Building in the Open: What Happens When You Build Stuff With Your Audience Melody Kramer / @mkramer
Who are ya, Mel? Philly native Former professional humor writer Tried to go to med school...twice…. Current Gig: I write, edit, code in a bunch of languages, and design/build/make stuff with audiences . I love what I do. I like teaching. I like helping explain things. I like sharing what I learn.
What do you like to think about, Mel? Metadata. Users. People. The Audience. Different audiences. Accessibility. Transparency. Culture Change. Building Cool Stuff.
Why is it important to involve an audience in your work while you’re working? They feel more invested in the outcome They have expertise you may not have Can point out errors / new ideas Trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. Cheaper for large networks.
Examples
KRCL in Salt Lake City: Experimenting with Community Podcasting http://www.krcl.org/connect/podcasts/
64 Ways To Think About A Homepage
KPCC: Make Al Care
WWNO: Listening Posts
Washington Post Weather Watchers
NPR: Find Jennifer
Curious City
ProPublica: Ways To Get Involved
Praise ‘em loud, praise ‘em often.
WNYC: Bored and Brilliant
Smithsonian Transcription Center
tinyletter.com/melodykramer News for Betty
Let’s Talk About Membership Community Mel Kramer @mkramer
THIS IS YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
THIS IS ME IN FOURTH GRADE.
President Obama to 4th graders: And you get a National Park Pass. And you get a National Park Pass. And you! And you!
Let’s Talk About Those 4th Graders in 30 years….. * Identify as supporters of the National Park Service * Feel a sense of satisfaction and loyalty when thinking about their relationship with the National Park Service * Value the experience they had in the National Parks and want to share it with their own children. * Advocate for the future existence of the National Park Service. * Recognize the National Park system for the indispensible public resource it is.
Let’s look at some examples.
How does this translate to community radio? How else can you ask the community to participate? How else can you ask them to become involved and invested?
What if community members could: ❏ donating code or participating in a hackathon ❏ donating design skills ❏ tagging an archive ❏ digitizing an archive ❏ designing a template or poster for a member station ❏ helping out at an event ❏ user testing ❏ putting together a documentary with your classmates
What will this look like? Here’s a sample task a station could post.
Create opportunities for people to become ambassadors for a station.
Creating ways for people to explore the physical space of a station.
Create frameworks for communities to be more deeply connected to each other using the station as a hub or platform.
Incentivize stations to collaborate and share content and/or code.
Develop different communications strategies for stations to contact remote contributors or donors.
Develop more ways to facilitate both creation and distribution of information.
We must think about what it means to be a member and be able to articulate that to audiences who might never listen through a radio.
We must work in public.
Above all: We must think about and learn from the user, the audience, the listener, the person, and the public.
How To Contact Me, If You’d Like • Best way: Twitter @mkramer • Second best way: personal email melodykramer@gmail.com • Github: https://github.com/melodykramer • Newsletter: www.tinyletter.com/melodykramer • Blog: melodykramer.github.io WHAT I’M BUILDING: MEDIAPUBLIC.IO
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