Jonathan Coffman

Upcoming Posts

Jonathan Coffman — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:15:08 +0000

Well, now that it’s February 2010 I’ve already pretty well given up on that New Years Resolution to blog each week!

But… I do have some pretty amazing posts all in various phases of draftiness that will be coming your way over the coming weeks.

Here’s a preview:

The Innovators Dilemma (Public Media Edition) – The Problem
The Innovators Dilemma (Public Media Edition) – Solutions
What does an “online membership” look like for non-profit organizations?
Appointment Web: So crazy it just might work!
How do you build a Community of Practice
The end of PBS Engage, and what it means to PBS and social media
Setting priorities amongst multiple projects
Early AP vs. PBS as distributor/connector of content
Public media is full of smart community organizers and yet we can’t seem to organize ourselves

As they say, “Stay tuned!”

links for 2009-09-28

Jonathan Coffman — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:02:40 +0000

The National Parks: America's Best Idea: | PBS

Ken Burns' latest opus is "The National Parks" which presents the story of our nations most beautiful landscapes

(tags: National Parks, PBS, Ken_Burns, TV, education, documentary, national_parks)

A Brief History of PublicMediaCamp

Jonathan Coffman — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:35:48 +0000

Tuesday I gave you a quick summary of Public Media Camp and what it means, today I’d like to walk you through some of the vision behind why #PubCamp, and why now.

Personally, I hope that the unconference movement marks a transition in civic and community service volunteerism — local public media stations have always been great about pulling together volunteers to do things like answer phones during pledge drives, but more and more I hear from stations who wish they had more capacity to do really innovative things online and across platforms.

There just isn’t enough money and employees to make all of our dreams come true, hopefully PublicMediaCamp can help.

We’ve (and by we, I mean PBS, NPR, the American University Center for Social Media, and iStrategyLabs — talk about some firepower behind the idea!) came up with what we think is a solid platform and framework for organizing and capturing ideas and content.

We’re not only going to gather 300 of the best and brightest of Washington DC, but also we’re creating a toolkit that local public broadcasting entities across the United States can use to hold their own unconferences no matter the scale. Those local events may be 20 people in a conference room, or 700 people in a convention center, the scale of the event doesn’t matter as much as the people and the ideas that are generated.

In the coming weeks, I’ll walk you through some of the other thinking behind the event and give you updates on where we are in the planning phase. If you’re interested in becoming involved in PublicMediaCamp just send a tweet or an email, we need lots of volunteers and sponsors to make this event a success.

Announcing – PublicMediaCamp

Jonathan Coffman — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:15:22 +0000

After several months of chewing on and discussing it, PublicMediaCamp is finally being announced to the public today.

Back in March of this year, Andy Carvin, Margaret Rosas, Jen Reeves, and several other passionate supporters of public and community media got together at DrupalCon DC to discuss the future and how tackle it.

One thing we all decided on, too many conferences and collaborations between PBS, NPR, and other organizations were too formal and expensive. In the age of the unconference, we had to ask ourselves why we haven’t been able to mobilize technology evangelists in the name of public service.

And as they say, the rest is history.

The first Public Media Camp will be held right here in Washington, DC October 17th and 18th. We hope that this will turn into a series of user generated conferences that bring together public broadcasting entities (namely PBS and NPR stations) and their local technology communities.

If you’re going to be in town in mid October, sign-up now to be alerted when tickets go on sale.

Later this week I’ll post a little more about the vision and thought behind the event, so check back soon!

Working on the site a little…

Jonathan Coffman — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:54:56 +0000

First off, thank you for sticking with me. I’ve really done a fantastic job of ignoring my blog for the last several months. In the mean time, I’ve been spending most of my time over on Twitter where I’ve amassed a nice little following.

In the meantime, there has been a lot of thinking going on in the background as I try to decide where to take my personal site — and brand — next. A lof factors are going into this but I decided in summary:

Drupal was too ambitious for my personal site, I really like the system and remain a big fan, but I don’t have the time to devote to making it work exactly how I want here.
WordPress lets me get up and moving quickly, it’s also typically the first CMS to get plugins developed for new social networking sites and services, this makes sure that I can try things out quickly and efficiently.
On a daily basis I wrestle with form vs function, and for my personal site — as in much of my work — I want this to work for you and me. If it doesn’t function well, there might as well not even be a pretty design on top.

Stay tuned, there’s much more to come here. (I’ll update this post or post again when most of the changes are in place)

links for 2009-02-23

Jonathan Coffman — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:02:25 +0000

PBS Engage | PBS at SxSW 2009 in Austin, TX | PBS

PBS is holding many events at the 2009 SxSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX. Visit the PBS area across the street from the convention center to meet with Public Broadcasting Service employees to see demonstrations of our latest tools and services, and help us brainstorm ideas for ways to make PBS more relevant.

(tags: SxSW PBS Public media Broadcasting Service Party Austin)

Gearing up for the Oscars

Jonathan Coffman — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:49:02 +0000

Today I’ll be hanging out at the AMC Loew’s Georgetown theatre to watch all 5 Best Picture nominees, courtesy of AMC Theatres. Be sure to follow my Tweets throughout the day for information about the event, the films, and more!

Here are the films and times I’ll be in them:

“Milk” – 10:30 a.m. – 12:38 p.m.
“The Reader” – 1:05 p.m. – 3:07 p.m.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” – 3:45 p.m. – 6:33 p.m.
“Slumdog Millionaire” – 7:15 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.
“Frost/Nixon” – 9:45 p.m. – 11:47 p.m.

Who’s ready for some popcorn and candy!?

Meet Me at SxSW Interactive

Jonathan Coffman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:22:34 +0000

Meet and Chat with me and other PBS Employees at the SxSW Interactive Festival March 13-17, 2009.

In just a few short weeks I’ll be headed down to the SxSW Interactive Festival (I’ll be in Austin March 13-17) with PBS Engage. We have lots of very fun events planned and lots of opportunities for you to help put the public back in public media. For several hours each day you’ll be able to chat with PBS employees who can share ideas and show off what we’re working on.

If you’re reading my blog, you probably know the best ways to find me — but if you’re unfamiliar. Hit me up via Email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Be sure to block off time on your schedule to visit the PBS Pub (we’ll be setting up shop at the Moose Knuckle Pub in Austin). For more details and to see my schedule visit PBS.org/sxsw. We’ll be Twittering (@pbsengage and @jdcoffman), live blogging, and even have streaming live video for you to enjoy.

I’ll see you there!

Thoughts on Twitter’s Growth

Jonathan Coffman — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:05:35 +0000

I often write about Twitter, but here are some fresh thoughts on my usage, and it’s value.

Twitter’s growth has been widely reported in both the mainstream, and technology/social media spheres so I won’t get into that today, but what I do want to discuss with you is how the value propisition of the service has changed for me personally over the last year.

Not a lot has changed in terms of functionality of feature set, although I think we all mourn the loss of “Track” — it brought true real-time data from twitter. Here are some other random thoughts on the value of Twitter:

I can only imagine what all of the journalists and news organizations currently using Twitter would be using it for if “Track” still existed.
With the addition of Summize’s search functionality came the ability to many more people to “get it” with Twitter and begin to understand how valuable it is as a business and personal growth offering.
I’ve now expanded to almost 1,500 followers and growing — what hasn’t changed however is what I use it for. I still use Twitter as a means to let people know what I’m doing, enjoying, and thinking about. A TON of value in my own personal Twitter usage stems from sending links that I enjoy to my followers and finding out what their thoughts are.
Asking and answering questions is a ‘killer app’ on Twitter.
There are WAY too many Twitter tools, and WAY too many of them are just mediocre.
My favorite Desktop Twitter clients are Twhirl, and TweetDeck. I use Twhirl for my work account and brand monitoring, while I use TweetDeck to keep track of close friends and family.
My favorite Mobile Twitter client is Tweetie – it is by far the best 99 cent iPhone application available today.

I’m on my way to 2,00 followers, won’t you consider following me?

Where are all the Location Aware Social Networks?

Jonathan Coffman — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:52:33 +0000

Where are all the Location Aware Social Networks?

As someone who spends a lot of time reading, trying out, and evaluating social media products and services I find it very hard to believe that we haven’t yet seen a game changing location aware social network, or at least extension of an existing system.

Sure I use traditional social networks on-the-go, but they don’t actually know where I’m at — geo aware social products and services are the next frontier –.

I’ve tried BrightKite, and it is interesting for a while, but definitely does not have mass appeal yet.

I’ve tried Google Lattitude, and that’s where I’m putting my bets, if Google can’t make location cool again no one can. But, and this is a big But, Google is taking a beating on the stock market like the rest of us and just isn’t innovating at as rapid a pace as they once were (even just a couple of years ago).

I’m also using Yahoo Fire Eagle – which is a really neat idea, it’s an attempt to aggregate your location across multiple services, this is pretty forward thinking and really lends it self nicely to geo data portability.

More to come soon, but until then please let me know if you’ve found a really great mobile location aware application.