New Media Lab brings together non­prof­its, cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists, social media experts

I’m at Day 2 of a remark­able two-day con­fer­ence that is bring­ing non­prof­its, cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism and social media together in ways I’ve never seen before.

I’m jazzed, hope­ful and intrigued by the chal­lenges ahead. The pas­sion in the room is pal­pa­ble. The 40 peo­ple who con­vened at the Vision­ing Sum­mit yes­ter­day in San Fran­cisco, and the 30 par­tic­i­pants who are steer­ing the pro­gram today, con­sist of some of the most tal­ented and forward-thinking inno­va­tors — non­profit execs, strate­gists, jour­nal­ists from the Bay Area, Miami and Fin­land — that I’ve come across in recent years.

Above is the pre­sen­ta­tion I gave at this gath­er­ing, orga­nized by a group of non­prof­its in a project called the New Media Lab (there’s no pub­lic pres­ence yet, just a pri­vate wiki). And while its focus is squarely on the role that journalist/media pro­duc­ers will play in our project, it can also be applied to the new roles that jour­nal­ists should be expected to take up in an age of social media if you work for a startup, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit.

Called Doing Good 2.0: The next-generation’s impact on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, media, mobile & civic engage­ment, it looks at the forces dri­ving Web 2.0 and the next-generation Inter­net, the role of mobile, the new cul­tural norms that social media is ush­er­ing in, and the role of the New Jour­nal­ist: how we need to still tell com­pelling sto­ries about peo­ple and causes but how we also need to expand our reper­toire in this new arena by wear­ing mul­ti­ple hats:

• entre­pre­neur
• con­ver­sa­tion facil­i­ta­tor
• social mar­keter
• futur­ist
• met­rics & research nerd
• journalist/storyteller

Here are some of the ques­tions we’ve just begun to tackle:

Should non­prof­its cre­ate their own media?

What should be the busi­ness model for social cause orga­ni­za­tions in the future?

How can the media pro­duc­ers funded by this project work with non­prof­its to build a sus­tain­able busi­ness ven­ture that con­nects to their core constituencies?

How do you turn pas­sive audi­ences into engaged communities?

What hap­pens when you bust the silos that keep us from work­ing together across sectors?

I’ve signed on as a paid advi­sor to the year­long project, which will hap­pen largely vir­tu­ally. The idea is that the alter­na­tive, pro­gres­sive non­prof­its — the National Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion, National Civic League, Freespeech.tv, Mother Jones and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Phil­an­thropy — will assign point peo­ple to work with pro­duc­ers selected by San Fran­cisco State’s Renais­sance Jour­nal­ism Center.

Lever­ag­ing free and open source tools

Some of the ingre­di­ents that will be sprin­kled into the project’s secret sauce: use of mobile; an empha­sis on social media; use of high-quality video across mul­ti­ple plat­forms (Web, cable and broad­cast TV); and busi­ness plans from Manas Con­sult­ing to make it all self-sustaining.

The goal, in a phrase, is to “help non-profit part­ners find inno­v­a­tive ways to get their mem­bers to engage in con­ver­sa­tion, vol­un­teer, sub­scribe, donate and advocate.”

The role of the “New Jour­nal­ist” — which we’re call­ing media pro­duc­ers — in this project is para­mount: The pro­duc­ers (who hail from SF Gate, the Miami Her­ald, an Emmy-winning doc­u­men­tar­ian and oth­ers) will be sit­ting down this after­noon to map out how to weave a tapes­try out of all these mov­ing parts.

“This is a project for those who like to play around, who are com­fort­able with things shift­ing fast and often,” Jon Fun­abiki, founder of Renais­sance Jour­nal­ism Cen­ter, told the producers.

Dur­ing my talk I showed off this heart-tugging video from aglimmerofhope.org as a com­pelling exam­ple of sto­ry­telling for a cause and showed off a suite of free open source and social media tools and plat­forms. I also pointed to a few ahead-of-the-curve ideas for partnerships:

Among those in atten­dance: Fun­abiki; David Cohn of Spot.us; Jed Alpert, co-founder of MobileCom­mons; Arthur Char­ity, author of “Doing Pub­lic Jour­nal­ism”; man­age­ment con­sul­tant Richard Landry; social entre­pre­neur Ron Williams, and many other smart folks. Jon Schwartz, who runs a string of pro­gres­sive non­prof­its, is fund­ing the project, and Hal­cyon Liew orga­nized the proceedings.

With a lit­tle bit of luck, we’ll fig­ure this out. I’ll report back on our progress in the months to come.

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.

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