One of my main frustrations is that all efforts to allow Register’s to share content have not been as successful as hoped for. So, I set out on brainstorming over a few weeks about why those efforts failed. Rather than being upset about the situation, I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to come up with my idea for user content.

My idea is #shareoc. Rather than building a website, or a mobile app, or a group on a social networking site – I want to build a system. And, I want the focus to be about why people share content.

My ideas on why people share content:

Status: People naturally want to be seen as having some sort of worth by other people. This is not about people being conceded – but it is about having ideas and contributions validated by the community.

Results: People want to share something so that it impacts someone else. People tweet about being stuck in a bad accident so they can complain and so that others might be able to be saved from sitting in the same traffic. People report potholes to city hall so that the potholes can be fixed.

With ShareOC – I want to provide a way for people to easily share content with the Register’s valuable audiences. I want the system to be built across channels – rather than being based around one thing (like how iReport is built around a website – which means less social and mobile integration at the core level).

Thanks for following and we’ll see how the project goes!

Link: Round-up of tweets about San Diego earthquake

Link: O.C. residents roll with the quake

I was working a Sunday night cops reporting shift when suddenly the building started shaking. A normal Sunday shift turned into a quake shift. While the building kept shaking I tweeted this: “Wow – #earthquake felt here in Santa Ana at the Register. Still feel it movin. Details to come.” Once the shaking stopped, I sent another tweet linking to the USGS quake information page and sent a text message to the breaking news SMS subscribers. I sent more tweets – retweeting others’ tweets and asking for damage information, personal stories and user-generated content. In some cases, I found user content on Twitter and asked if we could use it. I sent this tweet asking for us to use a video of pool water splashing during the quake — the same video you see that we were able to embed in this main quake story.

Without Twitter and people geotagging their tweets via mobile devices — my coverage would have been 25 percent as valuable. I was able to round-up tweets about the quake – specific to Orange County.

My favorite piece of reporting was my round up linked above and titled “O.C. residents roll with the quake.” The quake did little to no damage in Orange County, but it still created interesting stories. Editors were asking me to go drive around the county and look for stories. I was able to prove with this round-up of four stories that Twitter is a more effective tool (in some cases) than driving around and looking for stuff.

The first new mobile product produced by the Freedom mobile team and through my work as social/mobile leader launched April 1, 2010.

The mobile app includes these features:

• Access the latest articles, photos and videos of the day
• Customize your “My News” with your favorite sections and blogs from OCRegister.com
• Share content via Twitter, Facebook or E-mail
• Read the Orange County Register anytime, anywhere, with offline browsing
• Save stories for reading at your convenience

• Lead training to increase the speed in reporting and disseminating news to audiences using social media and mobile tools and technologies – and other methods as they emerge.
• Be the mobile and social media content champion. Train staff, engage newsroom, evaluate success and create guidelines.
• Be the point person for news alerts and text messages, mobile applications, e-mail news alerts, and OCR Twitter accounts and Facebook.
• Use social media as a tool for reporting and innovation in the breaking news realm.
• Train and mentor staff on mobile tools and adapting of workflows.
• Develop and execute strategies for mobile/social coverage of disasters and other news events.
• Manage content planning for mobile products. Work with content teams to deliver content for new and existing mobile products.

• A to Z (wiki pages in alphabetical order)
• Most popular pages
• Wiki badge system for contributors
• Wiki user page
• Featured wiki entries
• Basic site map
• My wiki page and my recent edits

As part of my work on the Orange County communities project I was the leader of developing an Orange County wiki. The wiki is intended to add depth and context to the people, places, things and trends of the county. The content is written by the community along with Orange County Register staff.

The O.C. Register Wiki began in Irvine and is expanding to include all of Orange County. I started working on the wiki in February 2009 and the wiki launched on July 20, 2009. In November 2009 I handed the wiki reigns over to Roxanne Hack so that I could join and work on the Freedom Communications mobile team.

For this project I: developed a strategy and action plan, reviewed vendors to finally select MindTouch as the wiki vendor, created a business plan, learned DekiScript (the API language for MindTouch wikis) so that I could automate sections in the wiki, created a user engagement plan, taught and managed staff’s contributions to the wiki, managed user-engagement and management, created a site structure and design and managed up by keeping OCRegister and Freedom leaders up-to-date on the wiki progress.

I was working a weekend cops desk shift when a small brush fire started in the Cleveland National Forest. No matter how small a brush fire starts a news organization should be alert because all fires start small. Thankfully this fire was extinguished after a few hours, but at least we were prepared to cover the story if the fire got out of hand.

An almost-drowning off the shore of Laguna Beach turned into a narrative on the rescue. While working a cops weekend shift I was able to interview people and write a full story about how the girl was saved.