As a teacher, gratifying to see students engaged in determining #FutureStuMedia Excellent presentation @stevebuttry! pic.twitter.com/qZwh8pZsYN
— Hans K. Meyer (@OhJProf) April 8, 2016
My keynote address last night at the Future of Student Media Summit included group discussions at tables around the room. A companion post has a blog version of my opening and closing remarks at the conference, hosted by the Post, Ohio University’s independent student digital and print newsroom.
In between, the students and faculty discussed the questions below. Each table would choose a question and discuss it for about eight minutes. Then we debriefed most of the groups.
Here were my instructions:
Choose a question to discuss in your group. The person whose last name is the closest to the end of the alphabet will take notes and speak for your group. For the purposes of this discussion, cost and technology are not obstacles. Discuss the ideal solution and presume you can get it done. Don’t feel the need to answer all the questions. If one of the questions launches a good discussion, roll with it and don’t cut it off to move on to the next question.
Here are the questions, interspersed with tweets as the groups were debriefing after their discussions:
1. What is your student media organization spending too much time doing? Should you stop doing it, do less of it or find ways to do it more efficiently? How? What would you do with the extra student time you pick up by changing your priorities?
2. What’s an important commercial need in and around your university community that’s not being met well? How might you use mobile media to meet that need? Brainstorm a new product or service your student media could provide to meet this need?
3. How do you and your peers use smartphones in daily life? What common uses of the phones present opportunities for student media? How might your organization address this opportunity? How would you have to change your existing products? Or what new product(s) should you develop to meet this opportunity?
“Design and produce content for mobile that reflects how people use them.” Steve Buttry #FutureStuMedia
— FANGLE (@fanglemag) April 8, 2016
#socialmedia strat for @ohiou‘s @TheNewPolitical: post stories when students are on their phones – btwn classes. #FutureStuMedia
— Kim Fox (@KimFoxWOSU) April 8, 2016
4. How does your student media organization respond to failure? How does your organization need to change to become a place that embraces risk and celebrates failures for the lessons they teach us?
5. What would you need to do to make your student media app (or site) the first thing students on your campus open when they pick up their smartphones in the morning, or the thing they’re looking at in class when their professors think they’re listening?
Is your #collegemedia app phone-worthy? #FutureStuMedia pic.twitter.com/pokT8hiA2u
— Hillary Warren (@jadviser) April 8, 2016
WOW! @pittnews college media app tells when the washer/dryer is avble, and tracks your shuttle. #FutureStuMedia pic.twitter.com/xAIEt6exQw
— Hillary Warren (@jadviser) April 8, 2016
#FutureStuMedia takeaway: Real life example: Pittnews mobile app. #collegemedia https://t.co/TGMUxuwBV8 pic.twitter.com/BDG1iFocfZ
— Kim Fox (@KimFoxWOSU) April 8, 2016
#FutureStuMedia takeaway: Think abt Mobile app v. mobile-responsive website. Not just a news content app. #collegemedia
— Kim Fox (@KimFoxWOSU) April 8, 2016
#collegemedia apps use utility, not news, to gain traffic: biz specials, late-night coffee, shuttle updates. #FutureStuMedia
— Hillary Warren (@jadviser) April 8, 2016
6. How is your student media organization using Snapchat (or some newer social tool) to bring news to students on your campus? If you’re already experimenting with Snapchat journalism uses, what’s a possible next step? How could you use Snapchat (or some newer social tool) if you’re not yet?
Nice job @emilybohatch telling #FutureStuMedia that Snapchat is NOT broadcast tv.
— Hans K. Meyer (@OhJProf) April 8, 2016
#FutureStuMedia and @Snapchat: Keep it short and sweet. Use it for engagement. #collegemedia
— Kim Fox (@KimFoxWOSU) April 8, 2016
7. How could your student media organization use Snapchat (or some newer social tool) to help business customers bring valuable and welcome commercial messages to students on your campus? (If you’re already doing this, discuss your project with your group and what the next step might be.)
8. What new positions do you need in your student media organization to lead your efforts to engage the mobile audience and develop news and commercial products to serve the mobile audience? Do you already have a position(s) devoted to mobile? What does that person/team do?
#FutureStuMedia takeaway: Newsrooms have changed; new staff should reflect digital realities. #collegemedia
— Kim Fox (@KimFoxWOSU) April 8, 2016
9. Tell about a successful new product, service or other venture your student media operation launched. What obstacles did you have to overcome to succeed? Did you have some failures on the path to success? What did you learn from your failures?
10. How is your student media organization using virtual reality, 360 video and/or computer-generated imagery to tell stories? What are some stories you could tell using VR, 360 and/or CGI? How would you need to change your staffing and training to make these tools a regular part of your content?
.@DinaBerliner and her team: Experiment with evergreen content virtual reality video, that can be used again. #FutureStuMedia
— The Post (@ThePost) April 8, 2016
On connecting with reader: “Empathy and experience are essential.” Steve Buttry. #FutureStuMedia
— FANGLE (@fanglemag) April 8, 2016
11. Are you using games to engage your university community around news stories? If so, tell what you did and how? If not, discuss some stories on your campus that might lend themselves to games?
12. Media are used to shooting and editing videos for the large screens that people used for the first half-century-plus of the video age. But you and your student audience increasingly watch video on small screens. How should you shoot and edit video differently for small screens? How should you tell video stories differently for the quick formats of gifs, Snapchat and Instagram?
13. How can your student media organization develop news and/or commercial uses of wearable technology, such as watches, glasses and fitness devices? Are you doing anything yet? What wearable devices, if any, are catching on with students on your campus? What opportunities do those devices, or something you see coming down the road, present for student media?
14. What are the journalism and commercial opportunities for student media in drones? What do you need to study to pursue these opportunities?
15. Beyond standard text alerts, does text messaging offer any news or revenue-generating opportunities for student media? How could your news organization pursue them?
The final three questions were not on the handout (I thought of them on my next flight after emailing them to the student organizer from an airport Thursday). I offered them to any table that wanted a different topic, but no one took me up on that. I include them here in case you want to use these questions to stimulate discussions in your own news organizations.
If you want to use these questions at a similar conference, I encourage you to do something I did as people were entering the room: I asked people to scatter, so that no two visitors from one university would be sitting at the same table. That wasn’t possible with OU students and faculty, who outnumbered the tables, but I encouraged them to scatter as well, so we didn’t have any tables only of OU students.
I didn’t realize until after everyone was seated that I should have encouraged mixing as well of students with faculty and administrators. We had a couple tables with no students. They appeared to have good discussions, but I would have preferred students at every table. It didn’t seem worth having people move at the point I noticed.
Of course, if you have a discussion like this within an organization, it will have value because of the shared experiences and knowledge. But at a conference, I think each group from a university (or company) would benefit from participating in multiple discussion, and each discussion would benefit from a variety of perspectives.
Of course, no one can solve student media problems in eight minutes, but the point was to start conversations. I hope I’ve done that, and I’ll publish guest posts from any participants who send them. And, if the questions inspire some thinking from you, I welcome guest submissions from people who weren’t at the conference. If you want to contribute a guest post, email me at stephenbuttry (at) gmail (dot) com.
The Buttry Diary 
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