Even though the industry looks pretty dull, the general feeling I got, was that people have now realised that there is no point in trying to desperately hold on to your job, but now is the time to look forward. Naturally, this forces people to think of new things rather than trying to fix the old, – exciting I think.

There was plenty to talk about, and the unconference format really works well when it comes to networking and spreading ideas. There was everything from failed online ventures like Scoopt, new and exciting start-ups like the local news site SoGlos.com, established success stories like London-SE1 who have made hyper-local work in 10+ years. Newly launched Sweeble.com, the poor journalists printer and distributor was unveiled, Ok, it’s been running for a month, but still pretty new ;-).

James Hatts from London-SE1

The whole event was all about the future of journalism and how to make money in an industry that is changing on all fronts. Hyper-local was one of the main topics of the day, and especially how to make it work. As Marting Belam notes in a short interview with John Welsh, there is no reason why every publication has to cover everything.

“Does every publication need to cover horse racing coverage? the Racing Post does that. Or, are we going to end up with a situation were the Racing Post can concentrate on that audience and selling the advertising for that audience, and the rest of us can point to that?”

He also gave re-assurance that there will be news in the future, but the business model will change, thanks Martin.

Live-blogging JEEcamp

I was live blogging the day on behalf of the Online Journalism Blog and had some great discussions and panels to cover. I did a whole bunch of videos with Documentally about journalists use of facebook, why small-talk is important on twitter, the value of your online network and the next big thing.

Documentally showing off

James Hatts from London-SE1 talked about local news and we also had some great impromptu panel discussions. One chaired by Joanna Geary from the Times, and the other headed by Dave Harte from Digital Birmingham. The full transcript of the live bogging is also available and of course, every journalist, apart from one, live blogged their own experience, so search the web or head over to JEEcamp.com where everything is aggregated.

Kyle MacRae’s Keynote: The Rise and Fall of Scoopt.com

CoverItLive:

Video Coverage

The live video coverage was not as successful as I had hoped. the Bambuser video was simply useless, and the audio on the Qik equivalent was poor to say the least. Luckily my LX3 held up nicely and I secured a nice collection of JEEcamp clips that was uploaded to Vimeo. A few are also embedded here.

Kyle MacRae on Scoopt.com

Documentally: The detail is in the small-talk

James Hatts from London-SE1

Tomorrow I will be live blogging from JEEcamp – the Journalism Enterprise and Entrepreneurship unconference. Joining me, will be a team of online journalism students from the Birmingham City University, some of which are also hard working reporters at my little baby; Birmingham Recycled. We will be using a variety of tools including CoverItLive, Qik, Bambuser, Flickr and of course twitter.

Update: Live archive here

“the hashtag to follow on Twitter is #jeecamp, while jeecamp.com will be aggregating any mentions of jeecamp from various social media platforms (Paul Bradshaw’s, Online Journalism Blog )”

You can see a list of attendees over at eventbrite where tickets are also available (I think they are sold out though).

Here is an (un)official schedule of the event.

10.00: People will start arriving
10.20: Introduction
10.40: Kyle Macrae keynote
11.10: Coffee break
11.30: Speed networking
12.00: Break into groups each with a question to discuss
13.00: Lunch break
14.00: Fringe discussion (whatever that means?)
14.30: Open Mic
15.00: Panel discussions
16.00: Finish

An unconference?

An unconference means that the event is basically organised by the attendees. Everyone have had the opportunity to contribute via the JEEcamp wiki. Here’s the official description of the event.

“JEEcamp is an opportunity for a range of people to get together to talk about how on earth journalists and publishers can make a living from journalism in the era of free information, what the challenges are, and what we’ve learned so far.

It is also an opportunity for people with different skills and experiences to network, share those experiences, and perhaps suggest partnerships or new projects.

It is an unconference, which means no endless parade of speakers, and no predetermined agenda (more info here). It’s a self-organising event, so you decide the agenda (via this wiki), and the focus is on providing the space and time for those with valuable experience and ideas – attendees – to talk to peers.

Attendees might have launched their own journalism project – or worked on one within a mainstream organisation. Or they might just have lots of great ideas, or knowledge about the area.”

Follow the liveblogging and  have a look all the aggregated content from around the web and help us make it worthwhile.