[INTRO-Megan Garber]
What are ideas? How do they spread?
We share stories. Information and knowledge is fluid. Ideas are sexual, always wanting to be exchanged. They are generative and social.
Challenge: How do we decide what information is worth spreading? Is it important or popular? How will the audience react?
Leave an impact on the reader. Help them create a movie to follow along the story with. Allow the reader to learn something from your story.
~~
In the shower. Making coffee. As soon as you wake up. Walking the dog.
Creativity appears at times when you are not looking for it.
“Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete”
― Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
We need to free ourselves of barriers.
[SOCIAL NETWORKS-Elise Hu NPR]
In order to build a community (race, gender, interest, etc.) there must be…
- Purpose; Why am I here?
- Authenticity; Who owns what? Is it true?
- Empowerment; Delegate authority. Where/How can I establish myself?
- Trust & Safety; I know I can count on my ‘Mommy Blog’ for tips on properly punishing my child.
In simple terms, have an interest in a field to narrow down a smaller topic; know what you want.
[DUMP THE INVERTED PYRAMID-Tom Hallman Jr.]
We are at a war for readers and circulation and our weapon is the features.
ALWAYS HAVE A NARRATIVE.
Respect the reader. Do not underestimate their ability to figure out the story.
“We are seduced by what we think is true and pursue that”
“The joy of reading is an element of truth from the character’s life”
Readers hunger for meaning. What does it mean to feel something?
You have to be curious about life to tell stories.
What makes a good story?
- Character
- Problem
- Voice
- theme (meaning)
- Scene
- Dialogue
- Transitions
- Nice writing
[RECAP]
What I have just shared with you is a summary of my notes from the Society of Professional Journalists JournCamp seminar. This past Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity of attending JournCamp in Washington D.C. to be informed on various topics.
*Nerd excitement*
The morning started with a fabulous continental breakfast courtesy of The Westin, then shortly after, an amazing introduction from Megan Garber on Ideas and the Future. I found it to be a thrilling way to start the day. The next session consisted of a breakout of two options, Beyond Twitter and Facebook with Elise Hu or Learning the Language of Web Developers with Greg Linch. I decided to attend the social network workshop, which taught me how to build a community and that there are several options out there to build stories and spread news and other important knowledge.
After a decent salad, a $25 parking ticket, and a $6 tiny deodorant, I was on my way to the next breakout session with a nice, cold diet coke can. Before my mind was filled with a variety of stories from Mr. Hallman, I met a wonderful woman who had just published her own book. She came off as a very confident woman in what she does and all I could think about was how I could absorb her work ethic and self-esteem for myself and my future career. As far as meeting new people went, it seemed slightly difficult while social networking and electronics were highly encouraged and allowed the audience to have their ears open but head face down into a screen.
Tom Hallman expressed his thoughts on story telling and all of the traits that come along with it. He made it sound a lot more intriguing and alive than it really is. It’s not just about being assigned a story, interviewing someone, then typing up factual statements. It’s about creating play-by-play scenes for the reader so that they feel as if they were right beside the main character(s). It is about being curious about other people and events and life in general. If you are shallow minded and believe everything ‘as is’, then how would creativity and imagination come about? Open minded, relaxed brains have the ability to break free from walls and connect ideas and thoughts to one another.
The entire day was filled with valuable information and left me wanting more but eager to escape the city humidity. I exited The Westin with a bigger brain, a journal full of notes and three more twitter followers. All in all, my first most certainly be my last.