, on average visiting three-and-a-half times a month and when they did, average ‘engagement’ time was the better part of seven minutes. Varied, by month; by the team’s performance - January, when the transfer window opens, we have an absolute ball…

As will the football section of any ‘ThisIsSomething’ site… big, sticky content delivered online to a passionate, niche audience.

And once unbundled from the broad and damning brushstroke delivered by Ms Enders, those people deliver the kind of demographics advertisers like. I’ve got the British Army signed up on a 12-month deal; cos our core audience is 16-30 males. Bingo.

And I’m not the only one; TrinityMirror, Northcliffe, etc… they have all, likewise, twigged what you can do when you start to unbundle your content in niche directions… British Army, mobile phones, DVD sales… re-bundle that content up in different ways and there’s a lot more you can do to delight your advertiser.

‘—Can’t the online grassroots help?: “It’s not really possible to replace professional journalism … people already engage in blogging, but they’re going to have to make a living through the day - washing cars or whatever.”

‘Adam Price MP pushed the promise of citizen journalism but Enders was still pessimistic: “Blogs are personal statements … less than four percent of news ever originates on a blog, blogs are commentaries on what’s going on, they don’t originate stories … you don’t see bloggers doing hard work …

‘Some of the regional channels… ThisIsSomething… one of the discussion areas they started had to be shut down because of racism … I don’t see that as a positive phenomenon. I have a lot of respect for everyone who’s out there in Bloggerland, but this is not a substitute.”

It’s actually hard to know where to start with those lines.

I have a lot of respect for everyone who’s out there in ‘Bloggerland’ … it’s just that I don’t see any of you working hard and when you’re not working you should be ‘washing cars or whatever…’

That really sounds like respect to me, Claire. Big respect.

The fact that for those of us that do work at this online living have already proved that our professionally delivered and packaged content has its own syndication value has clearly passed Ms Enders by; I’ve sold my content into the Telegraph sports desk… build yourself an elegant enough network and you can ‘feed’ any number of higher news portals with big, sticky content that they can’t source from elsewhere.

It’s why the Washington Post bolted on TechCrunch to their online offering; does no-one on TechCrunch work hard? Spot of passionate niche thinking, a smart piece of re-alignment and re-organisation into a more elegant, long-tailed networked platform and away they go - fit for their 2009 purpose.

And if you can do that with technology, why can’t you do that with football? With hyper-local news?

And then fill the space around it with hyper-local advertising - helping the kind of hyper-local advertisers that Ms Enders’ beloved Google all-but ignores when it comes to their own needs for a new, hyper-local, online home to call their own?

But what do any of us know, eh Claire?

We should all be washing cars.

�

As both regular readers of this blog will know, the whereabouts of this nation’s local planning applications has long been a subject dear to OutWithABang’s heart.

There were, for example, 17 million plus reasons why the Newspaper Society might be wary of any in-coming Tory administration…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=60

… whilst come this spring and the Newspaper Society were again to be found clinging onto those planning applications as if their very lives depended on it - even so far as accusing local councils of squirreling them away at the very back of their websites where no-one would ever find them…

It was only the mighty organ that is the Beccles & Bungay Journal that forced the news of a loft extension at No43 into the open… provided, of course, you ever made it to Page 64…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=217

It was an old chestnut that came up again in a trip to the Fine City of Lichfield the other day; the reason for said visit will, I hope, become self-evident in the days ahead.

Because it seems that one or two smart folk in that particular neck of the woods have been playing with a few of the new toys at our disposal these days.

One Twitter-based app later and a small piece of local planning genius was dropping onto my lap…. by Twitter to @MrRickWaghorn, natch.

Saying thanks to @PhilipJohn Simple genius… http://www.twitterplan.co.uk - built by @pezholio at @Lichfield_DC Newspaper Soc will luv it.

Click through to http://www.twitterplan.co.uk … enter my Twitter name and postcode… decide that the planning news that matters most to me is anything within an 800-metre radius… tick the ‘follow’ button for PlanBot and there we go….

Job done. And three cheers to all concerned… particularly @pezholio, aka Stuart Harrison

And fair play too to Lichfield District Council, they’re doing their job - digitally engaging with their 2009 ‘audience’; delivering them the kind of eminently useful and appropriately-targetted service that I, as a district council tax-payer, would expect and applaud…

… whilst for me - the consumer, ‘me’ - this is great. This is soooo 2009.

I now don’t need to pay 60p every week just to check whether or not there’s a planning application within 800-metres of my home… cos if there is, I get a DM to tell me.

Brilliant.

Simple. Cost effective. Networked. 

Don’t expect me to go find the news that I want; bring it to me; drop it into the palm of my hand whenever a plan and a postcode tag ‘drops’ within that 800-metre ‘news’ zone.

And, no, I’m not coughing 60p a week in the uncertain knowledge that there might be something of interest, somewhere round the back of your newspaper…

Clearly, there are huge swathes of the nation that aren’t all Twitter’d up; that without those planning applications tucked away at the back of the Beccles & Bungay Journal, there will be sectors of our society who will be left bereft; will be ‘disenfranchised’ from the planning news. As it happens… not once a week.

And that’s a serious challenge; to keep the elderly, the disadvantaged and the disinterested engaged in the world around them.

But what is equally true is that the Newspaper Society cannot expect anyone to turn back the clock; or, indeed, stop the clock before the moment that Lichfield District Council, @pezholio and http://www.twitterplan.co.uk went to work with their new toys.

They’ve let the planning genie out of the bottle.

And this is the line that I wouldn’t repeat if the Newspaper Society is still intent on winning over public and Parliamentary support…

“It is quite possible to imagine that a council might find it advantageous to post certain controversial notices on an obscure part of their website away from the public’s gaze…”

Because right now it is quite possible to imagine every district council in the country putting every planning application that happens within 800-metres of my front door into the palm of my hand. At no additional cost to me as a consumer - and at a lot less cost to me as a local council tax-payer.

Remember Mr Shirky and the line that launched a 1,000 fateful thoughts on my 40th birthday?

“Do people care about good writing? Of course they do, and it’s the writers who can adapt to the new technologies,”  he told MediaGuardian on January 16, 2006.

“The only technological innovation that the newspaper industry is waiting for is a time machine so that it can turn back the clock.”

Fortunately for the newspaper industry, there are some within their midst that don’t need telling; the pace of evolution has picked up markedly of late; the innovators so beloved by Mr Schumpeter are starting, slowly, to win over the bureaucrats…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=293

And whilst there is clearly an urgent need to ring-fence every last penny you can find in these troubled economic times, some causes are already lost; it’s time to move on and plan for a new future. 

A future without a monopoly on printed local planning applications.

�

This is a path that we’ve trod before… the trick, for me at least, is to sense the tone…

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/534752.php

“What the problem needs above all is some innovative, quick thinking on behalf of government,” were the words of Bob Satchwell, of the Society Of Editors. His impatience, you suspect, not helped by the game of musical chairs that is Whitehall of late…

Three, supposed ‘champions’ of this digital word of ours - Tom Watson MP, Andy Burnham MP and now Lord Carter - are all exiting centre stage, leaving the new man at the helm of Culture, Media and Sport Ben Bradshaw MP with the unenviable task of actually putting a ‘Digital Britain’ into practice.

For however long this Labour administration has left in office, that is.  

“We need Bradshaw to realise how urgent this is,” stressed Satchwell… ‘Of course don’t forget that there are long-term issues that need to be dealt with too. Whether it’s local consortia, whether it is relationships between the BBC and the licence fee payer, all of these issues will take months if not years to resolve.

“The difficulty is that while we’re waiting to create new models to deal with new media landscape the existing reality may be so seriously damaged that it may be too late to apply those complex solutions.”

Ms Bailey has been as equally urgent in her tone before now while at The Guardian, Mr Rushbridger has a phrase that he inserts into a number of speeches that I’ve either heard or read… that ‘for the first time since the Age Of Enlightenment’ we have to reckon on the prospect of a major UK city being without a daily newspaper to call its own… that the Star could, indeed, set on Sheffield.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=235

Those words crossed his lips again at the Local Media Summit in the House Of Commons the other month; the one in which no-one came to the party with an axe to grind - the Newspaper Society and the Local Government Association, the BBC and ITV… everyone was united in a common purpose as Messrs Burnham and Carter presided over the future media landscape of the nation…. before heading for the hills…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=285

Since then, of course, the BBC’s row with ITV has only intensified as to who, exactly, is going to pay for the content that someone, somewhere delivers into the regional news ’slot’ on Channel Three..

Likewise, this notion that the pair were somehow going to share office space and TV trucks appears to be going t*ts up… while, if the News Of The World’s sneak preview of the final ‘Digital Britain’ report is to be believed today, then the Beeb are also going to find themselves £120 million lighter as £5 of the licence fee is sliced off the top and pumped the way of ITV…

And won’t that go down well?

Not that the BBC will find many friends on the Opposition benches. The Tories - all set for power as and when Brown’s shambles of a party implodes one last time - already have their sights firmly set on bringing the BBC firmly to heel; hacking into what they perceive to be the culture of excess at TV Centre.

And yet, somewhere, in amidst all that ever-deepening sh*te, OfCom are still holding onto this notion that a gathering of ‘Local Media Consortia’ will ride to the rescue of Anglia News… 

The paper also claims that the report will unveil ‘a fund for ailing regional newspapers’ - which will come as good news to the US owners of NewsQuest that the UK tax-payer was riding to its recsue…

What was interesting about Satchwell’s exasperated comments, however, was the vehicle he appeared to offer in terms of delivering an ‘immediate’ answer to the industry’s needs…

“Public money is already earmarked for training initiatives. The government already funds training and should be looking to direct it where it will do most good in the short-term,” he explained.

“If there was money going directly to a local newspaper it might well be that they would continue to hire trainees.

“That means that you create employment and you also ensure that training is continuing, which is always a problem in recessions. But, most important of all, it could help to maintain reporters on the ground.”

That’s an interesting one… short-hand lessons subsidised by the State?

But - wearing my UK tax-payer hat - that’s all fine, as long as that money was indeed put into training schemes for the next generation of journalists; for me, ‘might well be…’  isn’t good enough. 

You either do re-train reporters for a life in Digital Britain or you don’t get the money. I’m not in the mood to subsidise the delivery of news by a bicycle in 2009.

But there is one point that screams out amongst all this… and it’s an old one, as far as the pages of this blog are concerned.

The only people who are going to help journalists in both this country and beyond is journalists themselves.

Journalists have to save journalism.

In this country, politicians are far more interested in saving themselves than saving the local rag; besides, I’m not sure any of us actually have an answer.

In fact, having walked this walk for the better part of four years I know there is not one answer; rather, there are thousands; some of which will work for some; none of which will work for others. ‘Nothing works, but everything might…’

All we can do is cling ever more tightly together and collaborate as if our very lives depended on it.

Because Big Government isn’t coming to our rescue; even if there was one ‘big’ idea that could save us, I don’t see anyone with the wit, the will or the wherewithal in Whitehall to deliver it.

No. The only people who are going to save us are ourselves. And we will save ourselves by thinking small, not big.

There are many reason why I enjoyed this…

http://garrysub.posterous.com/chris-sacca-on-silicon-valley-innovation-in-t

Not least for the revelation by the interviewer Kara Swisher that her chat with ’start-up whisperer’ Chris Sacca was held in San Francisco’s Zuni restaurant where a lovely piano player ‘tinkled in the background…’

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090504/silicon-valley-start-up-whisperer-and-twitter-investor-natch-sacca-speaks/

Me, Ian and Neil tend to put our little world to rights in The Artichoke at Brome where tinkling piano players are rather thin on the ground. It’s a different world - in every sense of the world.

Nevertheless, for me, that interview is worth a watch - if only for the ‘trends’ that the ’start-up whisperer’ sees. The bloke must know something; I became his 579,783rd follower earlier today. He has yet to become my 376th.

But, heh, I’m a little start-up in The Valley too, right? Me and the boys from The Artichoke have got the $ version of addiply chugging away out of Berkeley’s J-School; it’s there working the streets of www.OaklandNorth.net right under you-know-who’s nose.

It’s just that our valley happens to be that of the Waveney… 

But, as Chris points out, he’s seeing a lot of really cool stuff being created by ‘just a couple of guys…’  

But trends, that’s what Kara is interested in. What next, Chris… what’s the whisper in The Valley? 

And this is where it gets interesting. And if you can’t be doing with sitting through the slick looking BMW ad trail, this is what lights his fire…

‘The one thing that’s not going on enough, but when it is kicks ass,’ says the one-time Googler.

‘That one of the reasons that Google made billions of dollars is that they brought accountability to ads.

‘Show an ad you could see how many clicks it produced; you could actually see what those clicks were worth… display advertising doesn’t have that accountability and that’s why the display market got hit so hard.

‘So seeing technologies that are starting to bring accountability to display ads is really cool…’  

Showing people the numbers; ushering in the Era Of Pixelisation; shunning the Age of Sunlight… Yep, we can do that. Or rather Richard’s kids at Berkeley can; there they are handing out the numbers on www.OaklandNorth.net.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=249

But what is really interesting is Mr Sacca’s thoughts on Twitter; and this is a guy who invested in the thing.

This is good.

‘The most genius thing that those guys did was not define it.

‘Leave it up to the individual users to define their individual use cases… while Jack [?] would say: ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to tell my friends which club I’m going to…’ that’s like one-tenth of one per cent of the potential uses of this thing.

‘What’s been neat is that by allowing each person to define their own use case, they all feel like stakeholders in the service and it’s utility grows all the time…’ 

ie Twitter doesn’t impose a set of rules or behavioural expectations on anyone; it is this kind of half-baked notion, almost, that you throw out there onto the web and everyone go plays…

And I see that in Addiply.

We have this half-baked notion that it must, surely, be simpler for people to place an ad themselves - like they would in the window of a Post Office or a hardware shop - rather than entrust that function [and that cost…] to a third party.

If the technology is there to do it, why not place the ad yourself…

Create a platform that is robust enough for individuals to tweak and twiddle with such a ‘half-baked’ notion themselves and away everyone goes… feeling, hopefully, that they are ’stakeholders in the service…’

Cos I don’t know what works in Oakland; in Chris and Kara’s Valley; my ‘Valley’ is the Waveney. Another world away.

But part of that is, I suspect, by accident, not design - a happy accident, ideally.

Because the thing about being ‘a couple of guys with no money…’ is that you simply don’t have either cash or the time to take a fully-baked product to market… me and Ian have never written a rule book for Addiply; you must charge this, take this ad at that rate…

F*ck it. I don’t know - you get it to work. Just tell me and the rest of us when you do…

That’s how the web works. One rule doesn’t work for all; just as one size doesn’t fit all.

We enjoy bending and twisting things to suit our own, individual purposes. We’re empowered, enabled, enthused… I don’t have to watch the news at 6.30pm any more; you can’t impose that on me anymore.

I can make up the rules as I go along; all I need are the basics; something simple to work with. And that was the genius of Twitter; that they left it ‘up to the individual users to define their individual use cases…’

And, hopefully that’s all we’ve ever done with Addiply; we’ve given the basics to Craig on www.ThisFrenchLife.com and let him get on with it.

‘This month, Rick, I’m going to charge £30 per month…

‘Fine, fella… whatever…’

Ditto Berkeley.

‘Here you go, Richard, have the $ version… see if you can get it to work….

For that’s the line that I return to every time. Mr Shirky. ‘Nothing works, but everything might…’

None of us have an answer.

But you might.

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I don’t really know the guy from Adam, other than he seems from his profile to be a smart guy.

His name is Aral - or rather, @Aral - and tonight he could be found waxing lyrical about the launch of the new Apple iPhone 3GS… in a lot less than 140 characters as his excitement mounted. The penny was starting to drop as to just what this baby could do now…

aralShoot/edit/share video with just your iPhone 3GS. Oh, yes! 6 minutes ago from Tweetie

aralAwesome, “send to YouTube” feature is gonna rock! 6 minutes ago from Tweetie 

araliPhone 3GS: 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, 3MP autofocus/tap-to-focus/low-light/auto-macro (~10cm) camera + 30fps VIDEO, ~2x faster, OpenGL|ES

Me, being the sports hack at heart, doesn’t ‘get’ any of the first post.

Whatever, is my instant reaction.

Though even I twig that when the ‘S’ stands for speed, the new iPhone is likely to rock more than just @Aral’s world.

The little phrase, however, that I do ‘get’ is the ‘Send To YouTube’ function.

Because as muchas we might debate endlessly about whether we’re now digital journalists, citizen bloggers or this hybrid bast*rd in between - the ‘jogger’ of the NYT’s worst imaginings - that ‘Send To YouTube’ function now unites us all in one regard.

We’re all digital broadcasters.

And YouTube now looks set to be the default channel of our production choice. 

And for the traditional, legacy broadcasters, that’s not good news.

It is, however, the news that Anthony Lilley long ago predicted - that there would be an ‘explosion’ in media participation - one that, you sense, even now is only just beginning.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

For many an obvious reason - not least the fact that we now have Berkeley in common - this was well worth a ponder… the original article, just as much as the comments.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-i-recommended-to-publishers-in.html#comments

And as in the case of the lad from DoubleVerify, I’m loathe to stray too far into the technicalities of it all; I’m sure that there are a lot of very clever people doing a lot of very clever things behind the scenes.

Likewise I can get the idea - if the Visa registration process is, indeed, the simple analogy that Alan would approve of.

I guess it’s not a million miles away from a Tesco Clubcard scenario, either.

That once signed up, some ever-improving piece of ‘kit’ within the tills of Tescos (Beccles) keeps a beady eye on my spending habits; it notices when I switch from one washing machine powder ‘brand’ to another - and then duly sends me the Clubcard vouchers that fits with my spending habits…

By the same token, I presume that ViewPass will keep a beady eye on my reading habits; the pieces of content that I throw into my surfing ‘trolley’ on a daily basis and then send me the kind of advertising it thinks ‘fits’ with my reading interests.

The fact that it already has my age, gender and income status from the registration process will give the system a first information platform to work from; as it starts to de-cypher my reading habits, so it can then refine and re-tune the advertising that it despatches in my direction.

And if it’s very clever - and I would strongly suspect it is - going forward it can then aggregate me other pieces of content that it also thinks will suit my taste… ‘I saw you read this piece on the Denver Rockies, but have you read this…?’

‘No, I’d missed it… Jeez, thanks…’

And there’s the two-way bargain. You’re bombarding me with ever more accurately targetted advertising; in return, you’re saving me time and effort by bringing ever more targetted content to my door.

‘Good morning Rick, today I’ve brought you three articles for your perusal… and an advert for a 12-month subscription to ESPN…’

And that’s all fine. It was the same analogy that a Mike Phillips took from the article…

‘I buy some of the household groceries at Kroger. My wife buys the rest — also at Kroger. When she checks out, she gets coupons on the back of her receipt that correlate to her buying behavior.

‘I get different coupons because I buy different stuff. We’re both happy, and so are the marketers at Kroger. Ultimately, your tool would let digital news organizations transcend mass advertising and make money facilitating direct marketing…

I suspect that the challenge for Alan won’t be so much in the development of the kit; rather its unified and uniform adoption across a bunch of traditionally disparate, corporate individuals all of whom have ’silo’ as their default setting; ViewPass, of course, is potentially an elegant network.

Squeezing one into the other is the big challenge - in a sense, akin to persuading Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Asda, Lidl, et al to all sign up for the same ‘Clubcard’… a ‘uniform mechanism’, in Alan’s description.

At least he enjoys one, early advantage; that he is an ‘outsider’; he’s not one of the existing ‘Families’ trying to impose their ‘uniform’ answer on the cousins from Detroit, Vegas, Miami, etc…

But the same fear applies as to that of OfCom’s plans for ‘Local News Consortia’ here in the UK; that it will be like ‘herding cats’ getting them to agree to anything as cohesive and as, frankly, sensible as either a ViewPass ad solution or, together, pooling their resources to fill regional news slots on Channel Three on a uniform and unified basis.

It took little more than a month after that ‘Local Media Summit’ at the House of Commons before the BBC, OfCom and ITV were having a hissy fit at eachother; and with both Andy Burnham and Tom Watson out of the picture as the Brown Government implodes, you have to wonder what sort of momentum and genuine, political will is left within the pages of Digital Britain.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=285

But the other point of interest to ViewPass comes via the comments; that whilst Alan valiantly tries to bang the heads together of the ‘newspaper supermarket chains’ behind closed doors in some out-of-town Chicago hotel, so for the Mops and Pops corner shops and delis, there needs to be a different way of thinking.

As ever with the web, one size won’t fit all. The answers will have to come in all shapes and sizes.

You can’t, in short, impose the same answer on the Denver Post as you can on www.InsideTheRockies.com; just as you can’t find the same solution to the needs of both TrinityMirror Plc and www.london-se1.co.uk And yet all four are web publishers of merit and worth.

It was point that ‘Bob’ raised in the comments… ‘I wonder if it wouldn’t amount to creating two classes of web news operations - the elites such as Rupert, Dean, Gannett and their ilk, and the mom-and-pops, the community, small and medium chains…’

It touched on the same point that a Niel Robertson made with regard to Digg’s new venture into advertising… http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/told-you-digg-for-ads-coming/

Only the argument might be that you swap the words ’small advertisers’ for ’small publishers’ who, likewise, may have neither the time nor the inclination to sign up for a Kroger-like Clubcard; that they might not be a big enough ‘blip’ on anyone’s radar.

‘One of the challenges here is that to some extent the “price you out” model is a bit like Google quality score. While it has its advantages its extremely hard for a lot of small advertisers to keep up with.

‘AB testing means you have to try things and see what works. If you can get Digg QS’ed out you’ll be spending a lot of time managing things. Not always good for small advertisers who are time constrained…’

That all said, at least Alan’s having a go… trying to make a difference by offering a decent solution that ought, on paper, to be worth serious merit and attention from those it is designed to help and, ideally, save.

Quite what sort of attention span any of them have these days - be it this side of the Pond or the other - is the $64 million question.

Doing anything in ‘uniform’ , you fear, may well prove beyond them.

For someone who has spent the last few days trying to get more than a little toe through the door of some interesting boys [and girls…?] in SF, this was interesting…

http://www.adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/up-to-80-of-campaign-impressions-delivered-incorrectly-says-doubleverify-ceo-netzer/

There is - perhaps - an element of he-would-say-that-wouldn’t-he to the headline; that up to 80% of campaign impressions are incorrectly delivered - a block that we have already been round before with Uncle Jeff and his ads for lovelorn, Jewish singles… who also happen to be big fans of all things new media.

Could have been worse. His pal was getting gay, Jewish singles… and so the jolly japes continued.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=106

But therein lay a big point - that in that whole relationship between publisher, advertiser and third-party delivery mechanism there was only one winner. And it wasn’t either the publisher or the advertiser.

And, for me, having been on the receiving end of the same equation, that’s where certain ad models suck.

I’m left enfeebled, while others are left enriched.

And in many ways, fair play to Oren Netzer the ceo of DoubleVerify - it is into that particular, murky battleground that he strides with his new piece of ad checking kit - empowering and enlightening advertisers as to where their actual ad dollars takes them…

Above the fold, below the fold, right context, wrong content… everything that I, as a top down advertiser, might reasonably want to know in these economically-straitened times of ours.

Gone are the days when I’ll give any ad network 000s of bucks to chuck my brand willy-nilly over the web in the vague hope that some of that expensive, carefully-tailored branding lands in the right place; in front of the right eye-balls.

And if Oren’s figures are correct, then such tools as we now employ - be it as either publisher or advertiser - lead to a one-in-five strike rate.

“Ads being delivered next to inappropriate content is a big issue for advertisers. So are international impressions, below the fold ads or ads delivered to the wrong audience, and those are also the issues we find more frequently.

“In fact, we sometimes find up to 80% of a campaign’s impressions being delivered incorrectly…”

As a publisher there are bits of the thinking that would slightly alarm me; that suddenly the design - stroke re-design - of my site can be beholden to a DoubleVerify search spider wandering its way across www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and taking piccies as it goes… ‘Nope, banner ad below fold; cancel, cancel, cancel…

For me, publisher me, that still leaves me feeling rather enfeebled - even if the theory is that I will then get better targetted ad campaigns that are happier with their final product placement.

But what interests me even more is the language that Oren uses to promote his product. And the big word on his lips is ‘transparency’.

‘…digital advertising is now a key component of brand advertisers’ marketing plans and that the budgets committed to digital advertising have become significant.

‘This had prompted advertisers and agencies to ask for more accountability and transparency from their media partners.

‘It is our job as an industry to make sure we deliver this - if we expect advertisers to continue shifting budgets online and for digital advertising to become a mainstream marketing vehicle for them, we need to give them the peace of mind, comfort and proof that their money is well spent.

‘We as an industry will all benefit from more accountability…’

There’s not much I would change in that - one word, perhaps. From that last sentence. I’d drop ‘industry’ and replace it with ’society’. It is, after all, what lies at the very heart of both the banking crisis and that fatal malaise that now leaves the UK Parliament disfigured and in disrepute… transparency.

‘We as a society will all benefit from more accountability…’

It is the Age Of Pixelisation, not the Era Of Sunlight; the devil is always in the detail - so let’s see the detail; let me see for myself the devil therein… Oooh, I see you’ve been cleaning your moat again… Oooh, I see my ad for Jewish singles ran on a new media blog… the devil and the detail.

Tis that great line from Daniel Roth in Wired, that: ‘…the era of sunlight has to give way to era of pixelization; only when we give everyone the tools to see each point of data will the picture become clear…’

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=276

All of which resurfaced again in the comments to news that Digg was starting to produce its own ad system…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/told-you-digg-for-ads-coming/

Particularly that from Niel Robertson.

‘One of the challenges here is that to some extent the “price you out” model is a bit like Google quality score. While it has its advantages its extremely hard for a lot of small advertisers to keep up with.

‘AB testing means you have to try things and see what works. If you can get Digg QS’ed out you’ll be spending a lot of time managing things. Not always good for small advertisers who are time constrained…’

Like, Joe’s Pizza Parlour, on the corner of 17th/1st in www.OaklandNorth.net  The new US home of addiply… http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/534542.php

What’s the best way for me to know where my ad is going? If I place the ad myself.

Right there it is. Job. Done. Can see it. It’s not going anywhere else. It’s where I want it to be. I’ve looked at the placement of the ads. It’s at the top. Above the fold.

Fine. Like that.

What’s your numbers. Fine. Happy with that.

How much does it cost me? Oh, it’s there… right in front of me. 50 bucks a week.

OK, can go with that.

And the publisher? Who’s this who wants to advertise? Joe’s Pizza Parlour? On the corner of 17th/1st… perfect. Yep… nice to have you here, Joe. Welcome to our OaklandNorth community.

What had Richard [Koci-Hernandez] found before? That as a publisher: ‘We had little-to-no control over the content…’

‘Little-to-no control…’ As a publisher.

And what have advertisers found to their cost…? That likewise they have ‘little-to-no control…’ over their branding; when - according to Oren - 80% of the time, that ad goes astray; ends up where it shouldn’t.

Control. Accountability. Transparency. Simplicity. Empowerment. Honesty.

At this particular moment in time, those are the words that underpin so much of what we aspire to… particularly in an era when big business, big government and big media appears so, so bust.

We need simple solutions that work for us both collectively and as individuals. As, hopefully, the kids of Berkeley will discover; that when nothing works, this just might…�
 

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