I am doing a little traveling. Currently I am in Miami at the Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference. Unfortunately the internet connectivity is minimal, so posting is light. If you want to know more about how the conference is unfolding blow-by-blow, I recommend either the student run IRE blog or Megan Taylor’s blog (funny when you run into somebody who you recognize BECAUSE of the internet). In the SF airport I recognized Sean Wise from his video on how to do a good elevator pitch.
Meanwhile – I gave my first public talk on Spot.Us and I believe it went very well. I figured the IRE crowd would be tough, perhaps one of the toughest I could present to. After all – what I’m proposing is very different from how journalism is traditionally funded and journalists tend to be incredibly nervous whenever you talk about money and coverage in the same sentence. Overall, I’d say there were some concerns – but everyone is very supportive. I think the journalism industry has finally come around and is embracing innovation and experimentation on the web. So, the majority of concerns that were brought to my attention were coupled with sincere best wishes and hopefulness.
Once I’m back from my travels, I’ll be very public about what these concerns are and my responses. I have no intention of ever sweeping them under the rug. Indeed – the IRE attendees are one of the main constituencies that I want to serve.
From Miami I am actually going up to MIT for a conference I am VERY excited about. I hope there is more internet access there – so I can tweet and do video interviews with people in attendance.