This was another question posed to the attendees of the GV Summit. Attendees were split up in different groups to discuss this prompt, and these are some of their ideas.
What might GV look like taking into consideration the very different context in which we work? What would change? What would be the same? It could be anything from how we are structured to what our main activities would be.
Add your ideas in the comments section.
ORANGE GROUP
1. First, define the “gap” that GV want to bridge between.
2. More Social Media
3. More Visual/Audio content(about 50%)
4. Multiple distribution strategy
5. More resources for who cannot read-Phone calls, mobile messaging, auto-reading…
6. Mobile first: apps, mobile web, embedded in popular apps.
7. Build lists/databases of people/sites/accounts to follow based on topics, regions, languages….
8. Maps & #hashtags: present our contents in different ways.
9. New ways of community building: email(maybe less), messaging apps(definitely more), and recommend readings via messaging apps.
10. Make contents more readable, less geeky.
11. Speed up: more breaking news, shorter posts, while maintaining accuracy.
12. Partnerships: Yes, people blog less, but there are more online magazines, and more possibilities of partnership between GV and other websites globally. We should put more efforts on building partnership.
RED GROUP
What GV does:
• Taking things from local contexts and giving them global relevance and visibility
• Supporting local activism
• Archive of content where things can be found, versus social media content that disappears
• Curating. Translating. Bridging
• Offline + online
What would GV be if we started from scratch today?
• More multimedia
• Printed newsletter for non-internet users
• Alternative non-private owned social media and spaces
• Mobile reporting platform
• Crowdsourced data collection, timeline and maps for Advocacy and other projects
• Translation by default, but making sure that the quality is still there
DARK GREEN GROUP
Content:
1.Interview based stories
2. Editorial/ Narrative stories
3. Daily News Digest
4. Netizen posts (e.g., 5 blogs about…)
5. Collaboration among different contributors
6. Special coverage
7. Learning content (e.g., How to…)
Technology:
1. Mix of technologies not only limiting to blogs (e.g., embedding content on main page from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.)
2. Collaborative posts
3. Trending stories
LIGHT GREEN GROUP
-Would it be possible to do more interview- based stories?
- Planning of special coverage. The recent fatal French shootings have been covered quite extensively by traditional media , but solid articles about reactions from different regions are few and far between. We always say GV is a global community, let's make our coverage look so too. It'd be awesome to commission a series of special reports drawing on posts by different authors.
- On that note, collaboration between authors would be nice. I am hoping to write an analysis piece this year about China-Japan relations in light of the territorial dispute. Unfortunately, my knowledge about Japanese politics is very limited and I speak no Japanese. Nevin , I will reach out to you some time later this year:)
- Instead of quick reads, we are thinking daily or weekly news digest– essentially a congregation of news stories in brief sentences, ones that authors deem important and compelling. It's like saying here are five stories you need to know today/ this week. I can provide an example on request. This can be done on a regional or subject basis.
- online training content tailored for newly recruited writers.
YELLOW GROUP
If GV were to start today, here are our recommendations:
1- GV should focus of social media platforms. Apart from having a YouTube channel, a Facebook page and a Twitter account, it should also have an App that allows it to disseminate its content widely, for example.
1.1- Content should be created for those various channels, so GV content can be more than just written, stories can be made into short movies.
2- GV should mould it’s social media tools depending on regions. Focus on using the social media tools that are popular in China to publicizes stories of that region for example, while others might be more popular in Latin America.
3- Use alternative tools such as radio to reach out to people who don’t enjoy available internet service. Maybe even go into a sort of tie-up with big names such as BBC.
4- Expand the distribution of the newsletter by making many versions in many languages instead of being just in English.
5- Recruit authors in areas that lack coverage instead for waiting for volunteers to approach GV.
LIME GREEN GROUP
Look at four pillars of GV
1. Context
• Make sure the work engages with those outside the community, encouraging comments, and readership amongst different view points.
• bridging the gap between the local and global
2. Medium/Platform
• emphasis on ‘googlization’ of platforms; catering to claiming rankings within google hits to encourage more readers
• encourage more emphasis on social media in the structure of the platform a la Mashable
3. Content
• keep original content in other languages
• employ more data visualizations and infographics (possibly recruit a visualisation expert?)
• analysis/overview of monthly articles (‘month in review’)
4. Sources
• verifying sources, and authenticity of news (examining twitter handles), and employing this as part of the coverage
• showing in text sources (source aggregator to compliment each post)
DOTLESS GROUP
The New GV: Inputs, Outputs and Connections
- We want it to be like Humans of New York: human stories with striking images
– We should be on Twitter, Facebook
– We should use photos and multimedia first to tell stories
– Promote diversity and discovery (tell stories mainstream media doesn't tell)
– We should build an app!
– Present alternative opinions and POVs
– Balance news and opinion content
– We should have a social research component – can we do our own surveys, polls, interviews? Great source of data for stories
– Think about different scenarios of news discovery (push vs. pull)
– We should think about a multi-layer system of categories for content: by country/region, by topic/beat, by areas of special coverage – to provide broader views of our stories and allow them to be grouped in different ways
– We want to enable co-authoring of stories by people from different regions, promote cross-regional cooperation
– How do we access people – both new authors and new audiences?
- We should seek to create and build on microexpert communities on the ground in various countries, seek to have a diversity of regions represented on GV, and create opportunities for connecting people, authors, communities and audiences across the world.
PINK GROUP
If GV was to start today:
• We thought of focusing on more real time/live blogging. Have stories covered via aggregation of tweets/facebook posts and notes/news stories and blog posts. These entries would be updated on an on-going basis so if the story goes online on a specific date it would be possible to go back and keep on updating it if there are new developments;
• Initiating a “hotline” reaching out to people and asking them for their opinions and ideas and asking them to contribute stories and news;
BLUE GROUP
- Searchable content by hashtag and tags, but going in the opposite direction of the Google localization system. The idea is that to get people stories from parts of the world other than their own.
- It would share more local stories and less news-like articles
- It would share different possibilities for ‘social sharing’ like meetups with GV members, social events, talks of interest, conferences, and different opportunities (like job offers or grants)
- No more ‘click baiting’ (just like Lova said ” it would not partake into the race for clicks”
- It would take the advantage of readers rating the stories and giving a different position to news we don't think as news (for example, what we call “good news” which should have a lot of the same importance and position than the rest of the news. Not just a ‘light’, ‘refreshing’ touch.
- It would offer different translation options
- It would allow more cross-posting and cross-writing