Saturday

You can watch live (archived video player embedded below) or follow along the Twitter by searching ONADC. If you’re in town, there are still spaces open to attend in person at American University (RSVP here).

Also, here’s a CoverItLive blog where I plan to take notes, chat with anyone following along and pull in any choice tweets.

Thanks to David Johnson at AU for co-organizing and hosting the event, as well as the always magnificent ONA DC co-organizers: Laura Cochran, Tiffany Shackleford and Matt Mansfield.

Also, thanks to Burt Herman, Rich Gordon and Aron Pilhofer — who run the larger Hacks & Hackers — and Sherry Skalko of ONA.

Special thanks to Ethan Klapper, who will be running the live video feed.

Watch the keynote here (not visable in RSS feed) or at:

• http://www.mogulus.com/greglinch

The second set of workshops, which conclude Saturday, includes the following sessions (more about faculty):

• Creating video narratives by Washington Post video guru Travis Fox and University of Miami visual journalism professor Jim Virga.
• Creating effective online infographics by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill visual communication professor Alberto Cairo and New York Times graphics editor Xaquin Gonzalez.
• Multimedia programming for journalists by NYT senior multimedia producer Tom Jackson and Internet consultant Donny Loflin, who specializes in multimedia and application development.

I am attending the infographics workshops because it’s the area I know the least about, though I wish I could take all three!

Notes

Special thanks to Richard Koci Hernandez for embedding the livestream video player at Multimedia Shooter.

Follow all Beyond Bootcamp tweets:

• http://www.greglinch.com/multimedia/beyondbootcamp

As I mentioned the other day, please share the livestream and other links on Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, IM, etc.

Sidenote: I received an NBC xylophone-like chime from MSNBC’s Jim Seida for being an “awesome” audio workshop assistant.

I really enjoyed working with Jim and NYT’s Nancy Donaldson during the past three days. They didn’t treat me merely as an assistant (I only fetched water once), but asked me to help participants work in Soundtrack Pro, create their narratives and act as a “third teacher” (Jim’s words).

But, besides helping, I also learned a number of useful tips and tricks. Thanks, Jim and Nancy — you guys rock!

Last week there was an epic Twitter discussion about journalism education.

The conversation continued on the blogosphere and I’d like to offer a few links in the interest of keeping that conversation alive:

Rich Beckman discusses how to reshape journalism education – Greg Linch (me)

J-Schools Now – Emily Kostic

Peripheral education – Daniel Bachhuber

What do you think? Please post a comment or, if you blog about this topic, drop a link here.

UPDATE (Dec. 2 at 11 p.m.): Jared Silfies has also weighed in,

Education 2.0: The Internet makes us the computer wearing tennis shoes

New ONA site

Tah-dah! Another social network!

The Online News Association officially launched their new Web site (see right) Monday evening.

If you’re a member with full access, or even a non-member just perusing, you can tell this site is big step forward.

Here are some of the features, as outlined in an e-mail from ONA President Jonathan Dube:

• Networking features, including discussion groups that connect members by region and area of interest, giving you the ability to have one-on-one conversations and to chat in real time.
• An easy-to-navigate membership directory – searchable by name, type of organization, areas of expertise, and more – enabling you to more easily network with people with common interests.
• A Career Center that allows members to post and search job openings.
• A new training section with innovative digital presentations tagged by topic, source and medium. This section features videotaped sessions from ONA’s sold-out 2008 annual conference, with tips on the latest techniques in multimedia storytelling from the New York Times, Washington Post, USA TODAY and the BBC, among others.

So why I am blogging about this? Earlier this month I was asked to be the student group discussion leader, a role I enthusiastically accepted. 

I’ll be posting there a couple times a week in order to start conversations on topics such as classes, cool projects and internships. The group has six members so far, including two pros. 

If you’re a student ONA member, please join us!

If you’re a student interested in online journalism, I highly recommend joining ONA. I joined in April and think ONA is a group often overlooked by student journalists (read about membership benefits).

For only $25 a year, you can’t say no.

One benefit is that you get a heavily discounted conference registration — we’re talking less than half the pro rate.

And if you saw my posts or tweets about this year’s gathering in D.C., you’d see why the experience is so valuable. I went to a number of great sessions, but more important are the connections you make.

NETWORKING IS KEY! (see No. 8)

As someone in the midst of an internship – and soon job – search, I can’t emphasize that enough.

Josh Williams, new media projects editor, Las Vegas Sun

Tyson Evans, design editor, Las Vegas Sun

Highlights

(There has been a lot of discussion of the Las Vegas Sun site online, but here is a tour from two guys who helped create the site.)

They launched the new site using Ellington (Django-based) on Jan. 10, choosing that date to capitalize on the national attention around the caucus. They previously had no videos, no blogs and no comments.

They are only an eight-page paper daily. They had no guidelines when they started redesigning the site.

Videos are 998 pixels wide; you can download in standard or hi-definition.

Videos are fully integrated into their content management system. They mostly shoot video on the Panasonic HVX200.

Photographers only have to upload photos and audio — CMS automatically creates slideshow.

Panoramic feature that features different audio depending on where you navigate in the panorama.

There is a feature built into the CMS that allows Web producers to pull something directly from YouTube or Flickr and embed on the site.

They’ve avoided the broadcast model in doing Web video [their videos are pretty sweet].

What’s next?

They are preparing for video to move to an IP-distributed system (look at the Ethernet jack in the back of your digital cable box). Also, they’ve partnered with a local TV station because they know most people in the city are getting their news on TV, not in print.

Check out

• All In
• Flight delay calculator
• High school sports
• History site
• UNLV sports
• Vegas TV
• Weather

Technology

• Javascript, Google Docs, Linux, API, Djano, Python, RSS, CSS, XHTML, Final Cut Pro, Ajax, HD video, Flash, etc.

“Agile Development”

• Semantic, accessible and standards-driven
• Separating content, logic and presentation
• Software that fosters quick creation
• Etc. (too many to type here)

Misc.

They brought production, editorial and programming people together and do it all in-house. They showed a diagram to display how the 40-person team came together.

Production people almost never enter CMS — they create the apps for the content gathers to use.

They update the software everyday.

They aren’t tied to any old legacy programming technologies, such as ASP or PHP.

Advice for student news site

• Evans: Look for open-source solutions, such as WordPress.

UPDATE (Sept. 13): Check out Mindy McAdams’ post about the sesssion.

Check out what I’ve been writing: #ONA08 tweets and Moor tweets.

We just started the newspaper breakout part of session, which will be led by Jennifer Carroll, vice president for digital content at Gannett. See the newspaper breakout and Carroll tweets.

Greg meets Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward at SPJ 2007.

Last Thursday through Sunday, I attended the Society of Professional Journalists convention in Atlanta, Ga. This is the second SPJ national convention I’ve attended — the first being last year’s in D.C.

The sessions at this year’s conference offered much more in terms of online, multimedia, blogging, etc. and I say kudos to that. But my gripe was that there was no Wi-Fi available in the conference center, so liveblogging was not possible.

Instead, I tweeted most of the sessions I attended using my phone. Check them out @greglinch or search for all SPJ-related tweets (greglinch + SPJ08 can be found here).

Other people who did some good tweeting:

• Jeff Cutler
• Ron Sylvester
• Sonya Smith

For more about the convention, check out the stories written by the Working Press.

Looking forward, I’ll be flying to Washington, D.C. tomorrow evening for my first Online News Association conference. There will be Wi-Fi in the conference areas, so stay tuned for some liveblogging and tweeting.

I had thought about doing some livestreaming video, but — as some of you know — my MacBook Pro is being disagreeable and I’m back on my old HP laptop.

If you’re going be at ONA and want to meet up, direct message me on Twitter or contact me. Hope to see you there!

ONA-related links

• Schedule PDF
• Conference discussion board
• Pre-conference podcasts
• ONA08 Twitter widget