Child care, design and subtraction

Great ideas come out of the SXSW festival in Austin, a tech/music/film event.
Jeffrey Zeldman, an interaction designer, proposes a couple of disparate ideas worth your time.
Zeldman, who Tweeted frequently during the recent conference about missing dinners or events because he was playing with Barbie dolls with his child, throws out the idea of a child-care co-op for future conferences. It's a wonderful idea that can help broaden the diversity of attendance at similar events.
And he concludes the post with links to a couple of videos about design. My favorite part: Michael Lopp of Apple talking about how good design is the taking away of features, not the adding of more gizmos.
The tie between Zeldman's ideas? Usability.
Go there.

Travel and learn vicariously

A challenge over the next few days: Walk away from boring football on that other screen and go read the personal journals of some traveling Charlotte Observer folks. These are personal sites not affiliated with The Observer. You'll get lots of inside baseball but also travel vicariously.

From Cambridge
Mary Newsom is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writing about her Nieman time. She's getting to hang out with people like Tom Fiedler, former editor of the Miami Herald, and she's continuing to study urban design and transportation while walking to class. Her husband, Frank Barrows, former m.e. at The Observer, is studying sports statistics (surprise, surprise). And daughter Maggie is Live Journaling (surprise, surprise), and jealous that her mom gets to read "Pride and Prejudice" for class.

From Cuernavaca
Reporter Deborah Hirsch is writing and posting photos about her time as a Rotary International scholar.
Blow some stereotypes by reading about Yom Kippur in Mexico. She's using Wordpress and posting lots of photos (hint, hint, Mary). She's also occasionally sending dispatches to Observer blog Enterese Charlotte, like a report with photos on the recent floods.

African-American citizen journalists: "We are taking this into our own hands"

I'd love to hear what Mel Watt thinks about these guys, or what these guys think about Mel Watt. I can't wait to find out who gets the "Lawn Jockey awards."

Found this through a Youtube "citizen journalist" A.Man.I, who was linked in JOMC 713 class at UNC, props to student Amanda Carol Toler.
A.Man.I's website is called My Urban Report and has links to sites like Acting White and Afro-Netizen.

The bottom line: Can a citizen be a journalist? I wouldn't bet against this guy, and it's great that this kind of work can happen when the "name" journalism schools and student papers have inadequate minority numbers among students.



This guy certainly has more street cred than the following Fox TV station. While I applaud the efforts to reach out to the community, I can't help but think that the audience will feel that corporate media just wants content for free. We can steal the technique, but make sure it's mission-driven with the idea that we need help to cover all communities well.