The participants shot and edited short ‘postcard’ packages from Santiago. I attended a session at the conference on Friday where the videos were broadcast and we heard from the journalists. The following packages stood out to me:

Patrik Samuelsson‘s video is interesting – it has lots of nice shots that really show off the range of the iPhone. Interestingly, Patrik, who is a Video Journalist at SVT (Sweden), said he got better shots with the iPhone than he would with his usual VJ kit.

I love this story from Adrian Rozenberg of TVR (Romania). What Adrian observed was that his interviewees behaved differently in front of an iPhone compared to his usual set-up. There was less of a barrier and they talked to him much more freely.

This story below was shot and edited by Nadejda Uzunova of BNT (Bulgaria). Before the course in Santiago, Nadejda had never used a camera to shoot a story nor had she edited a package. This package shows that mobile journalism is a great entry point and something that can be taught, if the participant is willing and interested, in a very short period of time.

There’s no doubt that news organisations are using mobile journalism regularly in live and breaking news situations, but what these packages show is the potential for packaging content and how accessible it can be with some focused training and the right equipment.

Sitting in the session watching the videos it also made me think about how organisations could work with the audience to grow and develop user generated content. There’s so much potential considering the huge, and ever-growing, base of smartphone owners.

All of the videos from the workshop can be found here and Glen talks a lot more about the process over on his blog here.

Listening to the presentations got me thinking about something that hit me a while ago and about which I have been meaning to write – ATTENTION.

As we move more and more to mobile, content makers are in an even fiercer battle for the users’ attention. It’s no longer just about competing against other content websites, ecommerce, email, social media etc. We are all really in the attention game now!

Whether it’s making calls, texting, watching videos, emailing, gaming, reading books, banking, listening to music, browsing the web, IM’ing, social networking etc there is so much to occupy a smartphone user’s attention before they even contemplate checking a media org’s app or mobile website.

Commenting on research released earlier this year the Harvard Business review pointed out that people spend only 47 minutes a month ‘seeking news or information’ only 4% of the overall time they spend on their smartphones. For a media org that’s a scary prospect and surely means you have to find ways to aggressively play the attention game. It’s time to work hard to get the user’s time and attention.

Five ways to go about it:

1. Go social: incorporate social networking elements strongly into your  offering. Give people ways to interact with each other. Encourage it, stimulate it, devote resources to it.
2. Gamify: Learn from the games industry and introduce the concepts of competition and rewards.
3. Personalise: Find ways to introduce as much personalisation as possible – location, interests, peer recommendation/referrals.
4. Be useful: Place an emphasis on content that people really need – practical stuff that’s required every day. Prioritise this and build a core around it.
5. Entertain: Use your mobile platform to grab some of that time where people just want fluff, eye candy, humour and distraction.

We are not going to boost the amount of time the smartphone user spends on finding news or news discovery so we must push hard into the other areas that interest them more. It’s essential you are very clear about what you’re building when you are working on mobile platforms. Keep the audience in mind at all times and think of ways to disrupt their current behaviour and gain their attention – otherwise you’re just building follies!

A few photos I took this evening while walking Dún Laoghaire’s West Pier. 

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Buzzfeed is the current wonder kid with 40 million monthly users who enjoy a mix of irreverent pop-culture lists, recipes, celebrity news, gifs and some pretty darn good political reporting. Its influence is stretching far and wide as other publishers rapidly adopt scrolling, photo-heavy, light text lists that add up to some, preferably quirky, number.

The Buzzfeed list format makes for a pleasant user experience. It’s scrollable (good for most devices), there are no click-through-page-impression-gathering galleries, minimal text means it’s perfect for weary brains and crucially the over-arching voice/tone is familiar sounding – like something your most hilarious friend might say.

I don’t think I’ve seen any format spread quite as fast as the Buzzfeed list. Of course lists existed before Buzzfeed, but it took the list and put the user first. Whether it was just a one-day experiment or not at Foreign Policy the Buzzfeed format has now truly crossed the line from the viral funny web of bunnies and childhood nostalgia to telling stories about serious topics.

There are two subtle points here. The first that serious people are using the Buzzfeed format to tell serious stories, yes as an experiment, but if it drives traffic and makes complex issues easily digestible you can be sure they’ll use it again (who doesn’t want to appeal to the demographic that gives your stories the greatest viral bounce?). The second is that with copycats (some good, some bad) springing up everywhere, how long can Buzzfeed keep its edge?

Buzzfeed, because it looked at online storytelling in a radical and different way, has perfected a powerful storytelling format, but for how long can you keep something, which is ultimately formulaic, fresh? If it can apply that different perspective again and find other new ways to tell stories and engage readers as competition heats up (as it always does on the web, and the spread of the Buzzfeed list is a great example of) they might just be able to stay ahead.

The reputations of media organisations that are hacked are particularly damaged because the core of their brand is the accuracy and trustworthiness of their communications with the public. The next time the AP posts a big breaking news tweet we will have to second guess it. How crazy is it that we must dissect a tweet from the AP to make sure that it is legitimate.

Media organisations invest so heavily on security both virtual and physical – from heavily protected networks to security guards at the entrances to their offices – in order to protect their brands and ensure their reputations. There are generous allocations in their IT budgets for this. But they use services like Twitter that make them so vulnerable (much, I know, to the chagrin of their IT departments). So much money is spent making sure media organisations’ websites can withstand a hack, but what can they do to protect themselves when using services like Twitter? Currently very little. Sure, they strictly adhere to Twitter’s advice on account security, but they can’t pay for anything that keeps them more secure.

Both Twitter and media organsitions (and a host of other companies and personalities) have challenges. Twitter needs to generate more revenue and fundamentally better security. Media orgs must use Twitter, as bowing out is not an option, but they need better security. Surely there is a synergy here. Media organisations should have the option to pay for a premium service offered by Twitter that provides extra layers of security. It wouldn’t be the first time Twitter has differentiated between users and not everyone needs enhanced security, just like not every Twitter user needs a verified Twitter account.

For media organisations this cannot happen fast enough. They need to be on Twitter but currently they can’t pay to reduce the risks that are associated with it.  It’s an opportunity for Twitter to drive revenue and begin the process of providing more premium services for heavy and professional users.

Since we re-launched the site in September the WorldIrish community has grown to 70,000 registered members as well as large numbers of non-registered visitors. The community, which is spread across the globe, has been extremely active creating thousands of pieces of content including stories, personal accounts, photos, videos and events.

In particular I’m proud of building a young, talented and versatile Content and Community Team based in Dublin, the United States and the United Kingdom. Working with each of them has been a pleasure. It has been fascinating building an audience and engaging the global Irish community.

The @Ireland project, which WorldIrish got off the ground over a year ago, is something I’m particularly pleased to see flourishing. It offers great potential to continue representing Ireland to the wider world through a variety of voices.

The vision John McColgan has for a connected global Irish community is a powerful one and something I still believe in. It is particularly important at a time when a new generation of Irish people are joining the many previous generations who have gone before. Bringing those groups together, fostering links, highlighting challenges and celebrating their successes is important for Ireland and other countries that have experienced high levels of emigration.

I wish WorldIrish all the best.